5 Effective Methods to Take Notes from YouTube Videos in Obsidian

- Before you can process notes you need to find a way to reliably get your notes or highlights on media that you consume

into your note taking tool in the first place. I've already shown how I do this for books, Kindle books in particular, and for things like articles on the web.

But if you're watching this video then chances are high that you also have another source of media that we haven't talked about yet

and that's videos on YouTube. In this video, I'm gonna talk about how to take notes from YouTube videos.

I know it's a little bit meta and then have them filtered on through to Obsidian. The first one doesn't require any plugins at all

and it is to open up Obsidian on part of your screen and then YouTube on the other. For example, if I want to take notes

on this video on performance testing using Playwright I can quickly create a new note and Obsidian for that and then I can start taking notes.

One interesting thing to note here though is that in Obsidian you can actually embed whole webpages on YouTube videos.

It's a little bit different because you don't want the entire webpage or the comments on that.

You just want the video itself. So on YouTube you can do that by clicking on share here and then you can click on this embed option

and you're going to need to copy this entire thing. So I'm gonna copy that and then when I paste it here and I hit enter,

you'll see that what was a bunch of code is now an actual embed of this particular video on YouTube just in Obsidian.

So if you don't want to have like half of the screen taken up by YouTube and half of it by Obsidian then you can do away

with this entirely and just do it with an Obsidian. So you can start taking notes here. The problem with this is

that the YouTube player isn't that great in Obsidian. This is okay for playing and you can scrub through it but you know it isn't fully featured.

So for example, if you were halfway through watching something and then you go back into the code accidentally,

well you've now just lost your place. So it's not exactly the most ideal way to do things. The second way to take notes

on videos is by using the media extended Obsidian plugin. So I already have the media extended plugin enabled and installed,

so I can just get started. To do that I'm going to hit command P or control P to go to the command pane,

and you can see that I already have a media extended command. This comes with a plugin and you can also optionally set

like a hot key for it, going to hit enter. And I still have that link copied so I'm just going to paste that in, hit open.

And it actually already does the same thing that we were trying to do with this eye frame. So let me get rid of the eye frame

so that I can show you what media extended is like. And now this is playing on its own and I didn't have to get the eye frame and such.

It's also not going to go away. So I find it a little bit more robust than, you know accidentally going into the code from the eye frame.

This is playing, but while it's playing what if I want to take notes on a particular moment? Well, in media extended,

I can also get timestamped from player and you'll see that I already had previously saved this to have a hot key of control T.

So I'm going to do that and you'll see that it already linked to that particular timestamp. So apparently this is 45 minutes in.

Yep, that looks about right. So then I can say John says something cool here just to show you that hot key.

I'm going to control T here. And then you'll see that by default the timestamp is actually pasted

after the cursor. So you type something here and then the timestamp is there. So while you're watching the video,

you'll end up with a bunch of notes that are timestamped. The annoying thing with this one though is if you click on this, it will open it up

but it opens it up not in the Obsidian browser here it'll open it up in your browser. I've also seen that it doesn't always

get the timestamp right. Like this one was supposed to be 56 minutes in but it took me right to the beginning again

so it's not always been exactly spot on. One of the advantages of this media extended plugin is that it can handle more than just YouTube videos.

It can handle videos and also some audio notes as well. And I don't think I've tried it with anything else but really I just need YouTube videos.

So for that particular workflow I haven't been using media extended recently. I've been using another plugin called timestamp notes.

Do you timestamp notes. I'm also going to use the command pane. So control command P again

and then type in timestamp notes. You'll see that I have a few commands here some of them I've already established hot keys for.

So the one that I actually want is open video player but that requires the URL to already be pasted. So with media extended,

there was like a modal and I had to paste it in there. But for timestamp notes, I have to paste a link to the video there

and then I can start it off with my hot key command shift Y. And that opens it up over here. Just make that a bit bigger so we can see it.

