Video to Calories

Inspiration

Cooking videos can be sluggishly slow or insanely fast-paced, which can make it very difficult and frustrating for viewers to follow at their own pace. Constant rewinds and rewatches are required to get the recipe down and ensure nothing is forgotten. Video to Calories is an AI-powered tool that can instantly transform any cooking video into a structured recipe with helpful information such as time taken and cost.

What it does

Video to Calories extracts complete recipes from YouTube cooking videos. Just paste a URL, and our AI analyses the transcript from the subtitles to generate organised ingredients, step-by-step instructions, servings, cook time, and estimated ingredient costs.

How we built it

Backend: Python Flask server with Google Gemini AI for recipe extraction Video Processing: yt-dlp to fetch YouTube transcripts Frontend: React with CSS animations AI Integration: Gemini processes transcripts and structures them into JSON recipes Design: Custom Lato typography with glowing titles and transparent hover effects

Challenges we ran into

1)YouTube blocking transcript API initially - solved by implementing yt-dlp as backup 2)Finding the right Gemini model name (API versions changed) 3)Parsing different subtitle formats (JSON vs XML) 4)Getting AI to consistently return valid JSON without markdown formatting

Accomplishments that we're proud of

1)Zero cost - API key pre-configured, completely free to use 2)Beautiful UX - transparent boxes, glowing titles, falling dessert emojis 3)Fast extraction - 5-10 seconds per recipe 4)Reliable AI - accurately extracts quantities, understands cooking terminology, and estimates prices

What we learned

1)Working with YouTube's content delivery systems and subtitle formats 2)The importance of fallback systems (multiple transcript sources) 3)Balancing creativity with usability in design

What's next for Video to Calories

1)Multi-language support for international recipes 2)Save/export recipes to PDF or print format 3)Nutrition calculator using AI to estimate calories and macros 4)Recipe scaling to adjust servings automatically