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NoteWise can process multiple videos in one run. You can pass a YouTube playlist URL directly, or provide a plain text file with one URL per line.

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Processing a playlist

Pass a YouTube playlist URL as the argument to process: 
notewise process "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAYLIST_ID"
NoteWise resolves the full list of videos in the playlist, then processes them concurrently up to the configured concurrency limit.

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Processing a batch file

Create a .txt file with one YouTube URL per line:
urls.txt
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID_1
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID_2
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID_3
Pass the file path to process: 
notewise process urls.txt
notewise process urls.txt -o ./course-notes
Blank lines and any lines that are not valid YouTube URLs are skipped automatically.

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Output structure for multiple videos

Each video gets its own subdirectory under the output directory, named after the video title: 
output/
├── First Video Title/
│   └── study_notes.md
├── Second Video Title/
│   ├── study_notes.md
│   └── quiz.md
└── Third Video Title/
    └── study_notes.md
For playlist processing, all videos are written into the same root output directory (or the directory you specify with --output).

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Concurrency

NoteWise processes multiple videos simultaneously. The default concurrency limit is 5 videos at a time, controlled by the MAX_CONCURRENT_VIDEOS setting. To change the default, set MAX_CONCURRENT_VIDEOS in ~/.notewise/config.env: 
MAX_CONCURRENT_VIDEOS=3
For chapter-aware videos (longer than one hour with chapters defined), chapters within a single video are also processed concurrently, up to a separate MAX_CONCURRENT_CHAPTERS limit (default: 3). Both limits apply simultaneously, so a run with many long videos can open many LLM connections at once.

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Rate limiting

To avoid hitting YouTube’s request limits, NoteWise throttles its metadata and transcript requests. The default is 10 requests per minute, set by YOUTUBE_REQUESTS_PER_MINUTE in ~/.notewise/config.env: 
YOUTUBE_REQUESTS_PER_MINUTE=5
Raising the request rate significantly increases the chance of YouTube temporarily blocking your IP. If you see an IP block error during a large batch, lower YOUTUBE_REQUESTS_PER_MINUTE and try again. See Troubleshooting for more detail.

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Reprocessing with —force

By default, videos that are already in the local cache are skipped. Pass --force to reprocess every video in the playlist or batch regardless of cache state: 
notewise process urls.txt --force
notewise process "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAYLIST_ID" --force -m gpt-4o
Use --force when you want to regenerate all notes with a new model or after changing your temperature setting, without having to clear the entire cache.

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Using —no-ui for automated runs

For unattended runs (cron jobs, CI pipelines, server scripts), add --no-ui to suppress the interactive dashboard and print plain progress lines to stdout: 
notewise process urls.txt --no-ui --output /data/notes >> notewise.log 2>&1

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