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What is youtube2webpage?

obra/youtube2webpage — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

1,303JavaScriptAudience · generalComplexity · 2/5Setup · moderate

In one sentence

A script that converts a YouTube video into a readable webpage combining its transcript and timed screenshots.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Youtube2Webpage))
    What it does
      Downloads video
      Extracts captions
      Takes screenshots
      Builds HTML page
    Tech stack
      Perl
      yt-dlp
      ffmpeg
    Output
      index.html
      Screenshots folder
      Captions file
    Use cases
      Reading instead of watching
      Video archiving
    Requirements
      Command line
      External tools installed

Code map

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filefunction / class

What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Turn a lecture or tutorial video into a readable article with screenshots.

USE CASE 2

Skim a video's content as text instead of watching the whole thing.

USE CASE 3

Archive a video's captions and key frames as a self-contained webpage.

What is it built with?

Perlyt-dlpffmpeg

How does it compare?

obra/youtube2webpagefoundzigu/gujumpgategetify/caf
Stars1,3031,3451,360
LanguageJavaScriptJavaScriptJavaScript
Setup difficultymoderatehardeasy
Complexity2/54/53/5
Audiencegeneraldeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires yt-dlp and ffmpeg installed separately before running.

So what is it?

This is a script that turns a YouTube video into a webpage you can read. The author finds text easier to learn from than video, which is the stated motivation. You give the script a YouTube URL and a folder name, and it downloads the video, extracts the closed captions, takes screenshots at regular intervals, and assembles everything into a readable HTML page. The output folder contains the webpage itself, a folder of screenshots named by their timestamp in the video, the captions file, a copy of the video, and a stylesheet for the page's appearance. The index.html file is the main readable result, combining the transcript text with the corresponding screenshots so you can follow along visually without watching the video. The script is written in Perl and depends on two external tools that must be installed separately. The first, yt-dlp, handles downloading videos from YouTube. The second, ffmpeg, is a widely used tool for processing video and audio files, used here to extract screenshots. You run the script from the command line by passing a project name and the video URL. There is a live example of the output linked in the README so you can see what a generated page looks like before trying it yourself.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Show me the command to run this script on a YouTube URL and project name.
Prompt 2
Help me install yt-dlp and ffmpeg before running Youtube2Webpage.
Prompt 3
Walk me through what files end up in the output folder after running this script.

Frequently asked questions

What is youtube2webpage?

A script that converts a YouTube video into a readable webpage combining its transcript and timed screenshots.

What language is youtube2webpage written in?

Mainly JavaScript. The stack also includes Perl, yt-dlp, ffmpeg.

How hard is youtube2webpage to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.

Who is youtube2webpage for?

Mainly general.

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