YouTube Video Transcript Scraper

Extracts transcripts and captions from YouTube videos and Shorts. This Apify actor is built with Python, processes input URLs, and outputs structured transcript data to a dataset.

Key Features

• Fetches available transcripts and captions from standard YouTube videos and YouTube Shorts.
• Processes single or multiple video URLs in one run.
• Implements retry logic with exponential backoff for handling failed requests.
• Supports proxy rotation using Apify Proxy or custom proxy configurations.
• Outputs both the raw API response and a clean, normalized array of text segments with timestamps.

How to Use

Configure the actor run by providing a JSON input object. The main required field is startUrls, containing the YouTube video links to process.

Input

The actor accepts the following input configuration:

Example Input:

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BthfXVCRWEQ" },
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWAdfuPpLOc" }
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Output

For each processed video, the actor outputs a JSON object to the dataset containing the transcript data.

Output Fields:
* video_id: The YouTube video ID.
* title: The video title.
* url: The source video URL.
* lang: The language code of the transcript.
* format: The transcript format (e.g., vtt).
* segments: An array of transcript segments, each with start time, end time, and text.
* inputUrl: The original URL processed.
* fetchedAt: ISO timestamp of when the transcript was fetched.
* success: Boolean indicating if the fetch was successful.
* raw_response: The raw transcript API response object.

Example Output:

{
  "video_id": "BthfXVCRWEQ",
  "title": "I Hatched the World's Biggest vs Smallest Eggs",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BthfXVCRWEQ",
  "lang": "en",
  "format": "vtt",
  "segments": [
    {
      "start": 0.12,
      "end": 5.2,
      "text": "Here is the world's biggest egg...\nand here is one of the smallest."
    }
  ],
  "inputUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BthfXVCRWEQ",
  "fetchedAt": "2023-10-26T14:30:00.000Z",
  "success": true,
  "raw_response": { ... }
}