Is it possible to extract the closed caption transcript from YouTube videos?
We have over 200 webcasts on YouTube and each is at least one hour long. YouTube has closed caption for all videos but it seems users have no way to get it.
I tried the URL in this blog but it does not work with our videos.
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/10/download-youtube-captions.html
Following document says only the owner of the channel can do this via standard youtube interface: https://developers.google.com/youtube/2.0/developers_guide_protocol_captions?hl=en
Cheap fix: You can click on the "interactive transscript" button - and copy the content this way. Of course you lose the milliseconds this way.
Extremely cheap fix: A shared youtube account - so that multiple people can edit and upload caption files.
Challenging solution: The youtube API allows downloading and uploading of caption files via HTTP... You may write a youtube API application to provide a browser user interface for uploading or downloading for ANY user or particular users.
Here is an example project for this in java http://apiblog.youtube.com/2011/01/youtube-captions-uploader-web-app.html
Here is very simple example of a working upload for everybody: http://yt-captions-uploader.appspot.com/