Facebook Reels Scraper

Overview

This Apify actor scrapes metadata from Facebook videos and reels using yt-dlp. It processes URLs to extract structured data for analysis, monitoring, or archiving. The output includes video URLs, making it function as a video downloader as well.

Key Features

• URL resolution: Automatically follows redirects to reach the final video page
• Content detection: Identifies whether a link is a standard video or a reel
• Metadata extraction: Captures views, likes, comments, reposts, captions, duration, and upload dates
• Content parsing: Extracts hashtags and mentions from descriptions
• Normalized output: Provides consistent JSON formatting across different content types
• Robust handling: Includes fallback records if extraction fails to maintain dataset consistency
• Quality info: Retrieves thumbnail URLs and best available video resolution with audio

How to Use

The actor accepts a list of Facebook video URLs and processes them sequentially.

Input

Configure the actor with these parameters:

Notes:
- startUrls can be a single URL string or an array of objects: [{ "url": "https://..." }]
- Set maxItems to limit processing; use 0 for no limit

Example Input

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.facebook.com/reel/1394880385139005" },
    { "url": "https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Cvc1uotQb/" }
  ],
  "maxItems": 10
}

Output

The actor outputs an array of JSON objects, one per processed video/reel.

Output Structure

[
  {
    "platform": "facebook",
    "content_type": "video",
    "is_reel": false,
    "webpage_url": "https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=1259352712869315",
    "id": "1259352712869315",
    "title": "Video caption text here...",
    "description": "Full description with hashtags",
    "duration": 125,
    "duration_string": "2:05",
    "upload_date": "2024-01-15",
    "timestamp": 1705286400,
    "view_count": 4100,
    "view_count_string": "4.1K",
    "like_count": 51000,
    "comment_count": 42,
    "repost_count": 12,
    "hashtags": ["trending", "relatable"],
    "mentions": [],
    "thumbnail": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/...",
    "video_url": "https://video.xx.fbcdn.net/v/...",
    "share_urls": {
      "facebook": "https://www.facebook.com/share/...",
      "twitter": "https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?...",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/..."
    }
  }
]

Field Details

• platform: Always "facebook"
• content_type: "video" or "reel"
• is_reel: Boolean indicating reel content
• view_count_string: Human-readable format (e.g., "4.1K", "5.2M")
• duration_string: Human-readable duration (e.g., "2:05")
• share_urls: Pre-formatted sharing links for social platforms

If extraction fails for a URL, the actor outputs a fallback record containing the original URL and error information to maintain dataset consistency.

The actor runs on the Apify platform using Python and the Apify SDK. For detailed documentation and to run the actor, visit its Apify page.