Back to Cookbook
Rip the Clip
Videos, audio, subtitles, and clean transcripts
Download videos, extract audio, grab subtitles, or get clean paragraph-style transcripts from YouTube and 1000+ other sites via yt-dlp. Handles format selection, playlist extraction, and troubleshooting.
House RecipeCreative2 min setup
INGREDIENTS
📄Google Docs▶️YouTube
PROMPT
Get me the transcript from this video: [paste URL] Just give me clean paragraph text, no timestamps. If I need the video file or audio, I'll ask for that separately.
How It Works
One tool for all your media extraction needs. Transcript mode gives you
clean paragraph text (no timecodes unless you want them). Download mode
gives you the actual files.
What You Get
- Clean paragraph transcripts from YouTube (via youtube-transcript-plus)
- Fallback to yt-dlp subtitles for other sites
- Video download in best quality or specific format
- Audio-only extraction (mp3, etc.)
- Subtitle files in requested language
Setup Steps
- Install yt-dlp and ffmpeg (brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg)
- Run `npm ci` in the skill directory
- Use vtd.js for all operations
Tips
- Default transcript output is clean paragraph (no timestamps)
- Use --timestamps when timecodes are needed
- [Music] and other bracketed cues stripped by default
- Pass extra yt-dlp args after -- for advanced use
- List available formats with `vtd.js formats --url`
- Works with playlists and channels too
Tags:#video#audio#transcription#youtube