What I'd really like is a service that edits down YouTube videos by removing all the stock footage and talking head crap, then speeding up the audio to fit over the remaining novel information—whether that's new battlefield footage, electron micrographs, demonstrations of machining techniques, or just elephant toothpaste. The talking head filler seems like it would be easy to recognize, but stock footage recognition presumably would have a significant false negative rate, which is okay.
This would reduce some videos to just a transcription, which would be the ideal outcome, I think. The less of my limited time on Earth I waste watching some dumbshit reading a script at a camera, the better. Summarizing the transcript further like this site does might be occasionally useful, of course.
I use SponsorBlock (be sure to enable all categories of blocking such as filler content, not just sponsors), DeArrow (de-clickbaits thumbnails and titles) and a video speed changer extension to enable much of your stated functionality, though of course not all. I've saved likely years of watching due to this combination.
I don't watch YouTube but if I would / I would if I'd cut out anything with faces or speech & use an LLM to summarize what's technically relevant from the transcript in a way that fits length of what remains.
Pipeline such content, but use weighted random videos, with low weights for types of content with clickbait headings & perhaps blacklist for words like meme or lol in transcript to cut out things with stock footage. I am not sure of exact best way to remove it, actually, other than "using the transcript for some computational technique of probabilitistic stock footage prediction" which I bet would be most effective.
If that's what you want then why would you want a service like this? Surely there would be a non-video news sources of electron micrographs or elephant toothpaste for which there would probably be hundreds or thousands of LLM TL;DR things.
Wow, I'm really surprised that my comment describing 95% of YouTubers as "some dumbshit" got voted up to +19. I guess I'm not the only old man shaking his fist at the surveillance capitalism incompetent confident shouty bullshitter cloud?
What if we summarize all the information in the world into a few hundred volumes of human knowledge, then summarize those into a 10,000 pages book, then that into a 10 long form essays, then those into a 100,000 chars blog post, then that into a pamphlet and finally we summarize one more time into a single tweet.
It would say something like, "This text attempts to summarize the entirety of human knowledge".
Still, IMO summarizing videos is useful. Even if the summary is not accurate or a 1:1 representation of the content, you can mostly get the gist of what is being said without being baited into watching advertisements.
Although, this site doesn't seem to do a great job at summaries. Kagi's universal summarizer has much better results, https://kagi.com/summarizer/index.html . However, it requires transcripts to be available for videos.
Tried asking Claude to do that, ended up with something pretty beautiful:
Everything is made of atoms & energy, life evolves, math describes reality, knowledge builds on itself, humans need each other & Earth to survive – test ideas, learn from mistakes, be kind, stay curious.
This reminds me of the famous Library of Babel story, where the entire corpus of a language is imagined to live in a library. Like, every permutation of the characters of an alphabet for pages of a certain number of characters in books of a certain number of pages.
The reducto ab asurdum of this library is an alphabet of 0 and 1, a page size of 2 characters and a page count per book of 2.
I know you’re making a joke, but more seriously I think most yt videos have atrocious signal/noise ratios so information compression is likely very useful. Less so for many academic papers (although they have some pretty awful filler sometimes).
Hi HN! I'm the author of this service. Thank you for your support.
There may have been some temporary downtime due to residential proxy running out of bandwidth. I have purchased additional bandwidth. (I run this service for free.)
There also may be some errors with particular videos because they are not accessible in certain regions. For now all requests to YouTube originate from United States, but open to change in the future to some kind of round-robin or fallback system.
I know it's not perfect. I developed the tool originally for my own use. It's open source and I'm open to any patches or pull requests.
Tried it on 3 random videos I watched, and the results were... mostly good, albeit mixed.
On the one hand, it got my video about a Mario & Luigi: Brothership glitch dead right, immediately listing where you'd need to die to get an item early and what you'd get out of it.
It also did an okay job summarising a Zelda dungeon analysis video by someone I'm subscribed to, with some info on why that dungeon was well-designed that clearly came from the video.
