youtube-caption

YouTube Caption Fetcher

Download captions/transcripts and metadata from any YouTube video using the youtube-transcript-api library with optional residential proxy support.

Prerequisites

Required Python package:

pip install youtube-transcript-api

Residential Proxy Credentials (auto-loaded from environment or a shell startup file):

# Reddit proxy for YouTube caption and metadata fetching
export YOUTUBE_PROXY_URL="http://username:password@host:port"
# legacy fallback also supported:
export REDDIT_PROXY_URL="http://username:password@host:port"

The skill automatically fetches these credentials from the environment or a shell startup file when caption or metadata fetching requires proxy support.

Quick Start

Fetch captions and metadata:

python3 ./scripts/fetch_caption.py --url "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

Fetch only metadata (uses proxy):

python3 ./scripts/fetch_caption.py --url "https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID" --metadata-only

Fetch captions only (uses proxy):

python3 ./scripts/fetch_caption.py --url "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" --captions-only

Parameters

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
--url or -u	Yes	-	YouTube video URL (supports various formats)
--metadata-only	No	false	Fetch only video metadata (uses proxy)
--captions-only	No	false	Fetch only captions (uses proxy)
--language or -l	No	en	Language code for captions (e.g., en, es, fr)
--output or -o	No	-	Save output to JSON file

Output Format

Returns JSON with both captions and metadata:

{
  "success": true,
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "metadata": {
    "title": "Video Title",
    "description": "Full video description...",
    "channel": "Channel Name",
    "channel_id": "UC...",
    "published_at": "2025-01-15T10:00:00Z",
    "duration": "10:30",
    "duration_seconds": 630,
    "view_count": 1000000,
    "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/...",
    "links_in_description": [
      "https://example.com/link1",
      "https://example.com/link2"
    ]
  },
  "captions": {
    "text": "Full transcript text...",
    "language": "en",
    "is_generated": true,
    "word_count": 1500,
    "duration_seconds": 630
  }
}