YouTube Transcript Extractor

Fetches video metadata and transcript from YouTube and writes a Markdown file: title, source link, full description, and timestamped transcript. No browser or API keys required.

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• yt-dlp — metadata (title, description)
• youtube-transcript-api — transcript

Install

pip install yt-dlp youtube-transcript-api

Usage

python yt_transcript_extractor.py <youtube_url>

Examples:

# Full video
python yt_transcript_extractor.py "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

# From a specific timestamp to end (supports t=123, t=1m30s, t=2m)
python yt_transcript_extractor.py "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID&t=600"

Output is saved as {video_title}.md in the current directory with:

• Source — link with start time (&t=0 or the timestamp from the URL)
• Description — full video description (intro, bullets, links)
• Transcript — table of time (seconds) and text