Nice! My friends and I had this idea for a hackathon and we won! We skipped lectures and we needed a way to fast forward to relevant parts of a lecture
Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
11–20 of 138 posts
Re: Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
#12Nice! Is it possible to do it without fixing the channel?
I'm assuming it's using the API to download captions and scanning them, which is why it'd need the Channel. It would be so hard to know where to begin without it! Potentially future updates could search a logged in user's history?
Yep, you're exactly right. The tool works by getting the channel's videos, then fetching the voice-to-text transcripts for them, then searching within the spoken words (along with the title and description) for any keyword matches. So there isn't a feasible way to do that across all of YouTube.
I like your idea of searching the logged-in user's history! That could be handy. Another thing I've thought about is auto-importing all the channels they're subscribed to so they can search within those.
For the first version of VideoMentions Search, I kept things simple with a single "Channel URL" input field, but using their history/subscriptions is totally doable. I'll see if there's enough demand for that.
In any event, I still think that this simple first version has utility. I like being able to quickly pinpoint all the moments when a certain topic was mentioned across all of a channel's videos.
Thanks so much for taking a look, and for your feedback!
Re: Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - You remember watching a video where a certain topic was discussed, and now you're trying to remember which video it was to rewatch it. But I need to remember which channel I watched? Maybe I'm missing something, but in my eyes it would make it tremendously more useful if I didn't have to specify channel.
Yeah, YouTube doesn't provide a way to search all of YouTube based on the spoken words in videos. I could update VideoMentions Search to allow users to select multiple channels, and then perform the search across all of those (maybe importing all the channels they're subscribed to could be handy... ). One way or another though, it would still require selecting specific channels to search within. That limitation notwi…
Could you do a search based on their watch history if they have it enabled?
Re: Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
#14I wanted this just yesterday! I was searching several channels to recall how many bolts are holding the battery for the electric F150. Sure enough, Top Gear told me how many bolts the F150 used for its battery pack!
Result:
SPOKEN WORDS "…kept things simple it recycled the same basic chassis and attach the battery which can be removed with just eight bolts from underneath and used carryover components wherever possible in fact…"
Re: Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
#15Nice! Is it possible to do it without fixing the channel?
YouTube doesn't provide a way to search all of YouTube based on the spoken words in videos, unfortunately. I could update VideoMentions Search to allow users to select multiple channels, and then perform the search across all of those. Like maybe maybe auto-importing all the channels they're subscribed to could be useful. One way or another though, it would still require selecting specific channels to search within.…
Perhaps you could have channel owners register their channel if they want to be indexed. That would be super useful.
Re: Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming it's using the API to download captions and scanning them, which is why it'd need the Channel. It would be so hard to know where to begin without it! Potentially future updates could search a logged in user's history?
Yep, you're exactly right. The tool works by getting the channel's videos, then fetching the voice-to-text transcripts for them, then searching within the spoken words (along with the title and description) for any keyword matches. So there isn't a feasible way to do that across all of YouTube. I like your idea of searching the logged-in user's history! That could be handy. Another thing I've thought about is auto-im…
Do you keep the transcripts around on the server? It shouldn't matter much in terms of storage unless the site becomes crazy popular, so you could offer a "best effort search" or something along the lines, that just searches everything you got so far, so the site would get better and better over time.
Re: Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
#17This is amazing. I actually used yt-dlp to download all subtitles and search in them a few times already.
Thanks a lot!
Re: Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
#18Nice! Is it possible to do it without fixing the channel?
YouTube doesn't provide a way to search all of YouTube based on the spoken words in videos, unfortunately. I could update VideoMentions Search to allow users to select multiple channels, and then perform the search across all of those. Like maybe maybe auto-importing all the channels they're subscribed to could be useful. One way or another though, it would still require selecting specific channels to search within.…
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Re: Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
#19Nice! Is it possible to do it without fixing the channel?
YouTube doesn't provide a way to search all of YouTube based on the spoken words in videos, unfortunately. I could update VideoMentions Search to allow users to select multiple channels, and then perform the search across all of those. Like maybe maybe auto-importing all the channels they're subscribed to could be useful. One way or another though, it would still require selecting specific channels to search within.…
This field was a blocker for me as well. If the channel field was an async select that helped autocomplete lookup channel urls by channel name, this would be way more convenient.
My use case would be for ham radio. Lots of ham radio YouTubers film their QSOs (conversations) and mention the callsigns that they make contact with. I want to find the channels that mention my callsign and I'm sure lots of other hams would want to know. Anywho cool project. GL 73
Re: Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spoken words in videos
#20Hey HN! I just launched VideoMentions Search, a free tool that allows you to search YouTube to find videos that contain specific spoken words. Here's how to quickly try it out - Let's say you want to find every video on The Verge's YouTube channel within the last several months in which "MacBook Pro" is mentioned. Here's a pre-populated search to accomplish that: https://videomentions.com/search?channelUrl=https%253A…
I tried on this channel which is in Spanish [1] and it returned very fast with no results.
Then tried on GeoWizard channel (English) and it worked great.
There is a somewhat related tool called Youglish that works on subtitles, it's great for checking the pronunciation or usage of a word or expression in many languages, but it's based on a curated list of channels with known good subtitles. I thought yours could be a great complement to this as it works directly on the audio.