// ABOUT ME Site: https://nicolevanderhoeven.com Mastodon: https://pkm.social/@nicole My travel YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/luckydippers k6 YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/k6test // APPS I USE - Obsidian: https://obs..." --- Taking notes from YouTube videos in Obsidian ![rw-book-cover](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qjWq4ck2-0o/maxresdefault.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Nicole van der Hoeven]] - Full Title: Taking notes from YouTube videos in Obsidian - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[pkm]] - Summary: In this video, I talk about five different ways to take notes on YouTube videos in Obsidian, for those (like me) who love learning things on YouTube and want a way to capture new thoughts in Obsidian. I mention a few community plugins, a browser extension, and a separate service as well as my workflow for just using vanilla Obsidian, so you can take your pick! // TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 00:35 Method 1 - Embed video 02:04 Method 2 - Media Extended plugin 04:43 Method 3 - Timestamp notes plugin 07:01 Method 4 - YiNote browser extension 10:30 Method 5 - Readwise Reader 14:45 Bonus: Readwise Ghostreader // RESOURCES MENTIONED Readwise: https://readwise.io/nicole Shortform: https://shortform.com/nicole My video on Readwise Reader: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNH1JDOmGJw --- // ABOUT ME Site: https://nicolevanderhoeven.com Mastodon: https://pkm.social/@nicole My travel YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/luckydippers k6 YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/k6test // APPS I USE - Obsidian: https://obs... - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjWq4ck2-0o&ab_channel=NicolevanderHoeven - Before you can process notesyou need to find a way to reliably get your notesor highlights on media that you consumeinto your note taking tool in the first place.I've already shown how I do this for books, Kindle booksin particular, and for things like articles on the web.But if you're watching this videothen chances are high that you also have another sourceof media that we haven't talked about yetand that's videos on YouTube.In this video, I'm gonna talkabout 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 alland it is to open up Obsidianon part of your screen and then YouTube on the other.For example, if I want to take noteson this video on performance testing using PlaywrightI can quickly create a new noteand Obsidian for that and then I can start taking notes.One interesting thing to note here though isthat in Obsidian you can actually embed whole webpageson YouTube videos. It's a little bit differentbecause you don't want the entire webpageor the comments on that.You just want the video itself.So on YouTube you can do that by clicking on share hereand then you can click on this embed optionand you're going to need to copy this entire thing.So I'm gonna copy thatand then when I paste it here and I hit enter,you'll see that what was a bunch of codeis now an actual embed of this particular video on YouTubejust in Obsidian. So if you don't want to have like half of the screen takenup by YouTube and half of it by Obsidianthen you can do awaywith this entirely and just do it with an Obsidian.So you can start taking notes here.The problem with this isthat the YouTube player isn't that great in Obsidian.This is okay for playing and you can scrub through itbut you know it isn't fully featured.So for example,if you were halfway through watching somethingand 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 noteson videos is by using the media extended Obsidian plugin.So I already have the media extendedplugin enabled and installed,so I can just get started.To do that I'm going to hit command Por control P to go to the command pane,and you can see that I already havea media extended command.This comes with a plugin and you can also optionally setlike a hot key for it, going to hit enter. And I still have that link copiedso I'm just going to paste that in, hit open.And it actually already does the same thingthat we were trying to do with this eye frame.So let me get rid of the eye frameso that I can show you what media extended is like.And now this is playing on its ownand 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 knowaccidentally going into the code from the eye frame. This is playing, but while it's playingwhat if I want to take notes on a particular moment?Well, in media extended,I can also get timestampedfrom player and you'll see that I alreadyhad previously saved this to have a hot key of control T.So I'm going to do that and you'll seethat 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 thatby default the timestamp is actually pastedafter 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 isif you click on this, it will open it upbut 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 alwaysget the timestamp right.Like this one was supposed to be 56 minutes inbut it took me right to the beginning againso it's not always been exactly spot on.One of the advantages of this media extended plugin isthat 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 elsebut 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 againand then type in timestamp notes.You'll see that I have a few commands heresome of them I've already established hot keys for.So the one that I actually want is open video playerbut 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 thereand 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 itin the sidebar rather than as a different tab.What this has actually done is it's embedded this linkwithin 