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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!!

user2095138
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2 Answers2

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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.

Mike Ridgway
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    is there anyway to get the timing indications? – bouncingHippo Jun 16 '14 at 20:19
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    diycaptions.com does not work - Select Action is broken – Sergei Dec 29 '20 at 20:21
  • seemed to work as of today - downloaded auto-generated closed caption text in a variety of options – Kristopher Mar 23 '22 at 11:47
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    Update to my previous answer. DIYCaptions now points to two other websites that I have created. * www.captionsgrabber.com and * www.hyprscribr.com. Captions Grabber allows access to the text of a given YouTube video's automatic captions as well as access to human produced captions and translated subtitles. HyprScribr is an online editor that makes cleanup of automatic captions fast and easy. By using the menu in HyprScribr, one can obtain the text with the timing in .srt format. – Mike Ridgway Jul 10 '22 at 14:11
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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.

Alexander Mihailov
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