TL;DW: Too Long; Didn't Watch Distill YouTube Videos to the Relevant Information

Some people inflate their video durations intentionally, but I think the majority of people truly think they're using the time wisely. Have you ever tried making a quick travel vlog of a vacation and ended up with a 15 minute short film? That B-roll at the airport was definitely critical to include!

I think the reality is that there are a lot of amateur video creators. Elevating the few talented creators through social engagement metrics isn't perfect, but I think it works well enough. Or at least more so than what these anodyne summarizations would give us.

I tried it to summarize some lecture videos. And the summary ranged from average to bad. Nothing I couldn't already get from the description. Even ChatGPT 4o spits out far better content.

So far my method has been to take the transcript and use an LLM with customized prompt for summary.

I think a lot of people are sort of missing the benefit of something like this.

How do you read a book effectively? You skim the table of contents. You skim the contents of each chapter and mark interesting paragraphs. Then you go through the book another 1-2 times, each time getting deeper into the text and cross-referencing information between different parts of the book.

What tools like this will do is allow us to apply this same workflow to videos, which can greatly enhance our understanding of videos we're interested in and help us contextualise it with the rest of our knowledge.

I've already been doing this and it's helped me expand my knowledge and understanding in ways that wouldn't have been possible without an unreasonable investment of time and effort.

Books at least go through a minimal amount of vetting before they are published, and there are meaningful differences between forms of media. As McLuhan wrote: "The medium is the message".

From some light testing, the results here are pretty lackluster. I've used videosummarizerai.com in the past via ChatGPT and the ability to specify the format of the information you're looking for is a huge plus.

Here's the summary of this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1WkG8WuRcg (AoE2 video)] from tldw.tube:

> The video discusses the most powerful team combinations in the "10x Shared Civ Bonus" mod for Age of Empires II. It highlights how certain civilizations, when combined strategically, can create overpowering unit types and tactics. The focus is on four-player team compositions that leverage unique benefits: for instance, the combination of Franks or Incas for free castles, Japanese and Tatars for rapid trebuchet fire, and Celts for enhanced onagers. The video also explores various combinations for cavalry and infantry, including the Goths for swift unit production and a range of secondary civilizations to amplify strengths. Commenters contributed ideas for clever combos, emphasizing the limitless potential for exploiting the mod's mechanics to develop broken strategies that can quickly overwhelm opponents by accelerating unit production or enhancing existing attributes, thereby showcasing the humorous and chaotic nature of the mod's gameplay.

and here's the summary of the same video from videosummarizerai.com via ChatGPT with the prompt "Give a summary of all civ combos mentioned in order":

> Here’s a summary of the civilization combinations mentioned in the video in order:

    Castle Spam Team:
        Incas: Free castles and massive villager armor bonuses.
        Teutons: Adds +30 range to castles.
        Celts: Castles fire at four times the usual rate.
        Sicilians or Spanish: Increased castle build speed (castles built in 30 seconds).

    Ultimate Trebuchet Team:
        Japanese: Faster fire rate and instant packing/unpacking for trebuchets.
        Tatars: Adds +20 range to trebuchets.
        Britons: Adds splash damage and perfect accuracy with Warwolf.
        Saracens or Celts: Additional attack bonuses or faster firing trebuchets.

    Best Onager Combo:
        Celts: Increased fire rate and durability for onagers.
        Mongols: Super-speed movement for onagers.
        Koreans: Adds +10 range and removes minimum range.
        Slavs: Makes onagers free.

    Scorpion Team:
        Khmer: Adds range and additional projectiles.
        Romans: Reduces cost and increases attack rate.
        Ethiopians: Adds torsion engine tech for better area damage.
        Chinese: Adds huge damage to projectiles for almost quadrupled effectiveness.

    [goes on to list remaining 4 team combos]