Wisprs — AI Transcription & Subtitle Generator (YouTube, Podcast, Audio)

Submit any YouTube video, podcast episode, or audio URL and get back a full text transcript, SRT/VTT subtitles, speaker-labeled segments, and structured content like show notes, chapters, or Twitter/X threads — saved to your Apify Dataset automatically.

The Wisprs Transcription Actor is powered by the Wisprs API, a production-grade async voice processing engine that transcribes audio from any publicly accessible URL. Unlike caption-scraping actors that fail on 30–40% of videos (music, Shorts, unlisted), Wisprs uses Whisper-based transcription and yt-dlp to cover 100% of video and audio URLs. Accuracy is excellent on clear audio; results vary by language, accent, and recording quality.

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What does this Actor do?

1. Takes a list of YouTube, podcast, or audio/video URLs from your startUrls input
2. Submits each URL to the Wisprs transcription API (async job queue — no timeouts)
3. Polls until each job completes (typically 1–3 minutes per 15-minute video)
4. Exports the transcript in your chosen formats: TXT, SRT, VTT, JSON, or Markdown
5. Optionally generates structured content from the transcript via the Wisprs repurpose engine — podcast show notes, timestamped chapters, guest quotes, Twitter/X threads, or blog posts
6. Saves one dataset row per URL — ready for downstream automation

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How do I use this Actor to transcribe a YouTube video?

Step 1 — Run the Actor

Set the following input:

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXAMPLE" }],
  "language": "auto",
  "exportFormats": ["txt", "srt"],
  "repurposeMode": "none"
}

Step 2 — Check your Dataset

When the run completes, your Dataset contains one row per URL with the full transcript, SRT subtitles, and any repurposed content you requested.

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What data does the Actor extract?

Each dataset row includes:

Field	Description
url	The submitted URL
jobId	Wisprs job identifier for tracking
transcriptionId	Transcription identifier for the Wisprs API
status	completed or failed
durationSeconds	Audio/video duration in seconds
detectedLanguage	ISO 639-1 code of the detected language
transcript_txt	Full plain-text transcript
transcript_srt	SRT subtitle file content
transcript_vtt	WebVTT subtitle file content
transcript_json	Word-level timestamps in JSON
transcript_md	Transcript in Markdown format
repurposed_show_notes	Structured show notes (summary, chapters, quotes)
repurposed_thread	Twitter/X thread array
repurposed_summary	2–4 sentence summary
repurposed_chapters	Timestamped chapter markers

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How much will it cost to transcribe a 30-minute podcast?

Pricing is per-event:

• $0.005 per transcription submitted (one-time per URL)
• $0.015 per audio minute processed (e.g. a 30-minute episode = $0.45)
• $0.075 per repurpose result generated (show notes, thread, etc.)

Example: 10 podcast episodes averaging 45 minutes each

• Submission: 10 × $0.005 = $0.05
• Audio minutes: 10 × 45 × $0.015 = $6.75
• Show notes (optional): 10 × $0.075 = $0.75
• Total: ~$7.55 for 10 complete episodes with show notes

The Apify free plan includes $5 of monthly credits — enough to transcribe 5–6 short videos at no cost.

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Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
startUrls	Array	Yes	—	YouTube, podcast, or audio/video URLs
language	String	No	auto	ISO 639-1 code or auto
diarize	Boolean	No	false	Label speakers (host vs guest)
exportFormats	Array	No	["txt","srt"]	txt, srt, vtt, json, md
repurposeMode	String	No	none	none, summary, show_notes, thread, chapters, quotes
webhookUrl	String	No	—	Callback URL per completed job
maxPollSeconds	Integer	No	900	Max wait per job (60–3600s)
pollIntervalSeconds	Integer	No	10	Status check interval (5–60s)

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Supported URLs

• YouTube videos, Shorts, and playlist-linked videos
• Direct audio: mp3, wav, m4a, ogg, flac
• Direct video: mp4, webm, mov
• Podcast RSS episode links
• TikTok, Loom, Vimeo, and most public video/audio hosts

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Language support

100+ languages with automatic detection. The detected language appears in each dataset row as detectedLanguage. Pass a specific ISO 639-1 code ("en", "es", "fr") to skip auto-detection and speed up processing slightly for known-language content.

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Related Actors

• Wisprs — Podcast Show Notes Generator — tuned specifically for long-form podcast episode pipelines
• Wisprs — YouTube Content Repurposer — YouTube URL → thread, blog post, LinkedIn article in one call

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Related Actors

• Wisprs — Podcast Show Notes Generator — podcast episodes → show notes, chapters, guest quotes with speaker diarization
• Wisprs — YouTube Content Repurposer — YouTube → Twitter thread, LinkedIn article, blog post, chapters
• Wisprs — Social Media Transcriber — TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts at $1.00/1k

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FAQ

Do I need an OpenAI API key or a Wisprs account? No. No external API key or account required. The Actor handles authentication internally — you pay only via Apify credits.

Does it work for videos without captions? Yes. Unlike caption-scraping actors, Wisprs transcribes the audio directly using Whisper. It covers captionless videos, music videos, private-link Loom recordings, and anything with audio.

Is there a video length limit? No hard limit. The async job queue handles videos of any length. A 90-minute webinar typically completes in 5–10 minutes.

What if a job fails? The dataset row will have status: "failed" and an errorMessage explaining why (unsupported format, private video, no audio, etc.).

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Support

• Documentation: wisprs.co/docs
• Email: tosh@belvadigital.com
• Issues: report via the Apify Actor page

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Submit a URL. Get subtitles, transcripts, and show notes. Done.