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I'm trying to download captions from some videos on Youtube using their nuget package. Here's some code:

var request = _youtube.Search.List("snippet,id"); request.Q = "Bill Gates"; request.MaxResults = 50; request.Type = "video"; var results = request.Execute(); foreach (var result in results.Items) { var captionListRequest = _youtube.Captions.List("id,snippet", result.Id.VideoId); var captionListResponse = captionListRequest.Execute(); var russianCaptions = captionListResponse.Items.FirstOrDefault(c => c.Snippet.Language.ToLower() == "ru"); if (russianCaptions != null) { var downloadRequest = _youtube.Captions.Download(russianCaptions.Id); downloadRequest.Tfmt = CaptionsResource.DownloadRequest.TfmtEnum.Srt; var ms = new MemoryStream(); downloadRequest.Download(ms); } }

When the Download method is called I'm getting a weird Newtonsoft.JSON Exception that says:

 Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReaderException: 'Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: T. Path '', line 0, position 0.' at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader.ParseValue()

I've read some other threads on captions downloading problems and have tried to change my authorization workflow: first I've tried to use just the ApiKey but then also tried OAuth. Here's how it looks now:

 var credential = GoogleWebAuthorizationBroker.AuthorizeAsync( new ClientSecrets { ClientId = "CLIENT_ID", ClientSecret = "CLIENT_SECRET" }, new[] { YouTubeService.Scope.YoutubeForceSsl }, "user", CancellationToken.None, new FileDataStore("Youtube.CaptionsCrawler")).Result; _youtube = new YouTubeService(new BaseClientService.Initializer { ApplicationName = "LKS Captions downloader", HttpClientInitializer = credential });

So, is it even possible to do what I'm trying to achieve?

P.S. I was able to dig deep into the youtube nuget package and as I see, the actual message, that I get (that Newtonsoft.JSON is trying to deserialize, huh!) is "The permissions associated with the request are not sufficient to download the caption track. The request might not be properly authorized, or the video order might not have enabled third-party contributions for this caption."

So, do I have to be the video owner to download captions? But if so, how do other programs like Google2SRT work?

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  • Based from this thread, be noted that JObject.Parse() expects the actual JSON content (string), not a path. Also, converting JSON string to JObject and then back ToString() is really not adding any "value" here. You may also check these links: 1 and 2. Commented Sep 17, 2017 at 18:42
  • This Parse method is called INSIDE google's nuget package, that's why we can't do anything about it. But the real problem is that the captions are not downloaded properly. Commented Sep 17, 2017 at 18:56
  • my problem is getting the CC into one string. Commented Nov 19, 2018 at 20:34

1 Answer 1

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Found this post How to get "transcript" in youtube-api v3

You can get them via GET request on: http://video.google.com/timedtext?lang={LANG}&v={VIDEOID}

Example: http://video.google.com/timedtext?lang=en&v=-osCkzoL53U

Note that they should have subtitles added, will not work if auto-generated.

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6 Comments

As for me, I ended up with getting the source code of Google2SRT from here google2srt.sourceforge.net/en. There I could find all the required urls and querystrings.
you can get auto-generated caption as well by appending &track=asr in URL but for some of the video, i am also not getting the response.
Is it possible to get it using the API v3 nuget itself instead of making http calls?
@AmirNo-Family don't think so, if you are not the owner of the video
No longer works
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