What is a video summarizer?

A video summarizer is a tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to understand and analyze the most important parts of video footage, then compile it into a coherent summary.  

These tools analyze and identify key segments of a video and autogenerate a short, concise video summary with essential information, such as:

• Main points
• Important facts
• Key takeaways
• Overview of the video’s structure
• Timestamps

Instead of wading through hours of footage, you can use a video summarizer to generate a summary, then add it to your YouTube description box or social media posts along with a link to your video. 

Here are some key benefits of using a video summarizer:

• Time savings: A video summarizer automates the tedious task of summarizing long videos manually and generates a summary in seconds. This saves you time, so you can focus on other important tasks.
• Accuracy: The trained algorithms of a video summarizer analyze your video, identify and extract the most relevant information, and generate a summary that accurately reflects the main points of the content. 
• Ease of use: Video summarizers don’t require technical expertise. You can upload your video or paste its URL into the summarizer and watch the tool work its magic. 
• Customization: You can adjust the length of the generated video summary to suit your specific needs and/or audience.
• Better engagement: A well-written, concise summary draws viewers in, gives them an overview of what your content is about, helps them navigate the most relevant parts of your video, and entices them to explore the full video. This boosts your video’s view count and increases engagement.
• Improves SEO: Concise video summaries give search engines contextual clues about your video’s content and relevance, which can improve your search engine optimization (SEO).
• Better accessibility: A video summarizer generates summaries that make your content more accessible to readers who are short on time, prefer to scan, or have a hearing impairment. This ensures your message reaches a wider audience. 

Now, let’s check out some of the best video summarizers available below.

The 10 best video summarizers for creators

1. Descript: Best all-in-one AI video summarizer

Descript is a user-friendly, all-in-one audio and video editing tool with an AI Summarizer that generates a concise and accurate summary of your video or audio content in a couple of clicks. 

Here’s how Descript’s AI Summarizer works:

Step 1: Upload a video or record your footage in Descript

Select New > Video Project

Click Add file or Start a recording.

Step 2: Click Actions > Ask AI > Summarizer

Click Actions.

Select Ask AI. This feature acts like a personalized ChatGPT, which you can ask for anything — help writing, editing, summarizing, or writing scripts and promotional copy.

Scroll down to the Publish section and select Summarize.

Step 3. Get an instant video summary

Click the arrow in the What’s a short summary of this script? field.

Copy the generated summary to your clipboard or select Try Again to prompt the AI Summarizer to refine it further. 

Edit the generated video summary to include your target keyword or other essential elements. When you’re satisfied with the result, add the text to your YouTube video description box or social media posts. 

Descript’s AI Summarizer is available in its desktop application (Windows and Mac) and web app. You can generate as many video summaries as you like. It’s best for videos made in Descript—the AI-powered summary tool can’t access external URLs.

Best features

Descript does a lot more than just generate video summaries. Some of its key features include: 

• Text-based editing: Descript automatically generates a transcript of your video, which you can edit like a document
• AI tools: AI tools for generating chapter markers, short copy for social posts, podcast show notes, YouTube descriptions or scripts, removing retakes from a script, or converting your scripts into blog posts 
• Filler word removal: Purge your recordings of "ums," "uhs,” "you knows,” and other filler words 
• Remote recording: Record crystal-clear videos and podcasts from anywhere
• Studio Sound: Remove background noise and enhance audio quality in one click
• Social clips and templates: Create unique, shareable clips of your audio and video content in a snap

Pros

• Offers free plan
• User-friendly interface
• Doubles as an AI video generator
• Speech-to-text transcription
• Lots of features to choose from
• Built for collaboration

Cons

• No mobile app
• Doesn’t generate video summaries from URLs

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid pricing plans starting at $12 per user, per month.

2. Upword: Best for snappy video summaries

Upword is an AI-powered summary generator that uses GPT-4 to scan your content, extract the key information from a video, and generate AI-powered notes or summaries. 

The free Chrome extension is a quick and effective way to generate video summaries from YouTube videos and other online video content. I tested Upword’s Chrome extension on a YouTube video, and it used the video transcript to generate a short, concise video summary. 

The downside with Upword’s summarizer is it might not give you the most accurate, coherent summary, as transcripts sometimes contain errors or language translation mistakes. Plus, the free Chrome extension gives you only three video summary credits, after which you’ll need to sign up for a free 7-day trial or upgrade to Upword Pro.

