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

1. YouTube URLs → Passed directly to Gemini (no download needed)
2. All other URLs → Downloaded via yt-dlp → uploaded to Gemini File API → poll until processed
3. Gemini analyzes video with structured prompt → returns JSON
4. 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