Hi, it's Ivo. A long YouTube lecture is a lot to take in once. This is how I'd turn one into a single study sheet you can read again in five minutes, on the free plan.
First, the honest part
Free ChatGPT can't take a 2-hour lecture in one go.
I checked one: Andrej Karpathy's "Let's build GPT", 1 hour 56 minutes. Its transcript is 21,030 words. Free ChatGPT takes about 12 pages of text in one message, and the whole chat holds about 27K tokens (chatgpt.com/pricing, as of 21 October 2026). That one transcript is about 21,800 tokens on its own.
So you paste it in parts, keep a short sheet from each part, and merge the sheets at the end.
Step 1: get the transcript
- Open the video on a computer.
- Under the video, open the description, then click Show transcript. It only appears on videos that have captions.
- Select the lines and copy them. The timestamps can stay in.
Don't paste the link. Paste the words. That way you know ChatGPT has the whole lecture, not just the title.
Step 2: how to cut a lecture into parts
Cut it into parts of about 20 minutes each. A 2-hour lecture is 6 parts.
Why 20 minutes: that lecture ran at about 180 words a minute, so 20 minutes is about 3,600 words. That fits in one message on the free plan with room to spare.
Use the timestamps in the transcript to find where each part ends (0:00 to 20:00, then 20:00 to 40:00, and so on).
Step 3: the sheet command (one per part)
Paste this, then paste the part under it:
Here is part 1 of a lecture transcript. Make a study sheet for this part only: the 3 to 5 main ideas in plain words, the key terms with a one-line meaning, and one example from the lecture for each idea. Keep it under 200 words. Use only what's in the text.
For the next part, change "part 1" to "part 2" and paste the next 20 minutes.
Copy each short sheet into a note as you go. Don't wait until the end: on the free plan the chat can forget the first parts once it gets long.
Step 4: the merge line (in a new chat)
Open a new chat. Paste this, then paste your saved sheets in order:
These are study sheets from one lecture, in order. Merge them into one page: a title, the main ideas in order, a short list of key terms, and the 3 things I should remember if I forget the rest. Keep it under 400 words. Use only what's here.
That's your one page.
Another way: upload the transcript as a file
Save the transcript as a .txt file and attach it. Free accounts can upload 3 files a day (OpenAI Help Center, as of 21 October 2026).
One catch: I haven't tested how much of a 21,000-word file the free plan really reads. So ask it at the end: "What does the last part of the lecture cover?" If it can't answer, use the parts method.
Three tips
- Read the sheet once while the video is still open. If a point looks wrong, jump to that timestamp and check.
- Ask for "simpler" if the sheet has words you don't know.
- Numbers, names and dates are where AI slips most. Check the ones that matter.
Sources
- ChatGPT plans, Free: "GPT Instant total context window 27K", "input maximum ~12 pages of text". chatgpt.com/pricing, checked 21 October 2026.
- Free plan uploads: "Free users are limited to 3 file uploads per day." help.openai.com/en/articles/8555545, checked 21 October 2026.
- Show transcript: support.google.com/youtube/answer/15930243.
- The lecture: youtube.com/watch?v=kCc8FmEb1nY (1:56:20). Transcript counted on 21 October 2026: 21,030 words, 21,847 tokens with OpenAI's o200k tokenizer.
This is how the plans and menus look as of October 2026. They change.