# video-transcript-downloader

Video Transcript Downloader

./scripts/vtd.js can:

Print a transcript as a clean paragraph (timestamps optional). Download video/audio/subtitles. Transcript behavior:

YouTube: fetch via youtube-transcript-plus when possible.
Otherwise: pull subtitles via yt-dlp, then clean into a paragraph.

Setup

cd ~/Projects/agent-scripts/skills/video-transcript-downloader && npm ci

Transcript (default: clean paragraph)

./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…'
./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…' --lang en
./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…' --timestamps
./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…' --keep-brackets

Download video / audio / subtitles

./scripts/vtd.js download --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads
./scripts/vtd.js audio --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads
./scripts/vtd.js subs --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads --lang en

Formats (list + choose) List available formats (format ids, resolution, container, audio-only, etc):

./scripts/vtd.js formats --url 'https://…'

Download a specific format id (example):

./scripts/vtd.js download --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads -- --format 137+140

Prefer MP4 container without re-encoding (remux when possible):

./scripts/vtd.js download --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads -- --remux-video mp4

Notes Default transcript output is a single paragraph. Use --timestamps only when asked. Bracketed cues like [Music] are stripped by default; keep them via --keep-brackets. Pass extra yt-dlp args after -- for transcript fallback, download, audio, subs, formats.

./scripts/vtd.js formats --url 'https://…' -- -v

Troubleshooting (only when needed) Missing yt-dlp / ffmpeg: brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg

Verify:

yt-dlp --version ffmpeg -version | head -n 1