u/ajithpinninti

We recently started using Synthesia for awareness and training. Turns out going back to documents would have been better , team started hating the talking head sessions and Gen Z not watching at all.

Any solution for this?

I shifted focus to explainer video instead of avatar video.

So far tried DistilBook, Powtoon, and Vyond.

DistilBook has good automation,
Powtoon seems more older drag and drop,
Vyond needs too much manual work.

We don't have a team, need some quick way..
can you suggest what to do and how to manage this?

We recently started using Synthesia for awareness and training. Turns out going back to documents would have been better
team started hating the talking head vidoes and Gen Z not watching at all.

Any solution for this?

I shifted focus to explainer video instead of avatar video.

So far tried DistilBook, Powtoon, and Vyond.

DistilBook has good automation,
Powtoon seems more older drag and drop,
Vyond needs too much manual work.

We don't have a big team
can you suggest what to do and how to manage this?
any suggestions on softwares

Our team employees are genuinely good in their work, but due to uncertain hiring and seniors leaving, I can see a serious knowledge gap and coordination issues between everyone.
We have some documents,Scribe from the seniors but it's not going so well nobody is reading them.

So we decided to use video making (thought AI will help us) and we have limited people and need some content to show as video, mostly technical and some onboarding.

So far I looked into:

• DistilBook
• Synthesia
• HeyGen
• Powtoon

Our team hated the AI avatar videos and made us abandon Synthesia and HeyGen style completely.

DistilBook has good automation for whiteboard explanation style.
Powtoon seems more mature ..

But I am totally unaware of other tools to make this possible and trying to find better options so we can have a proper setup for this.

Can anyone suggest any of these you are using or point me to something better?

We hired two new engineers this year. Every time someone joins I end up spending half a day walking through the same stuff
and created solution with

NotebookLM
Distilbook

Spent a weekend throwing everything into a NotebookLM notebook.

All our internal docs, some YouTube videos I'd saved, confluence pages, whatever. Asked it to index everything into topics first before doing anything else. Then went one topic at a time

For the conceptual stuff
audio overviews. Short ones. New hire listens on day one while their environment is setting up.

Video Making:
after different reseruce i ran thorough DistilBook, it makes an actual animated walkthrough of the visuals
I do use notebookllm video overview for short vidoes ..

After their first week I send them a quiz generated from the same notebook. NotebookLM does this in Studio. Scenario-based questions, .

Whatever they get wrong that's the only thing I actually need to sit down and explain.

That's it. Notebook stays, grows, next hire gets the same thing already updated.

Curious if anyone else is using it for team stuff or mostly personal learning here.

I've added proof in the comments.

I've been building SaaS products for over a year now, and this is my second one. This is the first time I’ve hit $1.3K this quickly. My previous product took around 3.5 months just to reach $200.

Wanted to share a few insights on how this one started growing.

For context: I built a tool that converts documents into animated explainer videos for docs, training materials, product walkthroughs, and more.

My approach included:

• Reddit posts
• LinkedIn DMs
• Cold emails
• Twitter replies

Biggest one: Reddit

After launch, I focused on inbound first. I went into the NotebookLM subreddit and made a post around NotebookLM alternatives. I listed 4 tools, and mine was the second one.

That post crossed 70K+ views.

I repeated the same format three times, each getting 40K+ views, which converted into:

• 2 yearly subscriptions
• 3 × $75 payments

Suggestion:
Study competitors carefully and think about positioning before posting. Don’t make it look like pure promotion. Reddit users can instantly tell when someone is only there to market their product.

Twitter / X

Using my own video tool, I turned DeepSeek research papers and recent X/Twitter algorithm discussions into videos and posted them inside replies.

Boom - two of them crossed 50K+ views, while several others crossed 5K+.

At the end of every tweet, I added:
“Video created using DistilBook.”

It brought decent traffic, though conversions are still low. Mostly experimenting right now.

LinkedIn DMs

I bought LinkedIn Premium and started sending short messages (around 60–70 words max).

Usually started with:
“Hey, this is Ajith, founder of DistilBook. Our team is working on this (blah blah), and I’d love your opinion.”

Around 70% replied after accepting the request.

Most feedback was around:

• Why they wouldn’t use it
• Missing features
• What needed improvement

I updated features based on those conversations.

Cold Email (currently testing)

I used LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s free trial and enriched emails using Browser Use research (got free credits from YC SUS).

Then I used Instantly with warm-up emails and started sending around 20 emails daily.

Started yesterday , will share results once I have enough data.

After all this, last week alone I made around $900 and got multiple yearly payments.

(Btw, I kept a 50% yearly discount because I want early users to help fund the next stage of development.)

That’s basically how I started getting my first traction.

Still figuring out:

• ICP
• Funnel optimization
• Better conversions

For long-term sustainability, I think you mainly need:

• Lower churn
• Higher engagement from existing users

Working toward that now.

What I built: DistilBook

It turns documents into animated explainer videos.

Works especially well for technical material.

So far, people are using it for:

• Product walkthroughs
• Onboarding materials
• Technical documentation
• Course creation

If you're interested:
distilbook(.)com

TrustMRR link is in the comments.

Happy to answer anything.

I've been using NotebookLM as an ultra user for the audio and video overview features, mostly to share resources with my team and clients.

Over time I started noticing the audio is good but it's not really engaging nobody on my team was actually listening through properly. I tried the video overview thinking that would fix it, but most of it is just slides with voiceover and it's not engaging enough either. They weren't watching through.

