YouTube Transcript

Overview

Extract YouTube video transcripts, metadata, and chapters using youtube-transcript-api and yt-dlp. Output formatted as Markdown with YAML frontmatter, saved to ~/Brains/brain/ (Obsidian vault).

Quick Start

To extract a transcript from a YouTube video:

python scripts/extract_transcript.py <youtube_url>

Optional: Specify custom output filename:

python scripts/extract_transcript.py <youtube_url> custom_filename.md

Output Format

YAML Frontmatter

The generated Markdown includes comprehensive metadata:

• title - Video title
• channel - Channel name
• url - YouTube URL
• upload_date - Upload date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• duration - Video duration (HH:MM:SS)
• description - Video description (truncated to 500 chars)
• tags - Array of video tags
• view_count - View count
• like_count - Like count

Body Structure

Transcript organized by video chapters (if available):

## Chapter Title

**00:05:23** Transcript text for this segment.

**00:05:45** Next segment text.

If no chapters exist, all content appears under "## Transcript" heading.

Timestamps formatted as HH:MM:SS for consistency.

Workflow

1. Extract metadata using yt-dlp --dump-json
2. Extract transcript using youtube-transcript-api (tries Korean → English → Japanese)
3. Remove duplicate entries (prefix removal)
4. Group transcript segments by video chapters (if present)
5. Format as Markdown with YAML frontmatter
6. Save to ~/Brains/brain/ with sanitized filename based on video title

Language Support

The skill tries to extract transcripts in this order:

1. Korean (ko) - Priority for Korean content
2. English (en) - Fallback for international content
3. Japanese (ja) - Additional fallback

If none of the requested languages are available, the script exits with an error message.

Requirements

Install required dependencies:

# Install yt-dlp for metadata extraction
apt install yt-dlp
# OR
pip install yt-dlp

# Install youtube-transcript-api for transcript extraction
pip install youtube-transcript-api

Why youtube-transcript-api?

The skill uses youtube-transcript-api instead of directly downloading VTT files with yt-dlp because:

1. More reliable - Direct API access, avoids HTTP 429 (Too Many Requests) errors
2. Better language support - Easy to specify language preferences
3. Cleaner data - Returns structured data directly, no VTT parsing needed
4. Faster - No file download/cleanup overhead
5. Auto-generated captions - Works with auto-generated captions

Deduplication

The skill automatically removes duplicate entries where a transcript segment is a prefix of the next segment. This is common in auto-generated captions where text accumulates.

To manually deduplicate existing transcript files:

python scripts/deduplicate_transcript.py <markdown_file>

Troubleshooting

"No subtitles available"

• The video may not have captions in the requested languages (ko/en/ja)
• Some videos disable captions entirely
• Try checking manually on YouTube to see if captions are available

"youtube-transcript-api not installed"

pip install youtube-transcript-api

"Failed to extract metadata"

Ensure yt-dlp is installed:

apt install yt-dlp

Or update yt-dlp if it's outdated:

pip install --upgrade yt-dlp

Limitations

• Requires video to have subtitles (auto-generated or manual)
• Does not download video or audio files
• Description truncated to 500 characters in frontmatter
• Only supports ko, en, ja languages (configurable in script)
• Some videos may have region-locked captions