📝 Transcript Downloader - YouTube Transcript & Metadata Generator

This Apify actor fetches full transcripts, timestamps, video metadata, and optionally comments from public YouTube videos using the Transcript Downloader API. Ideal for content repurposing, accessibility, SEO enrichment, or video analysis at scale.

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✨ Features

• 🔁 Batch processing: Handle multiple YouTube videos at once
• 🌍 Language support: Use ISO codes or auto for detection
• 💬 Comment extraction: Fetch most relevant and most recent comments
• 📊 Metadata included: Title, description, view count, likes, channel info, etc.
• ⚙️ Concurrency control: Adjust maxConcurrency for optimized performance
• 🔄 Automatic retries: Handles API errors and retryable failures
• 🧠 Error tracking: All failures logged in output

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🔧 Input Parameters

The actor accepts the following input:

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
videoIds	array	✅ Yes	-	List of YouTube video IDs (11 characters each)
apiToken	string	✅ Yes	-	Your Transcript Downloader API bearer token
language	string	No	auto	ISO language code for transcript (e.g., en, es, fr)
includeComments	boolean	No	false	Whether to fetch video comments
maxConcurrency	number	No	5	Max concurrent requests (range: 1-10)

📥 Sample Input

{
  "videoIds": ["dQw4w9WgXcQ", "jNQXAC9IVRw"],
  "apiToken": "your-api-token",
  "language": "en",
  "includeComments": true,
  "maxConcurrency": 5
}

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📤 Output Format

Each video will produce a dataset item with the following structure:

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoMetadata": {
    "title": "Example Title",
    "description": "Video description...",
    "publishedAt": "2023-08-20T15:32:00Z",
    "duration": "5:12",
    "viewCount": 120456,
    "likeCount": 3456,
    "commentCount": 123,
    "channelName": "Channel Name",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/abc123"
  },
  "transcriptsWithTimeStamps": [
    {
      "dur": "3.5",
      "text": "Welcome to this tutorial...",
      "start": "0.0"
    }
  ],
  "fullTranscript": "Welcome to this tutorial...",
  "comments": {
    "mostRelevant": [
      {
        "author": "User123",
        "text": "This helped me so much!"
      }
    ],
    "mostRecent": [
      {
        "author": "User456",
        "text": "Just watched it!"
      }
    ]
  },
  "downloadInfo": {
    "id": "123DDJNRUND",
    "youtube_video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "type": "captions",
    "cost": "1.600",
    "status": "success",
    "created_at": "2025-06-16T21:34:43.000Z"
  }
}

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🚀 How to Use

1. Get your API token from Transcript Downloader
2. Open the actor in the Apify Console
3. Add YouTube video IDs and required input
4. Run the actor and access results in the dataset

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❌ Error Handling

The actor gracefully handles common API errors:

Status Code	Meaning
401	Insufficient credits
403	Invalid API token
404	Video or transcript not found
429	Rate limit exceeded
503	Service temporarily unavailable

Failed attempts are captured in the dataset with error info.

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⚠️ Limitations

• 🔁 API rate limit: 75 requests per minute
• 📼 YouTube video IDs must be exactly 11 characters
• 🔄 Retries up to 3 times per failed request
• ⚙️ maxConcurrency must be 1–10

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🧪 Example Run

{
  "videoIds": ["AyOjAEn36b8"],
  "apiToken": "your-api-token",
  "language": "auto",
  "includeComments": false
}

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the ISC License.