How can I efficiently find YouTube videos with manual written closed captions?

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1

Zerotohero has the right idea, but it’s far too limited. I am looking for a way to search the entirety of Youtube
with MWCC as a list, apply filters according to topic/interest etc and then choose what I want to import to LingQ accordingly.

Channelcrawler is also good, but I can’t apply CC as a filter or as a list.

The only other way I can see doing this is typing something into youtube and then finding all relevant content that way. However the list seems to go on forever and repeats a lot of the same channels based on the words used. I just want a masterlist dammit haha :slight_smile:

Maybe i’m missing something simple here.

Any ideas?

Josh.

2

Well, Josh, you’re already way ahead of what I’ve been able to accomplish with searches on YouTube. Over time, I’ve become convinced that their search algorithms just aren’t that well-thought out. They seem to search random words better than subject matter. Believe me, if I could figure out how to search everything in French with English subtitles, or French subtitles, for example - I would do it! Good luck with this and I’m going to check back and see if anyone answers you with some real tips.

3

You can filter your Youtube results by only videos that have CC! Productivity Hacks for LingQ - YouTube

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4

Hi, Josh!

For this task I’d use powerful “general purpose” search engines like Google & Co.
See, for example, “Google’s Advanced Video Search”
https://www.google.com/advanced_video_search?q=advanced+research+page&client=ubuntu&hs=j8I&biw=1164&bih=812&dpr=1.1&tbm=vid&hl=en
with the following: search terms:

  • the target language of the subtitles: French, Spanish, etc. or the L2 translations (français, español, etc.)
  • subtitles and / or the L2 translations, e.g. sous-titres (in French)
    → in quotation marks: “French / Spanish, etc. subtitles” or “sous-titres français”, etc.
  • the video sharing website (Youtube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, etc.)
  • the topic that interests you (in quotation marks - if you don’t want to search for individual terms)

An exemplary search for Youtube videos about (ancient) Rome with French subtitles would
look like this

You can refine your search further by using Google’s search parameters like “duration”, “length”, “date”, etc.

Hope that helps
Peter

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5

Salut Shelby

I have already tried this. I forgot to mention that the searches I was doing had CC on.

The issue lies mainly with YouTube’s inability to apply specific multiple filters at the same time. For example; CC and channels.

There is also the issue of the search results themselves. Even when I know what I am looking for I am flooded with a long list of related videos, that may or may not be useful and along with this the CC does not specify whether or not it is manually written or auto-generated.

Perhaps I am being too picky here and there is another way of approaching this.

EDIT: Checked out Yannick’s video. Great stuff! - It may be the case I have to be more specific in my searches and then go from there.

Merci pour la réponse

Josh.

6

Thanks a lot Peter, finally I can find Swedish videos with subtitles.

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