Videos are a great way to learn, but they're a hard way to study. With a book or a PDF you can flip back a page, skim ahead, or underline the sentence that finally made an idea click. A video just plays, and it's easy to reach the end of a long one and realize very little stuck. The YouTube Annotator brings the tools you already use in the RemNote Reader to video, so you can highlight moments, take linked notes, and check your understanding as you watch. This article covers only what's different about annotating a video, so if you haven't used the Reader before, read Learning from PDFs and Files with the RemNote Reader first, most of the features work exactly the same way!
The YouTube Annotator is a RemNote Pro feature.
Uploading
You can import a YouTube video to RemNote by pasting its link into the upload popup, just like you would do with the URL of a file.
Watching
The right sidebar works the same way in the YouTube Annotator as it does in the PDF annotator. This includes Guided Learn Mode (located in the Learn Video tab), which turns the video's chapters into a structured Study Plan; AI Tutor, which you can ask any question and get answers based on the video's content; and the Summary tab, where you can read a quick summary of the whole video.
At the top you'll see an embedded version of the video. At the bottom, you'll see an outline of the chapters in the video (if there are no chapters, RemNote AI will try to divide the video up itself based on a transcript). Click View all sections to see what's coming next and jump to a different section if you like.
Highlighting
Obviously, the main added challenge when highlighting a video is that you can move your eyes freely around a PDF to find the part you want to highlight, but can only see one frame of a video at once. To solve the problem of selecting the appropriate part, RemNote creates a transcript of the video and makes it available through the Highlight Moment button in the lower-right corner of the video.
When you click Highlight Moment, RemNote quotes the words at the current “moment” of the transcript in the upper-left corner. Sometimes the text of the transcript may not be perfectly aligned with the timestamps, or you may have simply clicked the button slightly too late, so you can click the back and forward buttons in the upper-left next to the timestamps until you hit the exact moment you want. Then click Highlight Moment again at the right.
You'll be prompted to switch to the Editor tab of the sidebar and paste the highlight into your notes.
Once created, a highlight works the same way as it does for a PDF. You can choose to paste as a Reference, Text, Pin, or Text with Pin, and clicking the inserted Reference or Pin starts playing the video to that moment.
Notice that you can also insert suggested AI flashcards on the current moment from the Highlight Moment button.
If you're planning to highlight things frequently, click the arrow to the right of Highlight Moment to lock the highlight tools on screen underneath the video.
Interactive Tutor
It's often difficult to maintain concentration when watching a long video about a dense topic, and unlike a book, it may not be immediately obvious that you've stopped paying attention until you get well into the video and notice you haven't retained anything. Backing up and re-watching is also more annoying.
To help you avoid this problem, the YouTube annotator will periodically pause the video and ask you to answer a couple of comprehension questions in the Interactive Tutor (a slightly modified version of the AI Chat sidebar tab seen when reading PDFs and websites).
By default, the video will pause occasionally and suggest that you answer a couple of comprehension questions about the section you just watched. You can free-form answer them in the chat box, and the AI will check your answers and correct you if you missed anything.
If you don’t remember the answer, you can hover over the question and click the Reveal button to see the correct answer.
Once you are done, you can ask any follow-up questions or continue watching.
If you'd rather not use the Interactive Tutor, or you want it to pause more or less often, change the auto-pause behavior by clicking the gear icon next to the title.