Best features

• Chrome extension
• Uplight (auto-highlighting)
• Manual notes 
• Library management
• Listen mode (text-to-speech)

Pros

• Generates short, concise summary
• Supports URLs
• You can share summaries on Slack

Cons

• Expensive
• No mobile app
• Favors academic language
• Relies on video transcripts to generate summaries
• Limits you to 3 summaries per day in free version

Pricing: Free Chrome extension. Paid plan costs $15 per month or $12.50 for the annual plan

3. Summarize.tech: Best for timestamped video summaries 

Summarize.tech is a simple online AI-powered video summarizer that generates summaries of YouTube videos. Its strength is in longer videos, like livestreamed events or Zoom meetings. 

The summary generator uses GPT models to process languages in video content. It splits the video content based on timestamps and provides a brief description for each, then processes the chapters into shorter sections. 

I found a few inaccuracies in Summarize.tech's summaries. For example, when I tested it with this YouTube video about Descript’s new AI features, it referred to Descript as Drips AI—and even added an unrelated, irrelevant affiliate link to it.

The free version has daily rate limits of a few videos a day. Upgrading to the premium plan removes rate limits and lets you summarize up to 200 videos a month.

Best features

• Simple video summarizer interface

Pros

• Free to use
• Simple, user-friendly interface
• Can generate summaries from video URLs

Cons

• No option to upload videos
• Inaccuracies in summary copy
• No collaborative capabilities 
• Lacks editing tools
• Free version has daily rate limits 

Pricing: Free. Premium plan costs $10 per month.

4. Jasper: Best YouTube video summarizer

Jasper is another AI-powered platform that can help you generate a YouTube video summary in minutes.

The software speeds up your content creation workflow and processes by generating condensed summaries that cover the key points of your video. This way, you can create social media copy or scripts for your online videos and get more done in less time. 

Jasper has no free plan, but you can use its seven-day free trial to try its features risk-free before committing to a paid plan.

Best features

• Video script templates
• SEO mode
• Browser extension

Pros

• Quick turnaround
• Generates summaries from URLs
• Native Grammarly support

Cons

• Limited free trial
• Expensive
• Requires credit card details to sign up for an account 

Pricing: 

• Creator: $49 per month
• Pro: $69 per month
• Business: Custom pricing

5. Notta: Best for real-time video transcription 

Notta’s AI Summary tool generates automated summaries of any video you upload or record in minutes. 

The summarizer automatically detects the topic and context of your video, then generates a summary with key points. It also has a real-time transcription tool that generates transcripts of online meetings in apps like Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams.

Best features

• Chrome extension
• Shareable links
• Live recording transcription 

Pros

• Speech-to-text transcription
• Intuitive interface
• Multi-language support
• Allows uploading videos or URLs

Cons

• Short free trial of Pro plan
• Summary generator only in paid plan
• You’ll need to play a video to get the summarized transcript 

Pricing: Free. Paid plan $8.25 per month.

6. Fireflies AI: Best for webinars and meeting recordings

Fireflies AI has an AI Super Summaries feature, which provides quick and accurate information about videos without having to listen to the recording or reading through a whole transcript. 

Besides short recaps of video recordings, Fireflies AI’s summaries offer valuable insights, action items, bullet point notes, keywords, outlines, and more. However, those features are only available to paid users, who get more transcription credits and advanced exporting capabilities.

Fireflies AI integrates with Slack and pushes the generated summaries to your Slack channel. It also integrates with popular CRM tools and tags summaries of each recording under the respective contact. 

Best features

• AI Super Summaries
• Chrome extension
• AskFred for Web

Pros

• Generates summary in various format (paragraphs, bullet point lists, numbered lists, and more)
• Strong encryption 
• Can summarize webpages 
• No video length restrictions

Cons

• Expensive 
• No AI video summarizer in free plan

Pricing

• Free: $0
• Pro: $18 per seat, per month
• Business: $29 per seat, per month

7. Mindgrasp: Best for summarizing multiple videos

Mindgrasp identifies the key points and moments in a video, then condenses the footage into a brief summary with the most important and relevant information. 

Whether you’re summarizing tutorials or an entire video series, Mindgrasp can summarize the main points of your content and generate an easy-to-read and recall summary. 

Enter the video URL and let Mindgrasp will analyze the video content. The tool will generate a short summary, which you can download to listen to the notes or share with others.

