Get YouTube Transcripts

Retrieves the plain text transcript from any YouTube video with a manually-created captions (auto-generated captions not currently supported.)

Usage

Positional arguments

url - The URL to the YouTube video you want to retrieve a transcript for.

Optional arguments

-h, —help - show this help message and exit

—file - The path to the file you want to save transcript to. To use the video's title as the filename, specify a directory. Example: ~/Desktop/transcript.txt or ~/Desktop.

—overwrite - Overwrites existing file at save location, if present.

—open - Open the created transcript.

—format - Choose output format. Only used if —file argument is not specified.

• Valid options:
  • dict: Returns a Python dictionary.
  • pipes: Returns positional values separated by |. Order: title, filename, transcript.

Example

./get_transcript.py https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<ID> --file ~/Desktop/

Compatibility

• Python 2.7.11
• Should be platform-independent. Tested on OS X, Windows 10, & Linux.