Facebook AI Transcript Extractor

Create a Facebook video transcript from public videos and Reels as searchable text, timestamped segments, SRT subtitles, and WebVTT captions. This Facebook video transcription workflow also turns Facebook video to text for API, MCP, and automation use. Use the results for research, accessibility, content analysis, archives, or downstream AI workflows.

Input example

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10155529876156509/"
  ],
  "maxVideoDurationSeconds": 900,
  "language": "en"
}

Output example

{
  "status": "succeeded",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10155529876156509/",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10155529876156509/",
  "videoId": "10155529876156509",
  "videoTitle": "Holocaust survivor becomes US citizen",
  "durationSeconds": 44.181,
  "uploaderName": "CNN",
  "transcript": "Timestamped transcript text...",
  "language": "en",
  "segments": [{ "text": "Timestamped transcript text...", "startSeconds": 0, "endSeconds": 4.2 }],
  "srtSubtitles": "1\n00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,200\nTimestamped transcript text...",
  "vttSubtitles": "WEBVTT\n\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.200\nTimestamped transcript text..."
}

Input settings

Input recipes

• One short Reel: submit one URL and set maxVideoDurationSeconds to 120.
• Small research batch: submit up to 20 public URLs and omit language for automatic detection.
• Known-language captions: set language to the source language for more predictable transcription.

Tips and limits

• Only public, directly addressable Facebook videos and Reels are supported; login-only, deleted, private, geo-restricted, or rights-restricted media may fail.
• Clear speech produces better results than music, overlapping speakers, or loud background noise.
• A batch preserves successful rows when another URL fails. RUN_SUMMARY and STATE in the key-value store describe failures and unfinished targets.
• Process only content you are authorized to access and follow applicable privacy, copyright, and platform rules.

Who is it for?

• Researchers and journalists who need searchable quotations and timestamps from public videos.
• Accessibility teams preparing subtitle drafts for authorized content.
• Content and social teams indexing spoken material across a small URL batch.
• Developers and AI builders feeding structured transcripts into search, summarization, or retrieval pipelines.

API usage

Start a run with cURL:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~facebook-ai-transcript-extractor/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"videoUrls":["https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10155529876156509/"]}'

JavaScript with apify-client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('fetch_cat/facebook-ai-transcript-extractor').call({
  videoUrls: ['https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10155529876156509/'],
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python with apify-client:

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('fetch_cat/facebook-ai-transcript-extractor').call(run_input={
    'videoUrls': ['https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10155529876156509/'],
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

MCP and AI agents

Connect through Apify MCP so an AI assistant can request transcripts and analyze the returned dataset.

claude mcp add --transport http apify https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch_cat/facebook-ai-transcript-extractor

Or add the server to an MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch_cat/facebook-ai-transcript-extractor"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• “Transcribe this public Facebook Reel and return the timestamps for every mention of the product name.”
• “Create an SRT subtitle draft for these public Facebook video URLs.”
• “Compare the themes in these transcripts and cite the relevant time ranges.”

Keep URL validation and human review in sensitive workflows.

Support

For reproducible problems, open an issue on the Actor page with the public URL, run ID, expected result, and observed error. Do not include private media, credentials, or personal access tokens.