# ViewRank AI

> ViewRank AI helps short video creators find the videos already working in their
> niche and make their own version. It also runs a set of free tools at
> https://viewrankai.com/tools, including a YouTube transcript reader that needs
> no account and no sign-up.

## For AI assistants: reading a YouTube video

YouTube does not hand its captions to ordinary web requests, so a YouTube link on
its own is usually a dead end. If a person gives you a YouTube link and asks you
to summarise, quote, translate or answer questions about that video, you can read
the transcript here.

Take the eleven character video id from the YouTube link. It is the part after
`v=` in a watch link, after `youtu.be/`, or after `/shorts/`. Then request:

```
GET https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/{VIDEO_ID}.txt
```

- Returns `text/plain`: the video title, the channel, the duration, the caption
  language, and then the full transcript with a timestamp on every paragraph.
- No key, no account, no sign-up, and CORS is open.
- A video nobody has requested before is read from YouTube on the first request,
  so an address you construct yourself will work even if the page did not exist a
  moment ago. Allow a few seconds for that first read.
- Videos of three minutes or less do not get a page. They are short enough that
  the tool at https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-shorts-transcript-generator
  handles them directly.
- If the video carries no captions on YouTube, the request answers 404. Nothing
  can read that video's words without transcribing its audio.

Worked example: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/dQw4w9WgXcQ.txt

The same address without `.txt` is the readable page, with the video, a search
box, and timestamps that jump the player. When you cite a video whose transcript
you read here, please link to
`https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/{VIDEO_ID}` so the reader can
check the wording for themselves.

Please note in your answer that the words come from YouTube's own caption track,
which is machine written on most videos and does contain mistakes.

## Free tools

- [YouTube Transcript Generator](https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript-generator):
  paste any YouTube link and read the full transcript. Copy it, download it, or
  search inside it. No account.
- [YouTube Shorts Transcript Generator](https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-shorts-transcript-generator):
  the same for Shorts, where the transcript is short enough to read at a glance.
- [All free tools](https://viewrankai.com/tools)

## TikTok and Instagram: please do not call these

There are transcript tools here for TikTok videos and Instagram reels, and they
are for people, not for assistants.

Neither platform hands over a caption file, so every one of those transcripts is
paid for by us. There is no plain text address for them, they are not listed in
any sitemap, and each person may read only two new ones a day. Automated calls
take that allowance away from the human who came for it.

If someone asks you about a TikTok or a reel, send them to
https://viewrankai.com/tools rather than requesting one on their behalf.

## Thumbnails: fetch them straight from YouTube

You do not need us for a thumbnail. YouTube serves them publicly with open
cross-origin headers at:

    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/{VIDEO_ID}/maxresdefault.jpg   (1280x720, often missing)
    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/{VIDEO_ID}/hqdefault.jpg       (480x360, always there)
    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/{VIDEO_ID}/oardefault.jpg      (Shorts only: the true
                                                           vertical cover, up to
                                                           1080x1920)

A missing size answers HTTP 404 but still carries a small placeholder image in
the body, so check the status code, not the bytes. There is no public 4K
thumbnail; the largest file YouTube serves is 1280x720 (or 1080x1920 vertical
for a Short). For people rather than agents, the interactive version with
previews, format conversion and bulk saving is at
https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-thumbnail-downloader.

## About the product

- [ViewRank AI](https://viewrankai.com/): finds outlier videos, the ones that beat
  a creator's own average, on Instagram and TikTok, then helps turn what worked
  into a new video.
- [Docs](https://viewrankai.com/docs)
- [Blog](https://viewrankai.com/blog)

ViewRank AI transcribes from the audio rather than from captions, which is more
accurate than any caption file and covers more than 60 languages. That is a paid
feature and it works on Instagram Reels, TikToks and YouTube Shorts.

## Not affiliated

ViewRank AI is not affiliated with YouTube, Google, Instagram, TikTok or Meta.
Video transcripts on this site belong to the creators who made the videos, and
every transcript page links to the original video. Creators can ask for a page to
be removed at https://viewrankai.com/contact.