YouTube Downloader & Transcript Extractor
Stefan Waidele
3544a89609
SvelteKit web frontend for yt-dlp and ffmpeg. Paste a YouTube URL to download best-quality video, subtitles (original + EN + DE), and thumbnail. Subtitles are converted to clean Markdown. Optional audio extraction to MP3. Supports ZIP & Send mode: downloaded files are packed into a ZIP and delivered to the browser, with optional server-side cleanup after delivery. An extra directory (ZIP_EXTRA_DIR) can be bundled into every ZIP. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com> |
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|---|---|---|
| .vscode | ||
| scripts | ||
| src | ||
| static | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .npmrc | ||
| INSTALL.md | ||
| jsconfig.json | ||
| package-lock.json | ||
| package.json | ||
| README.md | ||
| start.sh | ||
| svelte.config.js | ||
| vite.config.js | ||
yt-dlf
YouTube Downloader & Transcript Extractor — a local web frontend for yt-dlp and ffmpeg.
Features
- Paste a YouTube URL and download the best available video quality
- Subtitles downloaded automatically in the video's original language, English, and German (where available)
- Subtitles converted to clean Markdown (timestamps stripped, text deduplicated and paragraph-wrapped)
- Optional audio extraction to MP3 via ffmpeg
- Real-time progress log streamed to the browser
- Files saved to
~/YouTube/<video title>/
Prerequisites
brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg
Node.js 16+ is required for the web app (tested with Node 26).
Project Layout
yt-dlf/
├── scripts/
│ └── subtitle_to_markdown.py # standalone CLI converter
├── src/
│ ├── lib/
│ │ └── subtitle.js # JS conversion module (used by web app)
│ └── routes/
│ ├── api/download/
│ │ └── +server.js # SSE endpoint — runs yt-dlp / ffmpeg
│ ├── +layout.svelte
│ └── +page.svelte # UI
└── vite.config.js
Running the web app
npm install # first time only
npm run dev # starts on http://localhost:5173
To use a custom port:
PORT=8080 npm run dev
Standalone subtitle converter
Convert a .vtt or .srt subtitle file to Markdown directly from the terminal:
./scripts/subtitle_to_markdown.py video.en.vtt
./scripts/subtitle_to_markdown.py video.en.vtt output.md
Output is saved next to the input file (same name, .md extension) unless a second argument is given.