Build Anki decks from text files containing YouTube URLs

Yanki makes it easy to build and maintain video flashcard decks for Anki. It can use local video or image files, or it can download videos from YouTube or any other source yt-dlp supports.

Installation

You will need ffmpeg installed to use Yanki. On macOS, install it from ffmpeg.org or with brew install ffmpeg. On Linux or Windows, try installing yt-dlp’s ffmpeg.

I recommend using uvx run Yanki. uvx is part of uv, which can be installed a number of ways, but it’s probably simplest to install uv through your package manager, e.g. brew install uv on macOS.

Quick start

Create a simple deck file, e.g. basic.deck, to define your flashcards:

title: Basic ASL phrases
more: md:From [Lifeprint](https://www.lifeprint.com/)
audio: strip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHPszRvL9pg What is your name?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW8cpOVeKZ4 Are you deaf?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqKENRGkOUQ Are you a student?

On macOS and some Linux distributions, you can make yanki open Anki and start the import of the new deck:

uvx yanki -v update basic.deck

Otherwise, you can make it build an .apkg and then import that into Anki:

uvx yanki -v build -o basic.apkg basic.deck

Deck file format

There is a reference for the deck file format in REFERENCE.adoc.

Examples

The asl/ directory contains example .deck files that can be used to build a deck for the vocabulary and phrases in each Lifeprint.com ASLU lesson. Its README.md briefly explains how the signs were chosen.

Tip

If you are interested in learning American Sign Language, please see Dr. Bill Vicar’s Lifeprint.com ASLU. These decks can help you, but they cannot replace the Lifeprint lessons and vocabulary pages.

Plus, Lifeprint is full of Dr. Bill’s humor.

Command usage

This is a Python package that can be run with uvx. The most common usage is probably just to build your decks and import them to Anki. That’s as simple as:

uvx yanki update *.deck

You can see all the commands and options with --help:

❯ uvx yanki --help
Usage: yanki [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Build Anki decks from text files containing YouTube URLs.

Options:
  -v, --verbose                 Be more verbose. May be passed up to 3 times.
  --cache DIRECTORY             Path to cache for downloads and media files.
                                [env var: YANKI_CACHE; default:
                                /Users/daniel/.cache/yanki]
  --reprocess / --no-reprocess  Force reprocessing videos.
  -j, --concurrency INTEGER     Number of ffmpeg process to run at once.  [env
                                var: YANKI_CONCURRENCY; default: 8]
  --version                     Show the version and exit.
  --help                        Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  build                  Build an Anki package from deck files.
  list-notes             List notes in deck files.
  open-videos            Download, process, and open video URLs.
  open-videos-from-file  Download videos listed in a file and open them.
  serve-http             Serve HTML summary of deck on localhost:8000.
  to-html                Generate HTML version of decks.
  to-json                Generate JSON version of decks.
  update                 Update Anki from deck files.

License

Unless otherwise noted, this is dual-licensed under the Apache 2 and MIT licenses. You may choose to use either.

• Apache License, Version 2.0
• MIT license

Files in the asl directory are not licensed for redistribution. Copyright is somewhat unclear, and at least some of the material is owned by Dr. William Vicars.