Best features

• AI Summaries & Notes
• Video files and link uploads
• Bionic reading
• YouTube video uploads
• Chrome extension

Pros

• Allows importing videos or pasting URLs
• You can upload over 10 files at once
• Works in multiple use cases

Cons

• Short free trial
• Requires credit card to sign up for free account or trial

Pricing

• Basic: $9.99 per month
• Scholar: $12.99 per month
• Premium: $14.99 per month

8. YouTube Summarizer: Best free video summarizer

As its name suggests, the YouTube Summarizer generates short descriptions of YouTube videos. 

The tool uses AI and natural language processing (NLP) to summarize YouTube videos without character limitations, while maintaining the original context. Just paste the link to the YouTube video, choose the summary length, and wait for the tool to generate a summary. 

YouTube Summarizer is free to use anytime and anywhere, and you don’t have to sign up for an account. You can share the video summary with others via WhatsApp or email, or download it as an audio (MP3) file and listen to the notes.

Best features

• Video summarizer
• Text shortener
• Video conclusion

Pros

• Easy to use
• You can share and download summaries
• Offers unlimited video summaries

Cons

• Basic user interface
• Inaccurate summaries 
• Lacks speech-to-text functionality
• No collaborative features
• Limited sharing options

Pricing: Free

9. Wordtune: Best multi-platform video summarizer

Wordtune is a Generative AI platform with a native summarization tool that generates summaries of YouTube videos, blog posts, PDFs, and more. You can use Wordtune on a desktop or mobile device and create instant summaries of long videos, then export the summary for later use.

Best features

• Summarization
• AI writing
• Rewrite
• Chrome extension
• Smart translation
• Corrections and recommendations

Pros

• Translates languages to English
• Accurate, timestamped video summaries
• Offers mobile and desktop apps
• You can export your video summaries

Cons

• Limited free version
• Only offers 3 video summaries in free plan

Pricing: 

• Free: $0
• Plus: $24.99 per month
• Unlimited: $37.50 per month
• Business: Custom pricing

10. Eightify.app: Best for summarizing long videos

Eightify uses a proprietary AI technology and OpenAI’s GPT model to extract, analyze, and condense the key points of any video in seconds. 

Currently, the software only supports YouTube videos and podcasts or news segments on YouTube and any input language with translations in over 40 output languages.

You can summarize videos of up to six hours long with Eightify’s YouTube summary AI. If you want to summarize your own video, upload it as an unlisted video on YouTube, use Eightify to summarize it, then copy the summary or share a link with others or on social media.

Eightify is available as an iOS app and offers browser extensions for Chrome and Safari.

Best features

• Timestamped breakdowns
• Translations in over 40 languages
• Shareable summaries
• Chrome and Safari extensions

Pros

• Easy to use
• Free version doesn’t offer unlimited summaries
• Captures key points accurately

Cons

• No dedicated desktop or Android app
• Doesn’t work offline

Pricing: Free. Paid plans $4.95 per month or $3.95 per month (annual subscription)

How to choose a video summarizer

Accurate speech-to-text transcription

Video summarizers are not created equal. Test the tools you’re considering to see if they generate accurate summaries and can correctly figure out the main points of your video content. 

A good video summarizer should have built-in speech recognition capabilities that recognize keywords, crucial phrases, and essential elements of your content to add to the overall summary. The tool should also accurately capture your video’s main points and key details to generate a concise summary based on the topic and context of your content. 

Efficient editing tools

Find a video summarizer tool that offers user interaction features for editing the video summary and fine-tuning it to ensure it accurately represents the key points of your content. 

Collaborative capabilities

If you’re working with a team, find a video summarizer that lets you share and discuss the generated video summaries to finalize before publishing on your website or social media channels.

Thousands of video creators already rely on Descript for high quality summarizing and video editing. If you’re ready to join them, take a tour of Descript today.

Video summarizer FAQs

Is there a way to summarize a video?

You can use Descript’s AI Summarizer to generate an accurate, concise summary of your video content in a couple of clicks. 

Is there an AI to summarize videos?

Descript’s AI Summarizer can summarize videos quickly and easily. Here’s how: 

1. Upload or record a video in Descript
2. Click Actions and select Ask AI
3. Choose Summarize and press enter.
4. Edit the generated summary if necessary and add it to your video description box. 

What is the best way to summarize a video?

Using Descript’s AI Summarizer is the best, easiest, and fastest way to generate an accurate and concise summary of any video or recording.