Video Understanding (Gemini)

Analyze videos using Google Gemini's multimodal video understanding. Supports 1000+ video sources via yt-dlp.

Requirements

yt-dlp — brew install yt-dlp / pip install yt-dlp
ffmpeg — brew install ffmpeg (for merging video+audio streams)
GEMINI_API_KEY environment variable

Default Output

Returns structured JSON:

transcript — Verbatim transcript with [MM:SS] timestamps
description — Visual description (people, setting, UI, text on screen, flow)
summary — 2-3 sentence summary
duration_seconds — Estimated duration
speakers — Identified speakers

Usage

Analyze a video (structured JSON output)

uv run {baseDir}/scripts/analyze_video.py "<video-url>"

Ask a question (adds "answer" field)

uv run {baseDir}/scripts/analyze_video.py "<video-url>" -q "What product is shown?"

Override prompt entirely

uv run {baseDir}/scripts/analyze_video.py "<video-url>" -p "Custom prompt" --raw

Download only (no analysis)

uv run {baseDir}/scripts/analyze_video.py "<video-url>" --download-only -o video.mp4

Options

| Flag | Description | Default | |------|-------------|---------| | -q / --question | Question to answer (added to default fields) | none | | -p / --prompt | Override entire prompt (ignores -q) | structured JSON | | -m / --model | Gemini model | gemini-2.5-flash | | -o / --output | Save output to file | stdout | | --keep | Keep downloaded video file | false | | --download-only | Download only, skip analysis | false | | --max-size | Max file size in MB | 500 | | --raw | Raw text output instead of JSON | false |

How It Works

YouTube URLs → Passed directly to Gemini (no download needed)
All other URLs → Downloaded via yt-dlp → uploaded to Gemini File API → poll until processed
Gemini analyzes video with structured prompt → returns JSON
Temp files and Gemini uploads cleaned up automatically

Supported Sources

Any URL supported by yt-dlp: Loom, YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Twitter/X, Instagram, Dailymotion, Twitch, and 1000+ more.

Tips

Use -q for targeted questions on top of the full analysis
YouTube is fastest (no download step)
Large videos (10min+) work fine — Gemini File API supports up to 2GB (free) / 20GB (paid)
The script auto-installs Python dependencies via uv