Blog
Guides, tutorials, and tips on YouTube transcripts, captions, and the transcript API.
YouTube Transcript API: Designing a Resilient ETL Pipeline
Learn how to build a production-grade YouTube ETL pipeline: discover, fetch, transform, and load transcripts reliably with queues, idempotent workers, and smart monitoring.
David Boulen · 7/16/2026 · 10 min read
List All Videos from a YouTube Channel via API
Learn how to resolve channel handles, paginate uploads, filter by date, and build full transcript pipelines using the YouTube channel videos API
David Boulen · 7/15/2026 · 9 min read
Whisper vs YouTube Transcript API: Which Should You Use?
Whisper transcribes any audio at 2.7% WER. The YouTube Transcript API fetches captions free. Here is how to pick the right tool, or combine both.
David Boulen · 7/14/2026 · 6 min read
Building an Accessibility Captioning Workflow
Build WCAG-compliant captions: pull timed YouTube transcripts via API, generate SRT and VTT files in 125+ languages, review, and deliver to any video player.
David Boulen · 7/13/2026 · 9 min read
Caching YouTube Transcripts to Cut API Costs
Learn how to cache YouTube transcript API responses in Python to reduce credit usage by 70-90%, with TTL strategies, cache key design, and invalidation patterns.
David Boulen · 7/12/2026 · 9 min read
Mining Video at Scale: A Guide for Researchers
Extract bulk YouTube transcripts from 800M+ videos for research. Ethical collection, reproducible data structures, multilingual corpora, and citation best practices.
David Boulen · 7/11/2026 · 8 min read
How Indie Hackers Ship a YouTube SaaS in a Weekend
A practical guide for indie hackers building YouTube-powered SaaS products fast—picking a niche, wiring transcripts, managing costs, and launching in 48 hours.
David Boulen · 7/10/2026 · 8 min read
Search YouTube Programmatically with a Single API
Learn how to search YouTube via API, chain results to transcript fetching, paginate through results, and build robust content ingestion pipelines.
David Boulen · 7/9/2026 · 7 min read
Generate SRT and VTT Subtitles from YouTube Videos
Convert YouTube transcript JSON into SRT and VTT subtitle files with Python and JavaScript. Includes timing format gotchas, line-length rules, and accessibility best practices.
David Boulen · 7/8/2026 · 10 min read
Understanding YouTube Transcript Rate Limits
What causes YouTube transcript rate limits, how a managed API absorbs them, and how to design retry logic with exponential backoff that never wastes a credit.
David Boulen · 7/7/2026 · 9 min read
5 OSS YouTube Transcript Libraries and Their Limits
Compare the top open-source YouTube transcript libraries—youtube-transcript-api, yt-dlp, pytube, and more—plus when to switch to a managed API.
David Boulen · 7/7/2026 · 7 min read
Pull YouTube Playlist Data via API: Full Walkthrough
Learn how to fetch YouTube playlist items, paginate results, pull transcripts, and build an ETL pipeline—with working curl, Python, and Node.js examples.
David Boulen · 7/5/2026 · 8 min read