CODEWITHSUNDEEP
downloadextractcaptionssrt
user2095138
user2095138

Reputation: 301

Is it possible to download the automatic captions from a video?

My goal is to download automatic caption from a set of youtube videos. (I just want to get video information and subtitles of videos according to a query) The first thing I read is that you cannot download subtitles if you are not the owner. But I do not want the subtitles the owner uploaded, I just need the automatic ones.

For that I've seen some solutions, most of them with external applications . One of them is thorugh this URL: http://video.google.com/timedtext?type=track&v=3wszM2SA12E&name=Automatic&lang=en The problem are:

  1. that this is not the best way to access youtube data.
  2. It doesnt work with every video.

Does Youtube API offer a way to access this information?

Thank you in advance!!

Upvotes: 20

Views: 39551

Answers (3)

pooya13
pooya13

Reputation: 2691

In case you want to download just the auto-generated subtitles:

yt-dlp --write-auto-subs --skip-download 'Video_URL'

(yt-dlp seems to be better maintained than youtube-dl)

Upvotes: 5

Mike Ridgway
Mike Ridgway

Reputation: 301

You can download automatic captions for virtually any "public" or "unlisted" YouTube video so long as the owner of the video hasn't disabled embedding for the video by using one of two websites I have created:

  • Captions Grabber, an app intended to give you quick access to the automatic captions in a format that can be easily copied to the clipboard for use elsewhere, and
  • HyprScribr, an integrated online automatic captions cleanup tool.

DIY Captions, mentioned in an earlier version of this answer, is now basically a menu page that gives access to these two sites as well as to my "YouTube Transcription Pad." A fourth option opens the video in "oTranscribe" a transcription tool created by Elliott Bentley, that can be used for audio files and for YouTube videos.

Upvotes: 30

Alexander Mihailov
Alexander Mihailov

Reputation: 1168

Yes it is (as of now). There is a tool called youtube-dl. It supports many options that one could check alone. Just as an example:

>youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOUR_VIDEO_HASH --write-auto-sub --sub-lang en

This will download the video along with the auto-generated subtitles in english.

Upvotes: 7

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