So same sort of idea except that this one started it in the sidebar rather than as a different tab. What this has actually done is it's embedded this link

within a different code block. You don't need to know exactly how it works is something that the plugin does.

And then after that, while you're watching the video if you get to an interesting part then you can open up the command pane again

and select the command for time stamping. Or you can just use the hot key like I already have which was Command Control Z

and now it has that timestamp there. So let me just type something over there. The video is still going and you can keep watching it.

So here's one here, I'll put another timestamp. The cool thing about timestamp notes is once you've got the timestamps there

these are actually buttons. So if we go into them, then you'll see that it is a special code block as well.

And when I click on it, it actually goes to that part in the video, but it doesn't open up a new browser it just does it in the sidebar, which is really handy.

'Cause while you're watching your notes this is really a good way to scrub through a video if you've already taken notes on it.

So if I want to watch a video and take notes on it all entirely within Obsidian then this is the plugin that I used timestamp notes.

But the fourth way it solves a problem that timestamp notes and media extended didn't, and that's that. If you noticed, my notes were pretty short here

and that's because while the video was playing I didn't really have much time I didn't wanna miss anything.

So there wasn't a way to pause it, take notes and then keep playing again without, you know doing a whole lot of back and forth.

So the next tool is not even an Obsidian plugin it's actually a Chrome browser extension and it's called Y Note.

I've actually been using E-Note for almost two years. That's longer than I've been using Obsidian. Here's an article I wrote

about how to use E-note with Rome research. That's how long I've been using it. So here I am in Chrome.

I've got the same video up and I'm going to click on this little red icon here. That is e-note.

This is also a free browser extension. So the cool thing about E-Note is if I start playing this video

let's say I'm a little further along then I'm going to type here open MCT, see open MCT in action.

You'll notice that when I started typing the video automatically paused for me. The browser extension did that.

And that's really handy because usually when I wanna take notes on something I want to have the time to really flesh something

out before I go back. So I'll save that one. Then I will take a few more notes and I'll say

this is dev tools performance panel and I'll save that as well. This is a recent thing that they started doing.

This is a little bit annoying. Go back down here, start playing it again

and I'll type K abilities.spec.js. So I just want to take a few notes here so that I have something to demonstrate later

what is client side performance. Now let's say that I'm done with this video. I've watched everything.

I've taken four notes. They are also timestamped so I will be able to see that later as well.

And now that I'm done, I can go to this open management page and you'll see all of the videos

that I've recently taken video notes on. And this one is the one that I was just doing performance testing using Playwright.

So then I can go into that. And this is really cool because it presents me with this view where I see a screenshot of the video

as it was playing and then my notes and the timestamp. So then if I click on the timestamp it'll take me to that moment of the video.

So if I scroll up here, I can select a circle and then I'll say that this particular paragraph is the one that I wanted to highlight.

So that's kind of interesting. And I'll click save there and then I have a bunch of options here.

I can use it to export to pdf. But of course, since I want this to go to Obsidian I'm going to choose the one that says Export as Markdown.

I'm going to click on that and then I will just save it in my Obsidian vault. You'll see that it's saved as a.md found

because I saved it right to my vault. I'm gonna switch tabs to here and then I'll open up that particular note.

I'll open it up side by side. So you can compare it to the timestamp notes note. So it looks very similar.

It has the timestamps here and it also has my actual notes here but clicking on it will take me

to that point in the video in the browser, not in Obsidian. So you know, it's not exactly as handy as timestamp notes and because I exported as markdown, not pdf

I don't get those annotations in the screenshots in Obsidian. So what's not so great about this browser extension is

that I still had to manually export to markdown. Ideally, I would just click a button or something and it would maybe go to Readwise.

I did think about forking the code myself since it's open source and connecting it to Readwise but then Readwise came up with a better option.

Option number five is Readwise Reader. Reader has recently gone into public beta, so if you were wanting to test it out before,

now's your chance. Because you just have to go and sign up for it. You don't have to go on a wait list

like you used to anymore. And Reader just announced an integration with YouTube. So let's take a look at that.

