Facebook Video Transcript Extractor

This Actor extracts text transcripts from public Facebook video pages. It's a utility for developers and researchers who need to programmatically obtain the captions or subtitles available on Facebook videos.

Key Features

• Transcript Extraction: Pulls transcript data directly from Facebook video page HTML.
• Request Handling: Configures requests with browser-like headers to mimic real user visits.
• Error Reporting: Provides clear error messages if a transcript cannot be found or extracted.
• Proxy Support: Integrates with Apify Proxy to help avoid IP-based rate limiting or blocks.
• Simple Configuration: Uses a defined input schema for easy setup.

How to Use

You can run this Actor in three main ways:

1. Apify Platform: Find and run "Facebook Video Transcript Extractor" directly in the Apify Store.
2. Command Line (Apify CLI): Execute apify run -p from the Actor's directory.
3. API: Trigger runs programmatically using the Apify API.

Input

Configure the Actor using a JSON input object. The only required parameter is the video URL.

{
  "url": "https://web.facebook.com/username/videos/123456789",
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

• url (String, Required): The full URL of the Facebook video page.
• proxyConfiguration (Object, Optional): Settings for routing requests through proxies. Using useApifyProxy: true is recommended.

Output

The Actor saves results to the default dataset. Each item contains the video URL and the extracted transcript.

Successful extraction:

{
  "url": "https://web.facebook.com/username/videos/123456789",
  "transcript": "This is the full text of the video transcript..."
}

Failed extraction or error:

{
  "url": "https://web.facebook.com/username/videos/123456789",
  "transcript": null,
  "error": "No transcript found in the page"
}

Technical Notes & Limitations

• The Actor parses the page HTML, looking for specific script tags and using regex to extract transcript data. This means it depends on Facebook's current page structure and may break if that structure changes.
• Not all Facebook videos have publicly available transcripts.
• Using the Apify proxy is advised to reduce the chance of request blocking.
• Built with the Apify SDK, using axios for HTTP requests and jsdom for HTML parsing.
• Licensed under Apache License 2.0.