# How to use YouTube videos as NotebookLM sources > Paste YouTube URLs into NotebookLM and query hours of video like a document: build watch orders, extract steps, jump to transcript moments. Limits and workarounds included. (NotebookLM is now called Gemini Notebook.) _Markdown version of https://gemini-notebook-hub.online/guides/notebooklm-youtube-sources โ€” for AI and LLM crawlers. Content is identical to the web page._ --- _6 min read ยท updated 17 Jul 2026_ Any public YouTube video with captions can become a NotebookLM source. Ten tutorials stop being a weekend of watching and become a corpus you can question, rank and skim. Here is the workflow, plus the fine print about what actually gets imported. --- **NotebookLM was renamed Gemini Notebook** in July 2026. This guide covers the same product under its new name โ€” everything below still applies whether you know it as NotebookLM or Gemini Notebook. > **Quick answer** > In the Sources panel, click **Add**, choose **YouTube**, and paste the video URL. NotebookLM imports the transcript and treats it like any document: ask questions across videos, get citations that point at the exact transcript moment, and generate study guides or mind maps from a whole playlist's worth of material. ## What actually gets imported The transcript, and only the transcript. NotebookLM does not watch the visuals, so a video that says "as you can see here" over a diagram contributes nothing at that moment. This makes talk-heavy content (lectures, interviews, explainers, conference talks) ideal, and visual-heavy content (silent screencasts, cooking demonstrations) a poor fit. Three more constraints: the video must be public, it needs captions, and very fresh uploads sometimes fail to import for a day or two. ## The playlist-to-curriculum workflow ![A notebook with five YouTube tutorial sources and a chat answer ranking them from foundational to advanced](/blog/notebooklm-youtube-sources-1.svg) _Five tutorials in, one watch order out. Citations jump to the exact transcript moment._ 1. **Collect 5 to 10 videos on one topic** from different creators and paste each URL in as a source. NotebookLM only takes one video per paste, so for a genuinely long playlist see the note below. 2. **Ask for a ranking:** "Summarize each video, then rank them from most foundational to most advanced. Which should I watch first, and which can I skip entirely?" You now have a curriculum instead of a playlist. 3. **Generate a mind map** to see how the creators' explanations overlap and where they diverge. Divergence is usually the interesting part. 4. **Watch selectively.** Query first, watch second. When a cited answer looks important, the citation drops you at the right transcript moment, and you watch three minutes instead of forty. > **For a whole playlist** > Ten videos is a quick copy-paste job. Fifty is not. [YouTube to NotebookLM](https://youtube-to-notebooklm.com/) is a separate extension built for exactly that: point it at a playlist or channel and it queues every video as a labeled source in one pass, transcript included, instead of pasting links one at a time. ## Questions that work well on video sources - "List every concrete step the presenter gives, in order, with the video and timestamp each came from." - "Where do these creators contradict each other, and who gives evidence rather than opinion?" - "Extract every tool, product or resource mentioned across all videos into one list." - "Which questions from the audience Q&A did the speaker dodge or answer weakly?" ## Mixing video with text sources The strongest study notebooks mix formats deliberately: video tutorials for practice, official documentation for authority, an article or two for context. Ask a question and the answer synthesizes all three, with citations telling you which format contributed what. When a video and the docs disagree, you have found either an outdated tutorial or an undocumented behavior, and both are worth knowing. General source strategy is covered in the [sources guide](/guides/notebooklm-sources-guide). > **Tip** > Lecture-heavy courses compress beautifully this way: import the semester's recorded lectures, generate one study guide across all of them, and [export it to PDF](/guides/export-notebooklm-study-guide) for offline revision. ## FAQ ### Can NotebookLM summarize a YouTube video? Yes. Paste the URL as a source and ask for a summary, or add several videos and query across all of them at once. Citations link back to transcript locations. ### Why did my YouTube import fail? The usual causes: the video is private or unlisted, it has no captions, or it was uploaded within the last couple of days. Age-restricted content also fails. ### Does NotebookLM see what's on screen in the video? No. Only the transcript is imported, so purely visual moments contribute nothing. Talk-heavy videos work best. ### Can I import a whole playlist at once? Not with NotebookLM alone; it takes one video URL at a time. [YouTube to NotebookLM](/guides/notebooklm-youtube-playlist-import) is a dedicated extension that queues an entire playlist or channel in one click. ### Is NotebookLM the same as Gemini Notebook? Yes. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook in July 2026 โ€” it's the same product, same features, just a new name.