Add a YouTube video

Use this guide to import a YouTube video transcript into an Atlas project so it can be searched, cited, and used in research chat.

What this page covers

Add a video URL, state transcript requirements, recognize completion, and recover from unavailable transcripts.

Before you start

Atlas imports the transcript attached to a YouTube video. It does not extract information from the video track or slides. A missing transcript or noisy auto-generated transcript will produce limited results.

Good videos for this use case:

• Lectures, seminars, and conference talks
• Interviews with clear speech
• Product demos with spoken explanation
• Talks with enough substance to ask questions about

Steps

1. Copy the YouTube video URL.
2. Open the Atlas project where the source belongs.
3. Open the add-source panel and paste the URL.
4. Wait for transcript processing to finish.
5. Open the source and skim the transcript to confirm it looks correct.

Review the transcript

After the source processes, open it and skim the transcript. Check:

• The transcript includes the main discussion as well as the intro and outro.
• Speaker names and key terms are recognizable.
• The text is readable rather than garbled.

If the transcript is noisy, ask narrower questions and verify important answers against the video directly.

Result

After processing, you can ask questions about the video content, receive citations linking to transcript passages, and mention the source in notes using @.

Troubleshooting