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Ingest YouTube video transcripts

Written by Joseph Russo, Principal Architect, Networks and Tech, AskVault · Reviewed by Allison Chan
Last updated: · 3 min read

What gets indexed

For each video:

  • The video's title.
  • Its transcript, from YouTube's captions, or an AI transcription of the audio when captions can't be read.

Setup

5 minutes:

  1. Knowledge > Add Source > YouTube.
  2. Add videos:
    • By URL. Paste one public video URL. Repeat for each video you want indexed.
  3. Wait for indexing. The video's transcript becomes answerable once it is indexed.

Use cases

Product tutorials. A customer asks how to set something up, and the bot answers from your tutorial's transcript and links to the video.

Webinar follow-ups. "What did you say about pricing in the May webinar?" The bot answers from the webinar transcript and links to the recording.

Conference talks. Team-internal: "What did Alice present about deployment patterns?"

Citations

When the bot answers from a video, it cites the video and links to it on YouTube. Transcripts are indexed as plain text, so answers link to the video as a whole rather than to a timestamp.

Limits

  • One video per import. Channels and playlists are not imported in one go.
  • Updates. Delete the source and add the URL again to refresh its transcript.
  • Transcripts. YouTube captions where available; otherwise AskVault transcribes the audio.

Audience tags

  • public for marketing videos.
  • internal for team-private videos.

Private videos are not supported today. For internal-only videos, upload the video file itself (Business and above) on the file uploads page.

Planned features

  • Auto-detect new uploads to a channel.
  • Multi-language transcripts.
  • Chapter-level retrieval.

Common pitfalls

No transcript available. When captions can't be read, AskVault transcribes the audio instead. If that fails too, check the video is public or unlisted and try again later.

Wrong language. There is no language setting; the transcript is whatever YouTube's captions or the audio transcription return.

Outdated content cited. Video doesn't change; bot may cite stale info if the video is old. Add a freshness check in your QA process.

FAQ

Can I index private YouTube videos?

No. Only public videos can be indexed today.

Does the bot stream video itself?

No. Bot answers from transcripts. Customers click through to YouTube.

Will my YouTube channel see analytics from AskVault retrievals?

No. AskVault reads the captions directly and does not play the video, so it should not count as a view.

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