markusstrasser YouTube Transcript
Lightweight wrapper around yt-dlp for transcript-only fetching.
Install check
command -v yt-dlp || uvx yt-dlp --version # uvx works without install
Fetch transcript (no video)
# Replace VID with the 11-char YouTube ID or full URL
VID="Pxyl2O_AxPk"
OUT_DIR="sources/<topic>/transcripts"
mkdir -p "$OUT_DIR"
uvx yt-dlp \
--skip-download \
--write-auto-sub --write-sub \
--sub-lang "en.*" \
--sub-format "vtt/srv1/best" \
--convert-subs vtt \
-o "${OUT_DIR}/%(id)s-%(title)s.%(ext)s" \
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=${VID}"
VTT → plain text
VTT has timestamps and cue tags that make grep noisy. Strip them:
# Simple: drop all lines that look like timestamps, cues, or metadata
awk '
/^WEBVTT/ { next }
/^NOTE/ { next }
/^[0-9]+$/ { next }
/-->/ { next }
/^$/ { next }
{ gsub(/<[^>]*>/, ""); print }
' "${OUT_DIR}/${VID}-*.en.vtt" | awk '!seen[$0]++' > "${OUT_DIR}/${VID}.txt"
The !seen[$0]++ dedupes the rolling-captions pattern (same line repeated with growing cue).
Citation convention
After staging, cite as:
[SOURCE: youtube.com/watch?v=<VID>, transcript at sources/<topic>/transcripts/<VID>.txt]
Include approximate timestamp in-quote if the claim is time-specific:
At ~01:23:45, [speaker] claims X [SOURCE: <VID> transcript, line N]
Known failures
- Auto-captions unavailable — some channels disable them. yt-dlp errors out; fall back to manual transcript request or Whisper (not covered here).
- Age-restricted / members-only — requires
--cookies-from-browser chrome. - Live streams — transcript not finalized until stream ends.
- Very long videos (>6h) — .vtt can be 2-5MB. Strip before committing to git.
Evidence
sources/jre-2460-rachel-wilson-transcript.txt+.en.vtt— one-off, no reusable pattern.- Future: any podcast/video citation in research memos.