Now I've already talked quite a bit about Readwise Reader so just check out that link to get the full lowdown on how to use Reader.

But right now I've just got the video up and normally if this were an article I would just click on this yellow Reader icon

and that's the same thing that I'm gonna do. Now, obviously there isn't anything to highlight but it'll still say that it's saved to Reader.

Now to go to Reader itself and there's the video from YouTube I'm gonna go into that and you'll notice

that Reader has a very different approach from any of the other plugins or tools that I've talked about. Instead of trying to timestamp it to the video

it just leverages the fact that YouTube already creates automatic captions. And so that's what it's showing you here.

We can still play the video here and you can then see as you're watching the video the words that the person is saying get highlighted

which incidentally is pretty awesome for language learning as well although I've only tried this with English so far.

But you can also just pause that and if you would prefer to read it or maybe you already watched it

but then you just want to be able to highlight some things in the text version then you can use all the usual Reader shortcuts.

So if you wanted to highlight this entire paragraph you can hit H and the entire thing is highlighted but if you just wanted like a part of it

so maybe just that part, then that's fine too. And then I can also add a note. I've saved that.

And then I'll just add another one here as well because it's ready in Readwise Reader and there is already a Readwise

official Obsidian plugin that I have. Then I just have to either wait for that plugin to sync I think I've got it set up to do it every hour

or I can just manually sync it and see what it looks like in Obsidian which is what I'm gonna do right now in Obsidian.

I'm going to the Readwise official plugin settings and then there's an initiate sync. So see how it automatically resins every hour

but I don't wanna wait. I wanna show you right away. So I'm just waiting for that to sync.

All right, Readwise Inc. Has been completed. Now let's see what it looks like.

So performance testing using Playwright and it's under articles. So I'm going to open that up and I'll put it side

by side so you can compare it a little bit with the others. So this one was you note on the left and now on the right, this is what Readwise brought in.

So the advantage of this is that it has all of the metadata that Readwise usually brings in all of which is customizable.

By the way, these are things that I put for how I like to do things. They're still the URL here

so you can still go to the YouTube video but the highlights here are going to be the text highlights. So the disadvantage of this Readwise approach

is that it's text only. So if you were hoping to like get a timestamp to the exact moment where you took that highlight

then you're not going to be able to do that at least not right now. But in most cases

I find myself using Readwise Reader anyway after I've already watched the video. So I watched the video and then as a note

to myself to maybe investigate further, I might share it to Reader if I'm on my mobile or I can just click on the browser extension

like I showed you if I'm on my laptop. Another thing that makes Readwise such a compelling choice for taking notes on videos

is that they're pretty quick to jump on the latest trend of cool things that have come out. For example, they did like an experiment on bionic grading

and recently they announced that they're jumping on the whole AI train. That is all the craze these days

but their implementation is actually useful and it's called Ghostreader. For example, This is that video that's in Readwise Reader still.

I'm going to hit command K to open up their command pane. So it's Commander Control P in Obsidian but Commander Control K in Reader.

And I'm going to type ghost Reader and there is a keyboard shortcut for invoking ghost Reader. It's shift G.

So after you invoke it then you need to decide what you want it to do. This time I'm going to say summarize the document

and you'll see that little ghost in the corner there and then it'll say GPT added to highlight. Then when you go to Notebook here

you'll have your highlights but then also there's this nice little summary. It says, playwright is a no JS library that enables

developers to create automated tests of web applications. This is actually pretty good. I have no idea how it actually does it

especially since the captions weren't that great. This is just the automated Google captions, and yet it was able to do a pretty good job

with the summary. So that's the summary. Let's try something else like generate

thought-provoking questions. Again, it'll say GPTs added to the document note. And when we scroll up

it has some good questions to ask yourself while you're watching a YouTube video. Like, what are the advantages of using playwright?

What challenges do I need to be aware of and what resources are available? These are actually pretty legitimate questions.

