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transcribe_video
MCPTube transcribe_video tool: transcribe YouTube videos to SRT and plain text from YouTube captions, or with AI on the Pro plan, right in your AI assistant.
Transcribe YouTube video · REST: POST /v1/transcribe
Returns the transcript as SRT and plain text, right in the response. Uses YouTube’s captions when they exist, manual before auto-generated. With no captions, it transcribes the audio with AI, on the Pro plan only (up to 30 hours of audio a month); on other plans, the call is refused and counts toward your quota.
| Parameter | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
urlrequired | string | URL or ID of a YouTube video. |
languageoptional | string (ISO) | Caption language, such as "en" or "pt". Without it, the video’s original captions are used. |
forceAiTranscriptiondefault: false | boolean | Skips the captions and transcribes the audio with AI. Pro only. |
formatdefault: both | "srt" | "text" | "both" | What to return: SRT, plain text or both. |
Example
Transcribe this video and sum it up in 3 bullet points: youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
Your assistant calls transcribe_video, reads the transcript and answers.
curl https://mcp.mcptube.com/v1/transcribe \ -H "Authorization: Bearer mct_YOUR_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"url": "youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ", "language": "en", "format": "text"}'
Response
{
"videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
"author": "Rick Astley",
"durationSeconds": 213,
"source": "youtube-captions",
"language": "en",
"languageName": "English",
"cueCount": 61,
"aiTranscriptionSeconds": null
}The response also carries the SRT and the plain text, in the srt and text fields, depending on format. On MCP, your assistant gets the same data.
source tells you where it came from: youtube-captions (manual captions), youtube-auto-captions (auto-generated) or ai-transcription (AI transcription). In that case, the response includes aiTranscriptionSeconds and, on Pro, this month’s aiTranscriptionUsedSeconds and aiTranscriptionLimitSeconds.