YouTube Video Subtitles Scraper

Extracts subtitles and metadata from public YouTube videos. Outputs structured data (JSON, CSV, Excel) for analysis, AI training, or integration into automated workflows.

Overview

This actor scrapes captions from YouTube videos. For each video, it extracts the subtitle text, timestamps, language, and related video metadata (title, author, description, tags). It handles both manual and auto-generated (ASR) subtitles. Data is processed on the Apify platform and returned in a clean format ready for use.

Key Features

• Extracts Comprehensive Data: Gets subtitle text, start/end timestamps, duration, language, video title, description, URL, uploader, video length, and tags.
• Dual Caption Support: Can scrape both user-provided manual captions and YouTube's auto-generated subtitles.
• Multi-Format Export: Results can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), HTML, or plain text (TXT).
• Bulk Processing: Scrape subtitles from hundreds of videos in a single run by providing multiple URLs.
• Developer Integration: Output is structured for easy use with Python scripts, GitHub projects, or AI/NLP pipelines.
• Simple Configuration: Run with minimal setup directly via the Apify UI or integrate via API.

How to Use

1. Access the Actor: Find the "YouTube Video Subtitles Scraper" in the Apify Store. You'll need an Apify account.
2. Configure Input: In the actor's input tab, provide one or more YouTube video URLs. You can paste them directly or upload a CSV file containing a list.
3. Set Options:
   • Define the preferred subtitle language (e.g., en).
   • Choose whether to include auto-generated captions if manual ones are unavailable.
   • Select other optional filters.
4. Run: Click "Start" to launch the scraper. Processing time depends on the number of videos.
5. Download Results: Once complete, fetch your dataset from the actor's output. Choose your preferred format (JSON, CSV, etc.) and download.

Input/Output

Input Schema

The primary input is a list of YouTube video URLs. Configuration is typically set via the Apify UI. For API usage, the input is a JSON object. Key parameters include:
* videoUrls: (Array) List of YouTube URLs to scrape.
* subtitleLanguage: (String) Language code for preferred subtitles (e.g., "en").
* includeAutoGenerated: (Boolean) Whether to fall back to auto-generated captions.

Example input for the API:

{
  "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example1", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example2"],
  "subtitleLanguage": "en",
  "includeAutoGenerated": true
}

Output

The actor returns an array of items, one for each video. Each item contains the scraped video metadata and an array of subtitle segments.

Example output structure (simplified):

[
  {
    "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example",
    "videoTitle": "Example Video Title",
    "uploader": "Channel Name",
    "subtitles": [
      {
        "text": "This is the first subtitle line.",
        "start": "0:00:01.500",
        "duration": "0:00:02.000",
        "language": "en"
      }
    ]
  }
]

The dataset can be downloaded in full via the Apify platform in JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or TXT formats.