How to Use the Windows GUI & Command-Line Interface
Detailed guide to every option, mode, and command-line flag in v1.1.1.
1. GUI Controls & Modes
Indexes the top of the channel and extracts only the first 10 pending videos. Ideal for verifying subtitle tracks and translation output before committing to a full crawl.
Indexes the entire channel, skips any video already marked success or no_transcript in channel_cache.db, and processes all remaining pending videos.
Translates all previously extracted transcripts in your local channel_cache.db into the selected Translate To language without re-crawling YouTube.
Resets only videos that failed due to temporary network or HTTP 429 errors (status='error') back to pending and retries them.
2. Command-Line Interface (python cli.py)
Automate channel archiving or integrate transcript extraction into scheduled scripts:
# 1. Extract first 10 videos and translate into English python cli.py --channel "https://www.youtube.com/@YouTubeJapan" --output "./jp_channel" --mode test10 --langs "ja,en" --translate-to en # 2. Extract an entire channel (or resume an interrupted run) with a 3-second safety delay python cli.py --channel "https://www.youtube.com/@TED" --output "./ted_archive" --mode all --delay 3.0 # 3. Batch-translate an existing SQLite database into Spanish python cli.py --output "./ted_archive" --mode translate_existing --translate-to es # 4. Use a Netscape-format cookies.txt file to reduce rate-limiting on large channels python cli.py --channel "https://www.youtube.com/@channel_name" --output "./out" --cookies "./cookies.txt" # 5. Export a sanitized diagnostic report (redacts usernames, cookies, API keys) python cli.py --output "./ted_archive" --export-diagnostics