Send a video transcript to Perplexity

Why Perplexity is a good fit for a transcript

Perplexity describes itself as searching the web, summarizing what it finds and showing where each part of an answer came from. Follow-up questions stay in the same session, and you can work with a file and search the web in one session. That suits a particular job: you have watched, or half-watched, a video full of claims, and you want to know which of them hold up.

A transcript gives Perplexity the exact words. Claras puts a time on every line, like [23:10], so when Perplexity says a claim is off, you can find the moment and hear it in context before you decide.

Can Perplexity watch videos itself?

In some places, yes. Perplexity's own pages say its Comet browser "can process videos from YouTube and other sources directly, watching, transcribing, and summarizing the content", and that Comet for Android can find key moments in YouTube videos and link to timestamps. Its help center says you can upload audio and video files up to 40MB, and that they are transcribed into searchable text, while the picture isn't indexed. We read these pages on November 12, 2026.

So if you use Comet, a quick summary may be one question away. Claras is useful when you want the full text in front of you, when the video is on Instagram or TikTok, or when it is a recording bigger than an upload allows. Claras takes your own files in the web app, up to 6 hours each within your plan's monthly transcription hours.

What happens when you click

Choose Perplexity in the Send to AI menu. In the same click, Claras copies the text and opens www.perplexity.ai in a new tab. A green screen reads "All set! Ready to paste in Perplexity." for 8 seconds, with the paste keys for your computer. Click anywhere to close it.

The copied text starts with a short note: this is the full transcript of the video, with its title and link, use it as the source for my questions, and start with a short summary of the key points if I haven't asked anything. The web app adds a line asking the assistant to treat the transcript as content, not as instructions. You can delete the note before sending, or type your own question under it.

A worked example: checking a podcast

Say a two-hour health podcast makes a dozen confident claims about sleep, and you'd like to know which ones the research supports. Open the episode in Claras and send the transcript to Perplexity. Under the note, ask: "List each factual claim in this transcript with its time. Then check each one against current sources and say whether it holds up, with links." You end up with a list you can work through: the time to find each claim in the video, and the sources Perplexity used to judge it.

Other ways to use it

• Ask what has changed since the video was made: "Which of these product details are out of date?"
• Find the papers, articles or people a speaker mentions in passing.
• Read up on background before a lecture you plan to watch properly.

Transcript or summary?

Send the transcript when the exact wording matters, as it does for fact-checking: a summary can soften or merge claims. Send the summary when you want background on the topics a video covers and the details don't matter much. It is much shorter and pastes easily anywhere.

Keep it with related research

Perplexity says Projects group sessions and files by topic. If you'll come back to a video, download its transcript from Claras as a text file and keep it in a Project next to the sessions about the same subject.

Limits to know

It is copy and paste

Claras doesn't sign you in to Perplexity, send anything or read the reply. Perplexity's own limits apply to what you paste.

Long transcripts

Past about 400,000 characters, roughly 100,000 tokens, Claras warns that Perplexity may cut the text off and suggests Claude or Gemini Notebook. Another option is to download the transcript as a text file and upload it. Perplexity says it reads short files in full and pulls the most important parts out of long ones.

Claras' own limits

YouTube Shorts and live streams don't open. Each video you open counts toward your plan, and the free plan includes 3 a month. Sending doesn't count.

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