Unfortunately, it did a poor job at summarising a video about plagiarism in the YouTube speedrunning essay space, associating the problem with smaller creators rather than the person the video was about and leaving out far too many details to be useful.
This seems to confirm my assumptions about how an AI summariser would work in general; if the original media is a straightforward piece about one easily understandable topic, then it'll do fine and work about as well as a human would. If it's a longer piece with multiple points backed by various examples, then it'll struggle to summarise it in a way that makes sense.
Idea hackneyed since LLM's appeared. Cool that implementation is open-source, though yt automatic captions are sometimes completely off-point, especially when people talking in the video don't have a diction of a tv show host.
I wonder if an idea found it's niche after all? Do you guys summarise you videos to short texts and that leaves you satisfied? For me video is video, I can relax, sit and watch/listen to it. With text it is different, it is a mental exercise to read and process it, so turning video into text feels like an essential downgrade. I would prefer watching at 1.5/2x speed instead of text summary if I want to finish it faster.
I tried with a few Thunderf00t videos. He has good analysis, but the guys repeats everything too many times. Many are about silly impossible "inventions" / scams, but this is an experiment that he published in Nature Chemistry:
https://tldw.tube/?v=LmlAYnFF_s8 "High speed camera reveals why sodium explodes! --> "Coulombic explosion. (Sodium and water reaction)"
Seems to use gpt-4o under the hood. I wonder if using Deepseek would make any difference in quality.
I used to have nice and detailed summaries with this app lasting many paragraphs. It used to be totally free and you could submit as many links as you wanted. However they started forcing you to wait dozens of hours between summaries or pay for credits. I haven't found a YouTube summarizer as high quality since.
I'm thinking one could replicate such a service pretty easily and be able to plug in your Deepseek API token instead. It would be convenient if such services let you "bring your own API key" so to speak, so you'd only have to manage one bank of credits. But it's understandable that lots of people want in on a slice of the AI pie right now.
Something that could be interesting is processing all videos in some subgenre, like say "game development", rank them by popularity, summarize them, and then analyze for patterns. This would be valuable information for anyone wanting to make a video with higher chances of being shown to people.
Pretty cool. The summary at first was helpful, but then delves into repeating itself. I tried it on John wick. Here’s the latter part of the summary.
The video calls out the cliché tropes and logical inconsistencies in "John Wick," showing how they detract from the film's emotional impact. The critique outlines the logical flaws in "John Wick," focusing on cliché tropes that undermine the film’s emotional depth. The video critiques the logical inconsistencies and clichés in "John Wick," highlighting how they reduce its emotional impact. The critique points out clichés and logical flaws in "John Wick." The video notes clichés and flaws in "John Wick." The video critiques "John Wick."
The sweet spot of most YouTube videos was supposedly under 10 minutes. What happened? These days, the typical YouTube videos are almost 30 minutes long. I'm fine with documentaries and the like. Is there a way to bring back the idea that under 10-minute videos work the best?
I tried it to summarize some lecture videos. And the summary ranged from average to bad. Nothing I couldn't already get from the description. Even ChatGPT 4o spits out far better content.
So far my method has been to take the transcript and use an LLM with customized prompt for summary.
Getting a "Too long video" message in response to a query is frustrating to the user, and, well, redundant information, so contrary to the purpose of increasing information density.
Interestingly, YouTube also lends itself for this sort of thing for movies. You can watch scenes from movies and get the gist, while only spending ~30min on a movie. It's a great way to watch mediocre movies - they're not so horrible (1), and you do get the entertainment value without being exposed to the shlocky-est parts.
(1) Eg, if you skip the beach scene, Terminator Dark Fate is... palatable! But yeah, the reasons for mediocrity typically still shine through a bit.
[+] [-] kragen|1 year ago|reply
This would reduce some videos to just a transcription, which would be the ideal outcome, I think. The less of my limited time on Earth I waste watching some dumbshit reading a script at a camera, the better. Summarizing the transcript further like this site does might be occasionally useful, of course.
