YouTube Transcript Downloader

An Apify actor that downloads transcripts from YouTube videos. It supports multiple languages and output formats, and runs on a pay-per-result basis.

Overview

This actor takes YouTube video URLs and returns structured transcript data. It's priced at $2.99 per 1,000 transcripts ($0.00299 per transcript). You can specify a preferred language or retrieve the video's original transcript.

Key Features

• Download transcripts from multiple YouTube videos in a single run.
• Support for different languages (auto-detects original if not specified).
• Outputs available in multiple formats: plain text, SRT, VTT, and JSON.
• Returns detailed metadata including video title, channel, duration, and timestamped segments.

Input Configuration

Provide input as a JSON object with the following parameters:

Example Input:

{
  "urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"],
  "language": "en"
}

Output Schema

Each result in the dataset is a JSON object with the following structure:

{
  "videoId": "VIDEO_ID",
  "videoUrl": "https://...",
  "videoTitle": "Video Title",
  "channelName": "Channel Name",
  "duration": 360,
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": "Full transcript text",
  "transcriptSegments": [
    {
      "text": "Segment text",
      "start": 0,
      "duration": 5.2,
      "end": 5.2
    }
  ],
  "fetchedAt": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z",
  "hash": "md5_hash_of_transcript"
}

How to Use

Using the Apify API (Python Example)

Here's a complete example using the apify-client Python library.

from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the client
client = ApifyClient("your_apify_api_token")

# Prepare the actor input
run_input = {
    "urls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0"
    ],
    "language": "en"
}

# Run the actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("your_username/youtube-transcript-reliable").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and process results
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"Video: {item['videoTitle']}")
    print(f"Transcript Preview: {item['transcript'][:500]}...")
    print("-" * 80)

Using cURL

You can also start a run directly via the API.

curl -X POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/your_username~youtube-transcript-reliable/runs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"],
    "language": "en"
  }'

Monitor run status and access logs in the Apify Console.