yt-transcript-tools

Getting transcripts into epub format.

Download a transcript, place it in this directory, run ./convert_transcript.lua FILE, fill in author and link as requested, and you will have a usable epub.

This is heavily WIP.

I used the apply_margin script on a transcript downloaded from https://www.youtube-transcript.io to correct the poor formatting, then oops_all_code to add backticks to each line (because else pandoc encodes all code in a single block no matter how poorly that aligns with a page boundary when exporting epubs), then pandoc --from markdown+hard_line_breaks input -o output to finally have a functional epub that is legible.

This will probably fail with videos longer than an hour because the export will be different enough to fuck up the margin fix.

I am really frustrated because pandoc doesn't support plain text. I went through many tests and iterations before coming to even this minimal start and it was extremely frustrating.

Tasks

• I need an option / 2nd script to output a version with no timecode formatting for easier text extraction.
  • I made it actually just combine both in the same document, easier to manage that way.