How to ask AI questions about your videos

Own video piles up quietly. There are recorded webinars, screen recordings of how a process works, filmed customer interviews, lecture captures, and the walkthrough a colleague recorded before going on leave. Each file is an hour of footage with a name like Recording_0412.mp4, and the question you have about it (what did the customer say about the export feature?) is buried somewhere inside.

This guide covers how people usually get answers out of their own videos, where that runs into trouble, and how to upload videos to Fabric so you can ask the AI assistant about them and jump to the exact timestamp of each answer.

How people usually get answers from their videos

The most common approach is to open the file and scrub. With a good memory of roughly when something happened, that works. For a dozen interviews or a semester of lectures, scrubbing turns into hours of rewatching.

Recording tools such as Loom, Zoom and Teams often produce a transcript alongside the video. That’s useful within the tool. The transcripts tend to stay there, apart from your notes and documents, and a question across twenty recordings means opening twenty transcripts.

Some people run videos through a separate transcription service, then paste the text into ChatGPT or Claude. That gets a conversational answer, but it adds two steps per video, and the answer doesn’t point back to a timestamp in the original file.

If your videos are part of an editing project, How to manage video project files covers keeping the footage itself in order.

Step 1: Upload your videos

Drag MP4, MOV or WebM files into Fabric, paste them, or click Upload a file. Uploading handles large numbers of files at once, so a whole folder of interview recordings can go in together. On a phone, use the share sheet in any app to send a video to Fabric.

With the Fabric desktop app installed, Fabric mounts as a virtual drive on Mac, Windows and Linux, and you can move videos in like any other folder. Files on the drive take no space on your computer and stream when you open them, which suits large recordings. There’s more on that on the personal cloud page.

Once a video is in, Fabric processes it automatically. It writes a short summary, extracts attributes such as content type and topics, and suggests tags, so a library of recordings is findable before you’ve sorted any of it. Folders are optional, though they’re the easiest way to scope the assistant later.

Step 2: Get the videos transcribed

Fabric transcribes uploaded video in MP4, MOV and WebM, along with audio formats like MP3, WAV and M4A. The transcript is searchable and editable, so you can fix a misheard product name or a speaker’s surname once and the correction carries through to search and AI answers.

Transcription needs a paid plan. See pricing for the options.

Step 3: Ask about one video

Put the video in a folder, open the folder, and open the AI assistant. It’s automatically limited to that folder. Right-clicking the folder and adding it to the assistant’s context does the same thing without opening it.

Ask a specific question. “Where in this onboarding walkthrough does she explain how refunds are approved?” or “What were the three objections the customer raised?” The answer cites the video with clickable timestamps, so you land on the moment and can watch it in full context.

Follow-ups keep the thread. After the objections, ask which one the customer seemed most concerned about, or what they said they use today. You can also choose the model that answers, from Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, DeepSeek, Grok, Qwen and others, under the same subscription.

If you don’t remember which recording a discussion happened in, ask without a folder. The assistant searches across all of Fabric and any connected apps, finds the videos that cover it, and cites a timestamp in each.

Step 4: Ask across a set of recordings

The bigger gain comes from asking across many videos at once. Put fifteen customer interviews in one folder and ask “Which customers mentioned exporting to Excel, and what did they want it for?” The assistant analyzes every video in the folder and cites a timestamp in each one it draws on, so you can check the quotes before they go into a report.

The same works for a course: a folder of lecture recordings can answer “Which lectures cover regression, and what example did the lecturer use each time?” Save useful answers as notes in the folder, so the findings sit with the footage.

When you need a quoted phrase, search covers transcribed video and opens results at the exact timestamp. If others need to weigh in on a recording, share it with commenter access and they can leave timestamped comments, including a drawing on the frame. Collaboration covers roles and permissions.

Frequently asked questions

Can AI watch my video and answer questions about it?

Fabric transcribes the video, and the AI assistant answers questions from the transcript with timestamps that link to the exact moment.

Which video formats can Fabric transcribe?

MP4, MOV and WebM, plus audio in MP3, WAV and M4A. It also transcribes YouTube, TikTok and podcast links.

Can I ask one question across several videos?

Yes. Put them in one folder and open the assistant inside it. It analyzes everything in that folder and cites each video it uses.

Do I need a paid plan to ask AI about my videos?

Transcription needs a paid plan, and the assistant answers from the transcript. The free plan includes uploads and limited AI use.

Will large video files fill up my laptop?

No. Files on the Fabric desktop drive take no space on your computer and stream when opened. How to access cloud files without using disk space explains the setup.

Can I fix mistakes in the transcript?

Yes. Transcripts can be edited, and search and the assistant use the edited version.

Can I save the AI’s answer?

Yes. Answers can be saved as notes, which you can keep in the same folder as the videos.

How do I find a specific line someone said in a recording?

Click Search or press Cmd+F (Mac) / Ctrl+F (Windows) and type the phrase, in quotes for an exact match. Results open at the exact timestamp.

Can I share my video folder with my team?

Yes. Share the folder and choose a role for each person: viewer, commenter, editor or admin, set at space and file level. External people can open shared links without signing up, and commenters can leave timestamped notes on any recording in it.