So I started digging into alternatives. Not to replace NotebookLM it's still the best for getting all your sources together and creating proper narrations. But for the actual output that people consume, I needed something better. Here's what I landed on.

1. ElevenLabs Reader

For the audio side. When I want a document read aloud in a really natural, expressive voice without any AI summarization on top. Not a podcast format, just clean faithful reading of the actual content.

The voice quality is honestly miles ahead of NotebookLM's audio voices. Way more natural, way more expressive. 1000+ voices, 30+ languages, works offline. When I send audio to my team now, they actually listen through because it doesn't sound robotic.

Downside: it only reads. No synthesis, no conversation format, no analysis. It's a reader, nothing more. But for that job it's the best.

2. DistilBook

This is the one that actually changed my workflow the most. For the video overview side - it takes your documents and converts them into full animated explainer videos. Not slides with voiceover like NotebookLM's Video Overview. Actual motion graphics, animated diagrams, step-by-step visual walkthroughs with narration.

Team watches through because it's genuinely engaging

Upside: I've generated everything from 5 minute quick explainers to 45+ minute deep technical walkthroughs. The output genuinely looks like something our company produced.k.

Downside: it’s specifically a document-to-video tool. No chat or querying features.

Also, it explains things in much more detail - if you just want a basic overview, NotebookLM still does a good job.

3. NoteGPT

Best YouTube-specific tool I've found. Timestamped summaries, ask questions about any moment in a video, Chrome extension just works. I use it when there's a long lecture or podcast I want to break down before deciding if it's worth a full listen.

Not a daily driver for me but if your inputs are mostly YouTube

students, people following long-form podcasts this is the right pick.

4. Google AI Studio TTS (Gemini 3.0 Flash)

Google has a controllable TTS model in AI Studio that lets you control pacing, emotional tone, speaking style, even do multi-speaker scripts with different voices. You can prompt it with natural language like "speak this part slowly, this part with energy" and it actually does it.

Take some time to get good outpu

Downside: more manual work than hitting one button. Worth it for important stuff, not for quick daily use.

For the actual sourcing and narration - NotebookLM is still the best.

For getting all resources together, indexing into topics, creating structured topic-wise narrations, flashcards, quizzes - I still use NotebookLM for all of that and nothing else comes close.

These tools above just handle the output formats where NotebookLM's built-in options weren't enough for my team.

Better audio reading → ElevenLabs Reader

Engaging video explainers from docs → DistilBook

YouTube breakdowns → NoteGPT

Polished controllable audio → AI Studio TTS

Curious what others are pairing with NotebookLM or if you found something I missed.

TL;DR:

NotebookLM is still my core for sourcing and narration. But the audio wasn't engaging enough and the video overview is mostly slides

so I pair it with ElevenLabs Reader (natural audio),

DistilBook (animated video explainers from docs ),

NoteGPT (YouTube breakdowns),

AI Studio TTS (polished multi-speaker audio).

I lead a small engineering team, and knowledge sharing used to be the part of the job I disliked the most. Meetings people forget, Slack threads buried after two days, docs that get shared once and never opened again. Same story every time.

Around two months ago, I started running most of our internal learning through NotebookLM, and it completely changed the workflow for us. Thought I’d share what ended up working.

The setup:
Whenever the team needs to understand a new technology, tool, or process, I throw every useful resource into a notebook YouTube videos, docs, blog posts, internal notes, architecture references, basically everything relevant.

I keep one persistent notebook per major topic, so the knowledge base grows over time instead of recreating onboarding material every time someone new joins.

The organization step:
Before generating anything, I ask NotebookLM to first group all sources into structured topic sections. Then I work through them one by one with prompts like:

“Explain topic 3 using all uploaded sources.”

That alone made the outputs far more usable compared to getting one giant summary blob.

(Also, credit to someone in this sub who mentioned this approach earlier - huge improvement.)

Turning it into learning material:
This is where it became genuinely practical for the team.

For lightweight or mostly text-based concepts, I generate audio explainers tailored for mid-level engineers. Keeping each one focused on a single topic makes it easy for people to listen asynchronously instead of sitting through another onboarding call.

For more visual topics architecture flows, infra walkthroughs, system behavior, etc. I use Distill Book to convert the material into animated explainer videos.

The result feels far more intentional than dropping another PDF into Slack and hoping people read it. I don’t use videos for everything, only where visuals genuinely improve understanding.

Checking comprehension:
After people review the material, I generate quizzes and flashcards directly from the same notebook.

I usually ask for scenario-based questions rather than definition-style ones, because it exposes gaps in understanding much faster.

The biggest benefit:
The notebook turns into a long-term internal knowledge hub.

New hire? Share the notebook.
Process updated? Add new docs and regenerate.
Someone forgets something months later? They can just ask the notebook directly.

I went from spending 3+ hours repeatedly doing live onboarding walkthroughs to maybe an hour of reusable prep work.

Curious if others here are using NotebookLM for team workflows too. Most examples I see are around personal learning, but for internal engineering knowledge transfer it’s been surprisingly effective.

I've been trying to generate a video overview from my document, but the outputs look like simple slides only. I need something more engaging and explanatory.

Is there any alternative way to create better explainer-style videos from my document?

I want to share document videos with my team, and the current output is not really doing justice to the content.

Edit1:-

Tried multiple tools for now, Best as far i tried (rank wise)..
Distilbook
Notebookllm
pdftovideo

Will update if I find any better alternatives.