Help: Youtube Transcript Extractor

[zlc1952]

Hi guys,

Just now getting into coding and got a wild hair and bought Alfred! It's been incredible! 

 

I like to take the youtube transcript from videos and follow along for easier note taking.

I know very little about coding and just made my first workflow to open a pdf search the query (it took all day). In other words, I could really use some help.

 

Here are the steps I use to turn the transcript into a word document:

1. On chrome, open and copy transcript from youtube 
2. Paste into excel and apply formula "=MOD(ROW(),2)" in the adjacent column and extend all the way down
3. Create table with 2 columns and filter the number column to hide the blank spaces
4. Next I open word and paste the column of the table containing text
5. Finally In word Find > Replace > Paragraph mark to Space bar to delete extra space

 

 

This is extremely complicated using the mouse, i could not imagine the code needed to do this.

I'm not lazy I swear but this is WAY above my head

[deanishe]

1 hour ago, zlc1952 said:

This is extremely complicated using the mouse, i could not imagine the code needed to do this.

 

Mice are for humans, not computers. Do not try to make the computer use the user interface.

 

What is the actual task without all the Excel nonsense? What goes in and what comes out?

[vitor]

9 hours ago, deanishe said:

What goes in and what comes out?

@zlc1952 When you answer this, please make sure to be specific. For example, which format is the transcript in? Also, it will help if you provide one and/or the steps you’re using to extract it.

[zlc1952]

On 1/7/2022 at 9:52 PM, deanishe said:

 

Mice are for humans, not computers. Do not try to make the computer use the user interface.

 

What is the actual task without all the Excel nonsense? What goes in and what comes out?

I double click the first cell (A1) and paste the copied youtube transcript.

 

Column B is a formula that i apply to the entire column to assign a 0 or 1. (this is for filtering later on)

Column C is for directions for column B if I forget the formula.

 

 

 

 

[vitor]

You’re still thinking in terms of Excel. Forget about that. Don’t describe your steps, describe the data you have as input (where you get it from) and what you want to have in the end.

[LinkedInSeb]

Perhaps I am wrong but I think live transcripts are normally transported as Jison, no?

 

Have Alfred reach into source to search for Jison file,

 

Extract and convert to a .SRT which then can be tapped into by your next step. 

[TomBenz]

On 1/18/2022 at 3:04 AM, vitor said:

You’re still thinking in terms of Excel. Forget about that. Don’t describe your steps, describe the data you have as input (where you get it from) and what you want to have in the end.

 

@vitorIs it possible to download Youtube video transcript in vtt or SRT file format? i.e. you tube video transcript download as an added option to YouTube video download? 

[vitor]

On 11/8/2023 at 10:11 AM, TomBenz said:

Is it possible to download Youtube video transcript in vtt or SRT file format?

 

yt-dlp should have an option.

 

Download Media already downloads and embeds subtitles in the downloaded file.

[TomBenz]

1 hour ago, vitor said:

 

yt-dlp should have an option.

 

Download Media already downloads and embeds subtitles in the downloaded file.

 

Download Media already downloads and embeds subtitles in the downloaded file. -- this works great. It will be great to have an option to download transcripts / captions only without downloading video or audio.

[vitor]

1 minute ago, TomBenz said:

It will be great to have an option to download transcripts / captions only without downloading video or audio.

 

That’s out of scope for the workflow. You can do it with yt-dlp as per above, though.

[TomBenz]

thank you @vitor

 

I could download .vtt file without downloading video with yt-dlp.

 

To download only the .vtt subtitle file without downloading the video itself using yt-dlp, you can use the following command:

 

yt-dlp --write-subs --sub-format "vtt" --skip-download "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N45KtLPcRS8"
 

This command tells yt-dlp to:

• --write-subs: Download subtitles.
• --sub-format "vtt": Specify the subtitle format as .vtt.
• --skip-download: Skip downloading the video itself, only download the specified subtitles.

Replace "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N45KtLPcRS8" with the URL of the YouTube video from which you want to download the subtitles.