[+] [-] satvikpendem|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Xen9|1 year ago|reply
Pipeline such content, but use weighted random videos, with low weights for types of content with clickbait headings & perhaps blacklist for words like meme or lol in transcript to cut out things with stock footage. I am not sure of exact best way to remove it, actually, other than "using the transcript for some computational technique of probabilitistic stock footage prediction" which I bet would be most effective.
[+] [-] xandrius|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bbstats|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] GrumpyNl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dinkumthinkum|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] moralestapia|1 year ago|reply
What's stopping you from doing it?
[+] [-] kragen|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] henry2023|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] flemhans|1 year ago|reply
1. The universe is vast, mostly empty, and runs on fundamental laws that we barely understand but exploit well.
2. Life is a self-replicating, entropy-defying phenomenon that emerged through chemistry, evolved through selection, and adapts through intelligence.
3. Humans are social primates who dominate the planet through cooperation, tool-making, storytelling, and an insatiable drive for meaning.
4. Societies form through shared beliefs, laws, and trade, but oscillate between progress and collapse due to power, greed, and ignorance.
5. Technology is humanity’s amplifier, accelerating knowledge, comfort, and destruction in equal measure, with unintended consequences at every turn.
6. Economies are trust-based systems of resource distribution, prone to cycles of boom, bust, innovation, and inequality.
7. Morality is a human construct, evolving with culture, often conflicting between collective well-being and individual freedom.
8. Knowledge is a fractal—deeper the dive, more there is to know—yet most wisdom is rediscovery of old truths in new contexts.
9. The future is uncertain but shaped by the tension between human ingenuity and our own worst tendencies.
10. The meaning of life? Whatever gets you up in the morning and lets you sleep at night.
[+] [-] fifilura|1 year ago|reply
* Rule of law is a good idea
* Dictatorship is a bad idea
* Allowing Germany to occpy Sudetenland in the Münich appeasement 1938 was a bad idea. [1]
* ...
[1] https://snyder.substack.com/p/appeasement-at-munich?triedRed...
But that said! If this service works I think I could use it. I can handle long articles, but have no time to watch YouTube clips.
[+] [-] someothherguyy|1 year ago|reply
It would say something like, "This text attempts to summarize the entirety of human knowledge".
Still, IMO summarizing videos is useful. Even if the summary is not accurate or a 1:1 representation of the content, you can mostly get the gist of what is being said without being baited into watching advertisements.
Although, this site doesn't seem to do a great job at summaries. Kagi's universal summarizer has much better results, https://kagi.com/summarizer/index.html . However, it requires transcripts to be available for videos.
[+] [-] rayalez|1 year ago|reply
Everything is made of atoms & energy, life evolves, math describes reality, knowledge builds on itself, humans need each other & Earth to survive – test ideas, learn from mistakes, be kind, stay curious.
[+] [-] userbinator|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] guybedo|1 year ago|reply
Our understanding of reality is fundamentally shaped by the power of stories and narratives.
Humanity constantly seeks to impose order and structure on the world through systems and frameworks.
The inherent human drive to create and innovate defines our art, technology, and design.
We are bound by the complex interplay of connection, conflict, and cooperation in our relationships.
Time's relentless flow drives change, progress, and the unfolding narrative of history.
The vastness of the unknown perpetually challenges and defines the limits of human knowledge.
The search for purpose, values, and meaning is a central and ongoing human endeavor.
Abstract concepts and models are powerful tools for understanding and navigating reality.
All living things are interconnected within a complex web of life and ecological relationships.
The future of humanity presents both boundless potential and significant challenges to overcome.
[+] [-] zoogeny|1 year ago|reply
The reducto ab asurdum of this library is an alphabet of 0 and 1, a page size of 2 characters and a page count per book of 2.
[+] [-] PaulRobinson|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jowea|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sethammons|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x073|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stong1|1 year ago|reply
There may have been some temporary downtime due to residential proxy running out of bandwidth. I have purchased additional bandwidth. (I run this service for free.)
There also may be some errors with particular videos because they are not accessible in certain regions. For now all requests to YouTube originate from United States, but open to change in the future to some kind of round-robin or fallback system.
