Here’s a list of language codes to help you out.Ī variation of this How To originally appeared on The Future Journalism Project. For example, “ar” for Arabic or “es” for Spanish. If the transcript is in a different language, replace “en” with the two letter language code of the language you want to retrieve. Note that the JavaScript above ends with lang=en, meaning the language is English. Firefox: Tools > Web Developer > Web Console.Chrome: View > Developer > JavaScript Console.if(yt.config_.TTS_URL.length) =yt.config_.TTS_URL+'&kind=asr&fmt=srv1&lang=en' If a PDF is more your thing, here’s the same in that format.įinally, as I was writing this, I learned that you can simply enter the following JavaScript into the Console of the developer tools in your browser. For example, the following starts approximately 193 seconds into the video, or (maths!), at 3 minutes and 13 seconds: really caught between two forces in the Assad regime you were arrested a number of times I think by the Assad regime in 2012 and then you have the ISIS forces įor those who want a cheat sheet or don’t feel like sitting through the video, here’s an image of the steps you take to get the transcript. While I gloss over the XML file that you end up with when getting the captions, note that they are timestamped with a “start” attribute which is important for longer videos. Point being, transcripts from broadcast programs will soon be pretty clean and the screencast above is a way that you can quickly grab them from clips posted to the likes of YouTube. July 1, 2017, for video clips of live and near-live TV programming (such as news or sporting events).

January 1, 2017, where a single file contains multiple straight lift video clips (“montages”).

January 1, 2016, where the video clip contains a single excerpt of a captioned TV program with the same video and audio that was shown on TV (“straight lift” clips).

Here are the dates that Internet clips previously shown on TV must be captioned ( via the FCC): More important is that the FCC timeline for US broadcasters to provide better captions is fast approaching. This is helpful if you don’t want to sit through a 45 minute talk to see if there’s something in it of note. While the auto-generated captions are often hit and - mostly - miss, they usually give a general sense of what’s being said. Screencast: How to Extract YouTube Captions

Download transcript from youtube video