Youtube captions extract

[nesym]

Now, this is an interesting question.
I wonder how I can extract Youtube captions. (Those are the subtitles in every Youtube video). There are videos with auto-generated captions that Google tries to analyse and translate in real-time.

I'm looking for a legit way to extract subtitles (auto-generated too) from videos. If there isn't a free solution for this already, I'll appreciate directions on where to look at the code so I can write my own software that does that. Thank you, fellow forum members!

 

[wilburlims]

Yes I did it before, there is a legit way to do that, but it will be time consuming.

1. Right click anywhere on the Youtube video page, and click on Inspect Element
2. Click on Network tab
3. On the video player click on that Subtitles icon
4. Under the Network tab, a new item will start to popup, now look for an item starting with timedtext. Right click on it and open it in a new window. it will give a txt file.

The txt file gives you the timestamps and the subtitles. Now to get only the subtitles,

1. Excel or Google Sheet
2. Copy paste the subtitles inside one cell
3. Ctrl+ F, replace tab and type <*> in the Find What section and leave the Replace With blank, and Replace All.

 

[Morehere]

Another easy way is by using Voice to Text converter will instantly extract but you have to wait for the video length to be completed.

 

[nesym]

Thank you for your suggestions! I really appreciate the help!