YouTube Full Channel Transcripts#

Free, local alternative to Apify actor — no third-party paid APIs.

Fetches all videos from a YouTube channel (or playlist), extracts available transcripts (auto-generated or manual), and exports to JSON/CSV.

When to Use#

• "Get all transcripts from channel X"
• "Export channel Y's video subtitles"
• "Build dataset of all videos from creator Z"

Prerequisites#

• yt-dlp installed ( https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp)
• jq installed (for JSON processing)
• Internet connection

Usage#

bash

# Basic: fetch all transcripts from a channel
youtube_full_channel_transcripts channel_url="https://www.youtube.com/@SomeChannel" output_format="json"

# With filters
youtube_full_channel_transcripts channel_url="https://www.youtube.com/c/ChannelName" max_videos=50 languages="en" include_auto_generated=true

Options#

ParameterTypeRequiredDescriptionchannel_urlstringyesYouTube channel URL, handle, or playlist URLoutput_formatstringnoOutput format: json (default) or csv``max_videosintegernoLimit number of videos to process (default: all)languagesstringnoComma-separated language codes (e.g., en,es). Default: en``include_auto_generatedbooleannoInclude auto-generated transcripts? (default: true)output_dirstringnoDirectory to save results (default: workspace/exports/youtube-transcripts)

Output#

• transcripts.json or transcripts.csv — structured data with: json

  {
    "video_id": "abc123",
    "title": "Video Title",
    "url": "https://youtube.com/watch?v=abc123",
    "upload_date": "20240322",
    "duration": 360,
    "language": "en",
    "transcript": "Full text...",
    "is_auto_generated": false
  }
  
  

• Summary printed to console: number of videos processed, success/failure counts.

Implementation Details#

1. Discovery: yt-dlp --flat-playlist -J to list all videos
2. Transcript fetch: yt-dlp --write-subs --sub-format srt --skip-download per video
3. Parsing: Extract SRT subtitles and convert to plain text
4. Combine: Aggregate results into JSON/CSV

Errors & Retries#

• If a video has no available transcript, it's skipped (logged)
• Network errors: retry up to 3 times with backoff
• Rate limiting: yt-dlp handles automatically; can add --sleep-interval if needed

Notes#

• Respect YouTube's rate limits. The tool includes small delays by default.
• Large channels (100+ videos) may take a while; use max_videos to limit.
• Auto-generated transcripts are more available but less accurate.