How to download only subtitles of videos using youtube-dl

How can I download subtitles of a list of videos using youtube-dl? I need an option for this. However I could not find an option to download only subtitles

4 Answers

There is an option, clearly mentioned in the documention:

Subtitle Options:

--write-sub Write subtitle file --write-auto-sub Write automatic subtitle file (YouTube only) --all-subs Download all the available subtitles of the video --list-subs List all available subtitles for the video --sub-format FORMAT Subtitle format, accepts formats preference, for example: "srt" or "ass/srt/best" --sub-lang LANGS Languages of the subtitles to download (optional) separated by commas, use IETF language tags like 'en,pt' 

So for example, to list all subs for a video:

youtube-dl --list-subs 

To download all subs, but not the video:

youtube-dl --all-subs --skip-download 

Or you can only download one subtitle

youtube-dl --write-sub --sub-lang en --skip-download URL 

just run the following command

youtube-dl --write-auto-sub --convert-subs=srt --skip-download URL 

For example you are downloading . with title "example" --convert=srt will output to a file named example.en.srt where en stands for English es for Spanish etc.

The file will have something like this:

00:00:04.259 --> 00:00:05.259 >> I’m Elon Musk. 00:00:05.259 --> 00:00:06.669 >> What is your claim to fame? 00:00:06.669 --> 00:00:07.669 >> I’m the founder of 00:00:07.669 --> 00:00:08.669 Tesla.com. 

OPTIONAL - If you need the text to be cleaned up you can use python to clean it a little:

import re bad_words = ['-->','</c>'] with open('example.en.vtt') as oldfile, open('newfile.txt', 'w') as newfile: for line in oldfile: if not any(bad_word in line for bad_word in bad_words): newfile.write(line) with open('newfile.txt') as result: uniqlines = set(result.readlines()) with open('sub_out.txt', 'w') as rmdup: mylst = map(lambda each: each.strip("&gt;&gt;"), uniqlines) print(mylst) rmdup.writelines(set(mylst)) 

Output newfile.txt:

I’m Elon Musk. What is your claim to fame? I’m the founder of Tesla.com. 

Another simple way to download subtitles from YouTube is to download Google2SRT. Google2SRT is a free, open source program for Windows, Mac and Linux that is able to download, save and convert multiple subtitles from YouTube videos.

Usage

^{Click the links to see screenshots of steps 1 and 2.}

1. Paste the URL in the Google subtitles text box and click Read.

2. Choose the language by selecting the appropriate check box provided and press Go.

3. View the destination folder that was input in the SRT subtitles textbox to locate the SRT files.