This n8n community node retrieves native or generated YouTube transcripts through Capslane. It can return timestamped segments or one plain text string and can wait for an asynchronous transcript job to finish.

Installation

Install the package from the community nodes settings in n8n:

n8n-nodes-capslane

Credentials

Create an API key in the Capslane dashboard.
Create a Capslane credential in n8n.
Paste the API key into the credential.

Use a dedicated key for each n8n instance. Do not store the key in workflow fields.

Resources and operations

Select Transcript as the resource, then choose an operation:

Get retrieves native captions or starts a generated transcript. Its action is Get a transcript.
Get Job retrieves the current status or completed result of an existing job. Its action is Get a transcript job. It does not start another transcript or consume another request unit.

Get requires a YouTube URL or ID. Get Job requires the complete jobId returned by Get, including the job_ prefix.

Additional options

Optional fields for Get are grouped under Additional Options. Defaults apply even when an option has not been added.

Mode: selects how Capslane obtains the transcript. Defaults to Auto.
Language: optional preferred language code.
Plain Text: returns one text string instead of timestamped segments. Defaults to false.
Wait for Generated Transcript: waits for an accepted transcript job before continuing. Defaults to true, with a twenty-minute deadline.
Polling Interval: number of seconds between job status requests, from 1 to 30. Defaults to 2 seconds.

Requests have a 45-second network timeout to accommodate uncached native extraction.

Existing workflows

Package 0.3.0 contains one node implementation with Resource, Operation and Additional Options. It keeps typeVersion: 2, so workflows created with package 0.2.0 using that interface need no parameter changes.

The old typeVersion: 1 implementation has been removed. Before upgrading an instance that still uses it, back up the workflow and add a current Capslane node using package 0.2.0. Select Transcript and Get, copy the URL, move Mode, Language, Plain Text, Wait for Generated Transcript and Polling Interval into Additional Options, then select the credential and reconnect the input and output. Test the replacement before upgrading to 0.3.0. Changing only typeVersion in the JSON does not migrate the old fields. Package 0.2.0 remains available for instances that need the old implementation during migration.

Modes

Auto: use native captions and generate only when unavailable.
Native: never start speech transcription.
Generate: create a transcript from the video audio.

Example workflows

The package includes workflows for:

transcribing a video received through a webhook;
transcribing a video from a spreadsheet row;
checking the state of a generated transcript job.

Output

The node returns the Capslane API response. Completed transcripts include content, lang, availableLangs, source, cached and requestId. An asynchronous request returns a jobId, status and request ID.