PBS subtitles in 2025

[beejaykas]

Just wondering, has PBS changed something with their subtitles recently?
I'm not a frequent user but I'm pretty sure I've managed to download subtitles before, using the traditional method
(Developer Tools in Chrome, search for .vtt files)

Let's take this video
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/trumps-comeback/

It gives me two .vtt files
https://ga.pbs-video.pbs.org/videos/frontline/8e04d2ca-0265-4308-94e2-1ee6edb18fb3/200...s_622_0_en.vtt

This is for the trailer that is somehow part of this page.

And the second is
https://ga.pbs-video.pbs.org/trick_play/frontline/8e04d2ca-0265-4308-94e2-1ee6edb18fb3...trick_play.vtt

This has timecodes only but no text.
Why such a file name? Are they trying to use tricks to hide the subtitle file, and openly stating this with the name?

Or what am I doing wrong to get a .vtt file for the whole video, not just the trailer?

[2nHxWW6GkN1l916N3ayz8HQoi]

yt-dlp + stream detector addon

yt-dlp "https://ga.pbs-video.pbs.org/videos/frontline/8e04d2ca-0265-4308-94e2-1ee6edb18fb3/2000460850/hd-16x9-mezzanine-1080p/00004311_coveop1a_v002-AABR-AVC_622.m3u8" --write-sub --skip-download

Your subtitle
https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/47d567cc-464f-4e84-b12e-db3ff1abb382

[beejaykas]

Thank you - so it's officially not as easy anymore as those guides from a few years back show? You not only need yt-dlp but also another add-on to do it?
Just looking for a .vtt file or somehow using a general video link (another guide for PBS from years ago) no longer works, ever?

[2nHxWW6GkN1l916N3ayz8HQoi]

No idea. I just gave you the first solution I found.

Edit: turns out you can just use yt-dlp with the original url

yt-dlp "https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/trumps-comeback/" --write-subs --skip-download

[beejaykas]

Can someone help with this one?
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-war-cabinet/

If I change my VPN to US, I can view the video and see the subtitles but downloading the subtitles with yt-dlp just doesn't work. Any other global video that doesn't need VPN? Works perfectly. But using VPN seems to confuse my yt-dlp hopelessly, I tried some tips online but nothing worked.

Can someone in US download the subtitles and put them here? Thank you!

[fred_abila]

When a US VPN makes yt-dlp fail on PBS, it is usually the site serving a different player or blocking the session, not the subtitle format itself. Try without the VPN first if you are already in-region, or with a clean US exit that does not share a datacenter IP. Useful flags: yt-dlp --write-subs --write-auto-subs --sub-langs "en.*" --skip-download URL to pull only subs, and --cookies-from-browser chrome if the page only unlocks after a browser login. If yt-dlp still cannot see an m3u8, open DevTools on the episode page, Network filter for vtt or m3u8, and download the .vtt directly, then convert with Subtitle Edit or ffmpeg -i file.vtt file.srt. Avoid random third-party PBS rip sites; the official player stream plus cookies is the reliable route.

[beejaykas]

Yes, I'm guessing it's related to VPN. Frontline has a bunch of videos side by side. Half of them can be seen globally. I can open any of them and use yt-dlp to download subtitles without a single isssue.
A few of them, like the War Cabinet video, are geo-blocked to US only. I've tried using a few different US-based VPNs and while I can see the video and subtitles without issues, yt-dlp fails to download subtitles. I have tried a few of the tips (all that about cookies, outside players etc) but nothing works.
Using DevTools and Network no longer works for PBS, you only get some textless sprite files that way but not the normal subtitle file.

Basically I might manage to download something if I spend a few more hours at it, switching VPNs and trying various commands in yt-dlp,
but just wondering if a US-based user using the command
yt-dlp --write-subs --skip-download "https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-war-cabinet/"
can perhaps download the subtitles in 5 seconds?

[ListyDoM]

Can someone help with this one?
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-war-cabinet/

If I change my VPN to US, I can view the video and see the subtitles but downloading the subtitles with yt-dlp just doesn't work. Any other global video that doesn't need VPN? Works perfectly. But using VPN seems to confuse my yt-dlp hopelessly, I tried some tips online but nothing worked.

Can someone in US download the subtitles and put them here? Thank you!

N_m3u8DL-RE "https://ga.pbs-video.pbs.org/p/-/sid/1d80dde65a6c4eb4af769e062adfeaf8/videos/frontline/a39fb453-c728-41fa-8536-b9ba9f5764cb/2000524702/hd-16x9-mezzanine-1080p/00004501-AABR-AVC_726.m3u8"  --header "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/153.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" --header "Referer: https://player.pbs.org/" --save-name "The War Cabinet _ FRONTLINE _ PBS _ Official Site _ Documentary Series"

https://gofile.io/d/x7hb2UEZ

[beejaykas]

Thank you, you're a star!
A bit puzzling that VPN can make things so complicated with yt-dlp but otherwise it works wonderfully.
And yeah, using that link opens up the video globally (and also makes yt-dlp download the subtitles without issues globally) but I'm not sure I could have found the video link myself.

[ListyDoM]

No DRM
Use Stream Detector