Douyin Video Transcribe

Extract speech from Douyin videos and convert to text. Supports Chinese/English, cross-platform (Windows/macOS/Linux).

Core Principle

Douyin has strict anti-scraping. Must:

Load page in browser, wait for video stream
Extract real CDN URL from DOM or network requests
Download with Referer: https://www.douyin.com/ header (403 without it)
Convert audio to 16kHz mono WAV for Whisper

Prerequisites

Tool	Purpose	Install
ffmpeg	Audio extraction	`brew install ffmpeg` / `winget install ffmpeg` / `apt install ffmpeg`
whisper	Speech-to-text	`pip install openai-whisper`
curl	Download video	Built-in (Windows: `curl.exe`)

Workflow

1. Resolve Short URL

Douyin share links are usually v.douyin.com/xxx, resolve to full URL:

# macOS/Linux
curl -sL -o /dev/null -w '%{url_effective}' "https://v.douyin.com/xxx/"

# Windows PowerShell
curl.exe -sL -o NUL -w "%{url_effective}" "https://v.douyin.com/xxx/"

Output: https://www.douyin.com/video/7616020798351871284

Video ID is the 19-digit number in URL.

2. Get Video URL

Open video page in browser, wait 3-5 seconds, execute JS:

(() => {
  const videos = document.querySelectorAll('video');
  for (const v of videos) {
    const src = v.currentSrc || v.src;
    if (src && src.startsWith('http') && !src.includes('uuu_265')) {
      return src;
    }
  }
  return null;
})()

Key points:

Returns null: Page not loaded, retry after waiting
Contains uuu_265: Placeholder video, retry after waiting
Starts with blob:: Streaming, wait for real URL
CDN URLs expire (~2 hours), re-fetch if needed

3. Download Video

# macOS/Linux
curl -L -H "Referer: https://www.douyin.com/" -o video.mp4 "<CDN_URL>"

# Windows
curl.exe -L -H "Referer: https://www.douyin.com/" -o video.mp4 "<CDN_URL>"

Referer header is required, otherwise 403.

4. Extract Audio

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -ar 16000 -ac 1 -c:a pcm_s16le audio.wav -y

Parameters:

-ar 16000: 16kHz sample rate (Whisper requirement)
-ac 1: Mono channel
-c:a pcm_s16le: 16-bit PCM

5. Transcribe

python -m whisper audio.wav --model small --language zh

Model selection:

Model	Size	5-min video (CPU)	Accuracy	Use case
tiny	75MB	~30s	Fair	Quick preview
base	142MB	~1min	Good	Daily use
small	466MB	~3min	Better	Recommended
medium	1.5GB	~8min	Best	High accuracy

Language:

Chinese: --language zh
English: --language en
Auto-detect: omit flag (slower)

Output files in current directory: audio.txt, audio.srt, audio.json

Troubleshooting

Issue	Detection	Solution
Short URL fails	Returns non-douyin.com	Check link completeness, remove share text noise
Video URL not found	JS returns null	Wait 3-5s and retry, max 3 times
Placeholder video	URL contains `uuu_265`	Page not loaded, wait and retry
Download 403	curl returns 403	Check Referer header; URL may be expired
Whisper hangs	No output for long time	First run downloads model (~460MB for small)
Garbled output	Terminal shows gibberish	Normal, read .txt file directly
Out of memory	Process killed	Use smaller model (base/tiny)

Output Convention

Name files by video ID, save to user-specified directory:

output/
├── 7616020798351871284.mp4   # Original video (optional)
├── 7616020798351871284.wav   # Audio (delete after)
├── 7616020798351871284.txt   # Transcript
└── 7616020798351871284.srt   # Subtitles (optional)

Scripts (Optional)

Helper scripts in skill directory:

scripts/get_video_url.js: Browser-side video URL extraction with multiple methods
scripts/transcribe.py: CLI one-click transcription (requires video URL)

Scripts are accelerators, not required. Implement yourself after understanding the workflow.

Notes

Article links (/article/): Use browser snapshot directly, no transcription needed
Douyin AI summary: Some video pages have AI-generated chapter summaries, extract from snapshot as supplement
Other platforms: This skill is for Douyin only. Use yt-dlp for YouTube/Bilibili

douyin-transcribe

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