Studying from YouTube Videos
A huge amount of course material lives on YouTube — recorded lectures, exam walkthroughs, explainer videos. Paste a link and Scholarly reads the video's transcript, saves it as a source in your library, and lets you build study material from it like any other upload.
Where to Paste a Link
- Add content dialog -- Open Add content (from Home or the New menu), stay on the Upload tab, and paste the link into the Or paste a link field. It accepts YouTube videos, websites, and PDF links — click Add URL to queue it.
- Any AI create modal -- The upload tab in every create flow (flashcards, quizzes, podcasts, video lectures, and the rest) has the same link field, so you can go straight from a YouTube URL to a finished deck in one dialog.
You can mix a YouTube link with other sources in the same batch — pair the lecture video with the professor's slides PDF and generate from both together.
What You Can Build
Once the video is added, choose what to make:
- Flashcards and practice quizzes
- AI Video Lectures — a fresh narrated lecture built from the video's content
- AI Podcasts
- Study guides, summaries, worksheets, and outlines
- AI Slides, mind maps, infographics, timelines, and more
Watching the Video in Scholarly
The video also gets its own page in your library, built for studying rather than just watching:
- Chapters -- Jump between sections of the video.
- Transcript -- Read along, and click any line to seek to that moment.
- Summary -- An AI summary of the whole video.
- Flashcards -- Create a deck from the video without leaving the page; a linked deck stays attached to the video.
- AI Chat -- The chat panel on the video page already knows the video, so you can ask "what did they say about X?" and get grounded answers.
- Interactive questions -- Quick check-in questions appear while you watch, with a toggle to turn them off. See Interactive Video Questions.
How Transcripts Are Used
Scholarly works from the video's transcript, so everything it generates is grounded in what's actually said — not a guess based on the title. Long videos are fine: multi-hour lecture recordings work too.
If a video has no readable captions or transcript, Scholarly can't study from it. You'll see a clear message with alternatives — upload the audio or video file directly instead, or use a different link.
Tips
- Lectures and explainers work best. Talk-heavy videos give the AI the most to work with; music videos or footage with little speech won't produce useful material.
- One topic per generation. For a long playlist, add videos individually and generate per video (or group them in a folder) rather than mashing unrelated topics into one deck.
- Combine formats. A video plus the matching textbook chapter or slide deck as sources gives noticeably better flashcards than either alone.
Plan Notes
- Adding a YouTube link counts toward your plan's upload allowance, the same as uploading a file.
- Generating study material from a video uses an AI creation, like any other source. See Plans and Limits.
Related
- Uploading Content — all the ways to bring material into Scholarly.
- Paste Text — for when you have the transcript as text instead of a link.
- AI Chat — asking questions about anything in your library.