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 videoif you get to an interesting partthen you can open up the command pane againand select the command for time stamping.Or you can just use the hot key like I already havewhich was Command Control Zand 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 isonce you've got the timestamps therethese are actually buttons.So if we go into them, then you'll seethat it is a special code block as well.And when I click on it, it actually goes to that partin the video, but it doesn't open up a new browserit just does it in the sidebar, which is really handy.'Cause while you're watching your notesthis is really a good way to scrubthrough 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 Obsidianthen this is the plugin that I used timestamp notes.But the fourth way it solves a problem that timestamp notesand media extended didn't, and that's that.If you noticed, my notes were pretty short hereand that's because while the video was playingI didn't really have much timeI didn't wanna miss anything.So there wasn't a way to pause it, take notesand then keep playing again without, you knowdoing a whole lot of back and forth. So the next tool is not even an Obsidian pluginit's actually a Chrome browser extensionand 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 wroteabout 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 upand 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 thingabout E-Note is if I start playing this videolet's say I'm a little further alongthen I'm going to type here open MCT,see open MCT in action.You'll notice that when I started typingthe video automatically paused for me.The browser extension did that.And that's really handybecause usually when I wanna take notes on somethingI want to have the time to really flesh somethingout before I go back.So I'll save that one. Then I will take a few more notes and I'll saythis is dev tools performance paneland 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 againand I'll type K abilities.spec.js.So I just want to take a few notes hereso that I have something to demonstrate laterwhat 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 timestampedso I will be able to see that later as well.And now that I'm done,I can go to this open management pageand you'll see all of the videosthat I've recently taken video notes on.And this one is the one that I was justdoing performance testing using Playwright.So then I can go into that.And this is really cool because it presents mewith 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 timestampit'll take me to that moment of the video.So if I scroll up here, I can select a circleand then I'll say that this particular paragraphis the one that I wanted to highlight.So that's kind of interesting.And I'll click save thereand 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 thatand then I will just save it in my Obsidian vault.You'll see that it's saved as a.md foundbecause I saved it right to my vault.I'm gonna switch tabs to hereand 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 herebut clicking on it will take meto that point in the video in the browser, not in Obsidian.So you know, it's not exactly as handy as timestamp notesand because I exported as markdown, not pdfI don't get those annotationsin the screenshots in Obsidian.So what's not so great about this browser extension isthat I still had to manually export to markdown.Ideally, I would just click a buttonor 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 Readwisebut 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 listlike 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 linkto get the full lowdown on how to use Reader.But right now I've just got the videoup and normally if this were an articleI would just click on this yellow Reader iconand that's the same thing that I'm gonna do.Now, obviously there isn't anything to highlightbut it'll still say that it's saved to Reader.Now to go to Reader itselfand there's the video from YouTubeI'm gonna go into that and you'll notice that Reader has a very different approach from anyof the other plugins or tools that I've talked about.Instead of trying to timestamp it to the videoit just leverages the factthat YouTube already creates automatic captions.And so that's what it's showing you here.We can still play the video hereand you can then see as you're watching the videothe words that the person is saying get highlightedwhich incidentally is pretty awesome for language learning as wellalthough I've only tried this with English so far.But you can also just pause thatand if you would prefer to read itor maybe you already watched itbut then you just want to be able to highlight some thingsin the text versionthen you can use all the usual Reader shortcuts.So if you wanted to highlight this entire paragraphyou can hit H and the entire thing is highlightedbut if you just wanted like a part of itso 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 wellbecause it's ready in Readwise Readerand there is already a Readwiseofficial Obsidian plugin that I have.Then I just have to either wait for that plugin to syncI think I've got it set up to do it every houror I can just manually sync itand see what it looks like in Obsidianwhich 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 hourbut 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 Playwrightand it's under articles.So I'm going to open that up and I'll put it sideby side so you can compare it a little bit with the others. So this one was you note on the leftand now on the right, this is what Readwise brought in.So the advantage of this is that it has allof the metadata that Readwise