108 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
108 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
# YouTube Transcript/Subtitle API (including automatically generated subtitles)
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This is an python API which allows you to get the transcripts/subtitles for a given YouTube video. It also works for automatically generated subtitles and it does not require a headless browser, like other selenium based solutions do!
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## Install
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It is recommended to [install this module by using pip](https://pypi.org/project/youtube-transcript-api/):
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```
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pip install youtube_transcript_api
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```
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If you want to use it from source, you'll have to install the dependencies manually:
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```
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pip install -r requirements.txt
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```
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## How to use it
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You could either integrate this module into an existing application, or just use it via an CLI
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### In code
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To get a transcript for a given video you can do:
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```python
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from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi
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YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcript(video_id)
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```
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This will return a list of dictionaries looking somewhat like this:
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```python
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[
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{
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'text': 'Hey there',
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'start': 7.58,
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'duration': 6.13
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},
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{
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'text': 'how are you',
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'start': 14.08,
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'duration': 7.58
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},
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# ...
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]
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```
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You can also add the `languages` param if you want to make sure the transcripts are retrieved in your desired language (it usually defaults to english).
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```python
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YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcripts(video_ids, languages=['de', 'en'])
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```
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It's a list of language codes in a descending priority. In this example it will first try to fetch the german transcript (`'de'`) and then fetch the english transcript (`'en'`) if it fails to do so. As I can't provide a complete list of all working language codes with full certainty, you may have to play around with the language codes a bit, to find the one which is working for you!
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To get transcripts for a list fo video ids you can call:
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```python
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YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcripts(video_ids, languages=['de', 'en'])
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```
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`languages` also is optional here.
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### CLI
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Execute the CLI script using the video ids as parameters and the results will be printed out to the command line:
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```
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youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> ...
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```
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The CLI also gives you the option to provide a list of preferred languages:
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```
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youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> ... --languages de en
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```
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If you would prefer to write it into a file or pipe it into another application, you can also output the results as json using the following line:
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```
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youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> ... --languages de en --json > transcripts.json
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```
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### Proxy
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You can pass a proxy to use during the network requests
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Code:
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```python
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from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi
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YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcript(video_id, proxy={"http": "http://user:pass@domain:port", "https": "https://user:pass@domain:port"})
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```
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CLI:
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```
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youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> --http-proxy http://user:pass@domain:port --https-proxy https://user:pass@domain:port
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```
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Find out more about using proxies and the type of proxies you can use here: http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/user/advanced/#proxies
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## Warning
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This code uses an undocumented part of the YouTube API, which is called by the YouTube web-client. So there is no guarantee that it won't stop working tomorrow, if they change how things work. I will however do my best to make things working again as soon as possible if that happens. So if it stops working, let me know! |