YouTube Transcript

Overview

Extract YouTube video transcripts, metadata, and chapters using yt-dlp. Output formatted as Markdown with YAML frontmatter, saved to ~/Brains/brain/ (Obsidian vault).

Quick Start

To extract a transcript from a YouTube video:

python scripts/extract_transcript.py <youtube_url>

Optional: Specify custom output filename:

python scripts/extract_transcript.py <youtube_url> custom_filename.md

Output Format

YAML Frontmatter

The generated Markdown includes comprehensive metadata:

• title – Video title
• channel – Channel name
• url – YouTube URL
• upload_date – Upload date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• duration – Video duration (HH:MM:SS)
• description – Video description (truncated to 500 chars)
• tags – Array of video tags
• view_count – View count
• like_count – Like count

Body Structure

Transcript organized by video chapters (if available):

## Chapter Title

**00:05:23** Transcript text for this segment.

**00:05:45** Next segment text.

If no chapters exist, all content appears under “## Transcript” heading.

Timestamps formatted as HH:MM:SS for consistency.

Workflow

1. Extract metadata and subtitles using yt-dlp
2. Parse VTT subtitle format to extract timestamps and text
3. Group transcript segments by video chapters (if present)
4. Format as Markdown with YAML frontmatter
5. Save to ~/Brains/brain/ with sanitized filename based on video title
6. Clean up temporary subtitle files

Deduplication

To remove duplicates from existing transcript files:

python scripts/deduplicate_transcript.py <markdown_file>

This removes transcript entries that are prefixes of subsequent entries (common in VTT files where subtitles accumulate).

Requirements

Ensure yt-dlp is installed:

pip install yt-dlp

Limitations

• Extracts subtitles in English first, falls back to Russian if English unavailable
• Requires video to have subtitles (auto-generated or manual)
• Does not download video or audio files
• Description truncated to 500 characters in frontmatter