I know it's not perfect. I developed the tool originally for my own use. It's open source and I'm open to any patches or pull requests.
Enjoy!
[+] [-] CM30|1 year ago|reply
On the one hand, it got my video about a Mario & Luigi: Brothership glitch dead right, immediately listing where you'd need to die to get an item early and what you'd get out of it.
It also did an okay job summarising a Zelda dungeon analysis video by someone I'm subscribed to, with some info on why that dungeon was well-designed that clearly came from the video.
Unfortunately, it did a poor job at summarising a video about plagiarism in the YouTube speedrunning essay space, associating the problem with smaller creators rather than the person the video was about and leaving out far too many details to be useful.
This seems to confirm my assumptions about how an AI summariser would work in general; if the original media is a straightforward piece about one easily understandable topic, then it'll do fine and work about as well as a human would. If it's a longer piece with multiple points backed by various examples, then it'll struggle to summarise it in a way that makes sense.
[+] [-] fullshark|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] righthand|1 year ago|reply
I agree that this mentality of works being “too long so don’t ingest it”, is not a healthy way to go about life and thinking in general.
[+] [-] BeFlatXIII|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyhart7|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zorgmonkey|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mtlynch|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gloosx|1 year ago|reply
I wonder if an idea found it's niche after all? Do you guys summarise you videos to short texts and that leaves you satisfied? For me video is video, I can relax, sit and watch/listen to it. With text it is different, it is a mental exercise to read and process it, so turning video into text feels like an essential downgrade. I would prefer watching at 1.5/2x speed instead of text summary if I want to finish it faster.
[+] [-] gus_massa|1 year ago|reply
https://tldw.tube/?v=LmlAYnFF_s8 "High speed camera reveals why sodium explodes! --> "Coulombic explosion. (Sodium and water reaction)"
[+] [-] doright|1 year ago|reply
I used to have nice and detailed summaries with this app lasting many paragraphs. It used to be totally free and you could submit as many links as you wanted. However they started forcing you to wait dozens of hours between summaries or pay for credits. I haven't found a YouTube summarizer as high quality since.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emote.yout...
I'm thinking one could replicate such a service pretty easily and be able to plug in your Deepseek API token instead. It would be convenient if such services let you "bring your own API key" so to speak, so you'd only have to manage one bank of credits. But it's understandable that lots of people want in on a slice of the AI pie right now.
[+] [-] tikotus|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gloflo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] xivzgrev|1 year ago|reply
The video calls out the cliché tropes and logical inconsistencies in "John Wick," showing how they detract from the film's emotional impact. The critique outlines the logical flaws in "John Wick," focusing on cliché tropes that undermine the film’s emotional depth. The video critiques the logical inconsistencies and clichés in "John Wick," highlighting how they reduce its emotional impact. The critique points out clichés and logical flaws in "John Wick." The video notes clichés and flaws in "John Wick." The video critiques "John Wick."
[+] [-] ggasp|1 year ago|reply
Link: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/fbb5a315cb354fbf903bcfa4f40...
What the shortcut does is taking the transcript of the video and asking your ChatGPT app to extract main ideas, quotes, and facts.
The prompt comes originally from fabric CLI tool https://danielmiessler.com/blog/fabric-origin-story
[+] [-] energy123|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] albert_e|1 year ago|reply
It said "too long video"
Exactly, duh ;D
[+] [-] waskosky|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ruibiks|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] acrophiliac|1 year ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc&list=PLWDUzz3hCD...
[+] [-] stong1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] TNWin|1 year ago|reply
So far my method has been to take the transcript and use an LLM with customized prompt for summary.
[+] [-] rapind|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] RockRobotRock|1 year ago|reply
All YouTube cares about is keeping you on the platform as long as possible.
[+] [-] swyx|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] prvc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tanewishly|1 year ago|reply
(1) Eg, if you skip the beach scene, Terminator Dark Fate is... palatable! But yeah, the reasons for mediocrity typically still shine through a bit.