usually brings inall of which is customizable.By the way, these are things that I putfor how I like to do things.They're still the URL hereso you can still go to the YouTube videobut the highlights here are going to be the text highlights.So the disadvantage of this Readwise approachis that it's text only. So if you were hoping to like get a timestampto the exact moment where you took that highlightthen you're not going to be able to do thatat least not right now.But in most casesI find myself using Readwise Reader anywayafter I've already watched the video.So I watched the video and then as a noteto myself to maybe investigate further,I might share it to Reader if I'm on my mobileor I can just click on the browser extensionlike I showed you if I'm on my laptop. Another thing that makes Readwise such a compelling choicefor taking notes on videosis that they're pretty quick to jumpon the latest trend of cool things that have come out.For example, they did like an experiment on bionic gradingand recently they announcedthat they're jumping on the whole AI train.That is all the craze these daysbut their implementation is actually usefuland 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 Obsidianbut Commander Control K in Reader.And I'm going to type ghost Readerand there is a keyboard shortcut for invoking ghost Reader.It's shift G.So after you invoke itthen you need to decide what you want it to do.This time I'm going to say summarize the documentand you'll see that little ghost in the corner thereand then it'll say GPT added to highlight. Then when you go to Notebook hereyou'll have your highlightsbut then also there's this nice little summary.It says, playwright is a no JS library that enablesdevelopers to create automated tests of web applications.This is actually pretty good.I have no idea how it actually does itespecially since the captions weren't that great.This is just the automated Google captions,and yet it was able to do a pretty good jobwith 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 upit has some good questions to ask yourselfwhile you're watching a YouTube video.Like, what are the advantages of using playwright?What challenges do I need to be awareof 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 bookon a page for the Visual Thinking Workshop cohortthat I recently joined.And I'm going to enable Ghost Reader here.I will also ask it to summarize the documentand then maybe I'll generate Qand 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 powerof 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 Gand then generate Q and A pairs again.So it looks like, despite the highlightsI wasn't able to make the Q and A pairs work.Let's see if I can do some of the other oneslike 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 dobut let me try anyway.What does it mean to be self self-organizing?Ghost Reader is an AI reading tool that works bestwhen the user asks a specific targeted question.Okay, so this is really good because insteadof 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 elementsof self-organization outlined in the text?Ghost Reader says critical massso that it can make intelligent assessmentshigh number of random encountersand identifying patterns in the science.Okay, well, that's actually pretty good in this way.You can use Readwise Readeras 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 commentaryon books that help deepen your understandingof even the books that you choose to readand also help you read out the books that maybearen't really worth the effort to read.So I kind of look at Readwise Readeras a way to do the same with YouTube videos.I mean you don't really have to watch the entire thingto already be able to ask it to summarize things.This doesn't necessarily even have to make itto your Obsidian vault. So those are five different ways that you can take noteson YouTube videos in Obsidian,which ones do I use?I still kind of use three of themdepending on the circumstance.When I'm on my laptop, I usually have an external monitorso I'm not hurting for screen real estate.So it doesn't matter if I have to have this side paneAnd in that case, I use timestamp notesbecause I can also use keyboard shortcutsand 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 servicebut sometimes I can get really lostin a YouTube rabbit hole if I'm not careful.So I just use that as a way to like send it offand then not have to watch it right then and there.And then I also really like that I have the text therewhich means that it's infinitely more searchable. So I am finding myself gravitating towards theReadwise Reader option.It's only been out for I think about two weeksand I'm thinking that that probably will be the mostcommonly used option for me in the future.But I'm imagining that there's some things that it's notgonna 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 toget my videos captioned so that it can be translated into other languages.But I'm thinking that if I come across something like thatthen I might still use something like,you know to take my notes.It seems like it wasn't so long agothat everything on YouTube was likea cat video or a compilationof golden buzzer moments or something.I mean, there's still that corner of YouTubebut I actually find myselfon 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 learningand bring some of those insights from let's face thatotherwise mindless YouTube binges over intomy personal knowledge management system is essential for me.If you'd like to know more about Readwise Readercheck 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!, Taking notes from YouTube videos in Obsidian, Nicole van der Hoeven, 01gpkfwkwsxmh5kx2ga9g4j3q4.