# Video Transcript

> Video Transcript is an Agent Skill for documents published in the majiayu000/claude-skill-registry repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Extract video transcripts: yt-dlp subtitles to clean paragraphs.

- Skill name: `video-transcript`
- Category: [Documents](https://www.openparable.com/skill/documents/1)
- Source: https://github.com/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/blob/HEAD/skills/bash/video-transcript/SKILL.md
- Repository: majiayu000/claude-skill-registry (498 GitHub stars when collected)

## SKILL.md

# Video Transcript

Pull a video's transcript as readable paragraphs. Two paths, in order:

**Path 1 — uploader subtitles** (accurate, prefer when present):

```bash
yt-dlp --skip-download --write-subs --sub-langs en --sub-format vtt \
  -o '<work-dir>/%(id)s' '<URL>'
```

**Path 2 — auto-generated captions** (fallback when path 1 writes no file):

```bash
yt-dlp --skip-download --write-auto-subs --sub-langs en --sub-format vtt \
  -o '<work-dir>/%(id)s' '<URL>'
```

Then clean the VTT into paragraphs:

```bash
python3 skills/research/video-transcript/scripts/vtt_to_paragraph.py <work-dir>/<id>.en.vtt
```

Default output is plain paragraph text with `[Music]`-style cues stripped and the rolling duplicates of auto-captions deduplicated. Use `--timestamps` for `[mm:ss]` markers, `--keep-brackets` to keep cue tags, `-o FILE` to write to a file.

For other languages, change `--sub-langs` (e.g. `de`, `en.*`). List what a video offers with `yt-dlp --list-subs '<URL>'`.

## Error handling

### Both paths write no .vtt file
Cause: video has no subtitles or captions in the requested language.
Solution: run `yt-dlp --list-subs '<URL>'` and pick an available language; if none exist, report that and offer audio transcription via the `markdown-converter` skill on a downloaded audio file.

### HTTP 429 / "Sign in to confirm"
Cause: platform rate-limiting the host.
Solution: wait and retry with `--sleep-requests 2`; keep request volume low.

### Cleaner output repeats lines
Cause: VTT came from a third path (e.g. translated captions) with cue formats the dedupe misses.
Solution: rerun the cleaner; if repeats remain, file the sample VTT alongside a fix to `vtt_to_paragraph.py`.

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Source: https://www.openparable.com/skill/documents/video-transcript (OpenParable). Cite the canonical URL above.