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Ingest YouTube video transcripts

Written by , Founder, AskVault · Reviewed by Aashiq
Last updated: · 3 min read

What gets indexed

For each video:

  • Title and description.
  • Auto-generated or human transcript.
  • Chapter markers if present.
  • Channel name as source attribution.

Setup

5 minutes:

  1. Knowledge Hub > Add Source > YouTube.
  2. Add videos:
    • By URL. Paste video URLs (one per line).
    • By channel. Paste channel URL; AskVault indexes the channel's videos.
    • By playlist. Paste playlist URL.
  3. Trigger sync. Each video takes about 30 seconds.

Use cases

Product tutorials. Customer asks "How do I set up SSO?" Bot links to your tutorial video at the specific 2:34 timestamp.

Webinar follow-ups. "What did the CEO say about pricing during the May webinar?" Bot pulls transcript snippet plus timestamp.

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

Citations with timestamps

When the bot answers from a video:

Per our SSO tutorial at 2:34, enable SAML in Admin > Security.

Click the timestamp to jump to that moment in YouTube. Useful for quick verification.

Limits

  • Videos per source. 500.
  • Per-video duration. Up to 2 hours.
  • Sync frequency. Manual or weekly scheduled.
  • Transcripts. Auto-generated where available; otherwise English-language auto-ASR.

Audience tags

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

For private/unlisted YouTube videos: not supported today. Use Google Drive ingest for internal-only video files.

Planned features

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

Common pitfalls

No transcript available. Video too new for auto-generation, or transcript disabled. Wait 24 hours or upload transcript manually.

Wrong language. YouTube's auto-detect may pick wrong language. Override under source settings.

Outdated content cited.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?

Today, public/unlisted only. Private videos planned for OAuth-authenticated access.

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 transcripts via YouTube's API; doesn't count as views.

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