This is a more technical one. Here's another type of video. This one is by Zsolt Viczian,

who is the developer of the Obsidian, Excalidraw and ExcaliBrain plugins. And this is one about his book

on a page for the Visual Thinking Workshop cohort that I recently joined. And I'm going to enable Ghost Reader here.

I will also ask it to summarize the document and then maybe I'll generate Q and a pairs based on my highlights.

Let's see what it does. So it does come up with a summary here. "Emergence" is a book about the power

of complexity in our lives and the world around us. But I see that my attempt to create question and answer pairs have resulted in this error.

Take some highlights and try this prompt again. So let's just go down and take some highlights here. So now I have highlights, they're here as well.

And then I'm going to do shift G and then generate Q and A pairs again. So it looks like, despite the highlights

I wasn't able to make the Q and A pairs work. Let's see if I can do some of the other ones like generate thought provoking questions.

Okay, that worked well. What is the definition of emergence? What are the key ideas and themes discussed in the book?

Those are pretty good. I would also wanna try the ask the document a question. This is going to be really difficult.

I don't know how well it's going to do but let me try anyway. What does it mean to be self self-organizing?

Ghost Reader is an AI reading tool that works best when the user asks a specific targeted question. Okay, so this is really good because instead

of just saying, "Sorry, don't know". It actually asks a better question that it might be able to answer.

So let's try that. What are the three elements of self-organization outlined in the text?

Ghost Reader says critical mass so that it can make intelligent assessments high number of random encounters

and identifying patterns in the science. Okay, well, that's actually pretty good in this way. You can use Readwise Reader

as a bit of a short form for videos. If you don't know short form, it's like a service that you can use to quickly screen

out books that you don't wanna read. You get summaries, but also nuanced commentary on books that help deepen your understanding

of even the books that you choose to read and also help you read out the books that maybe aren't really worth the effort to read.

So I kind of look at Readwise Reader as a way to do the same with YouTube videos. I mean you don't really have to watch the entire thing

to already be able to ask it to summarize things. This doesn't necessarily even have to make it to your Obsidian vault.

So those are five different ways that you can take notes on YouTube videos in Obsidian, which ones do I use?

I still kind of use three of them depending on the circumstance. When I'm on my laptop, I usually have an external monitor

so I'm not hurting for screen real estate. So it doesn't matter if I have to have this side pane And in that case, I use timestamp notes

because I can also use keyboard shortcuts and be able to take notes while I'm watching the video. But if I'm on my mobile or on my tablet, maybe

I usually just send it to Reader and worry about it later. I kind of use it as a watch it later service. No, Readwise is usually called a read it later service

but sometimes I can get really lost in a YouTube rabbit hole if I'm not careful. So I just use that as a way to like send it off

and then not have to watch it right then and there. And then I also really like that I have the text there which means that it's infinitely more searchable.

So I am finding myself gravitating towards the Readwise Reader option. It's only been out for I think about two weeks

and I'm thinking that that probably will be the most commonly used option for me in the future. But I'm imagining that there's some things that it's not

gonna get right. Not every video on YouTube has captions, and not every video that has captions has usable captions.

It's one of the reasons why I actually pay to get my videos captioned so that it can be translated into other languages.

But I'm thinking that if I come across something like that then I might still use something like, you know to take my notes.

It seems like it wasn't so long ago that everything on YouTube was like a cat video or a compilation

of golden buzzer moments or something. I mean, there's still that corner of YouTube but I actually find myself

on YouTube more and more to really learn. YouTube has become one of my primary ways to learn about science, travel, software engineering.

So having a way to extend the learning and bring some of those insights from let's face that otherwise mindless YouTube binges over into

my personal knowledge management system is essential for me. If you'd like to know more about Readwise Reader check out this video that I did just after it was launched.

More features have been added to it since then, like for example, being able to take notes from YouTube videos.

But the basics are the same. Thanks for watching. Agora Estou Em Portugal!