October 14, 2010

Download YouTube Captions

Let's say that you've watched Eric Schmidt's keynote from TechCrunch Disrupt and you want to share some interesting ideas from the video. Fortunately, the video has closed captions and there's also an interactive transcript, but there's no way to copy the text.

The good news is that you can download the captions file if you know the URL: http://video.google.com/timedtext?lang=en&v=VIDEO_ID, where you should replace VIDEO_ID with the ID of the YouTube video. Here's the captions file for Eric Schmidt's keynote.

It's an XML file and you can extract plain text by removing all the tags. Right-click on the page, select "view source", copy all the text and paste it on this page.

Now it's easy to copy an excerpt from the keynote:
We have one of the largest databases of information in the world which we've engineered and which is very, very difficult technologically in order to house all that information and ready for more. So, where do we go next with search? Well, you've got personal contacts, personal emails, personal network of people and your relationships with them, and with your permission -- and I need to say that about 500 times -- with your permission, we can actually search and index that information and make all of these answers so much better. The next step after that is obviously autonomous search. This is searches that you're -- that are occurring while you're not even doing searching.

22 comments:

  1. You can download annotations as well!
    view-source:http://www.google.com/review­s/y/read2?video_id=VIDEO_ID
    Check out my video tutorial on copying annotations from one video to another,
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Pjnxhey-s

    ReplyDelete
  2. There’s a script that allows you to download these captions in SRT format.

    Ionut, any chance you could incorporate that script into your ‘Download YouTube Videos as MP4’ script, so that the captions appear in the Download drop-down in the list of videos?

    ReplyDelete
  3. This tool can also turn the XML into an SRT file:
    http://greatdreamers.sinaapp.com/youtubesubs/raw.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. how do we do that exactly?
      could u plz guide us a little?what do we put in the box above "make"?

      Delete
  4. this is a better tool for download captions and translate too

    http://mike.thedt.net/ytsubs/ytsubs.php

    ReplyDelete
  5. I find the incoherent text of Eric's speech really cool!

    ReplyDelete
  6. the "the captions file" link feels html text, in raw format. is any chance that google didn't forget to generate the http header ?

    btw, the feature is interesting and useful. thank you very much

    ReplyDelete
  7. Im getting XML error when i try to do it. Any help?

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm getting an XML parsing error too.

    ReplyDelete
  9. If you download the file you can import it into MovieCaptioner and create captions for other formats very easily. It will also convert them to transcripts.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm getting an XML parsing error too...
    how can i fix this??

    ReplyDelete
  11. @admin
    how often does the http://www.google.com/review­s/y/read2?video_id=VIDEO_ID get updated?

    It still show annotations for one of the videos i recently updated? Any other alternatives so that I don't have to wait for the annotations to get updated on that page?

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  12. Okay?
    this youtube for eg;
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kifHYZfa0i8&feature=share
    has annotation that are subtitles, (no CC)
    how do I download the sub/anno
    this;
    http://mike.thedt.net/ytsubs/ytsubs.php
    says there are 'this vid has no subtitles'
    any clues anyone
    something that only need one or two buttons:-)

    ReplyDelete
  13. this website works: http://mo.dbxdb.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. CAN YOU TELL ME HOW TO DOWNLOAD THIS VIDEO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4PAMWZn5As&feature=relmfu
      WITH SERBIAN SUTITLE? I TRIED EVERYTHING, BUT IT IS NOT WORKING....

      Delete
  14. Its not working for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auw8y1KGl9k.
    Can some on help to get this ?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Do any of these scripts / links here work for videos that YouTube automatically transcribes? Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  16. No there is no way to download auto-transcriptions because YouTube API is not publishing them.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hi Guys,

    please try to follow this instruction - it works just fine!

    http://www.4kdownload.com/howto/howto-download-youtube-subtitles

    ReplyDelete
  18. TOPIC CLOSED: Use this Web based application to extract your subtitles from youtube and save the file to .SRT format LINK: youtube subtitles

    ReplyDelete
  19. Not a single method I've tried has worked. :(

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLEmllnDeA

    ReplyDelete
  20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxZ1mYEzy9w

    ReplyDelete

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