Filmina vs NotebookLM
NotebookLM turns your PDF into a podcast where two hosts talk about it. Filmina explains the slide in front of you, while you look at it. Both are audio, but they are not for the same thing.
NotebookLM is the Google tool that ran past everything else on campus. You upload the sources, press a button and a while later you have a nine or ten minute audio where two hosts chat about your material, ask each other questions and explain it as if it were a radio show. It is impressive the first time, and it is free.
Then comes the moment of sitting down to study, and that is where the problem shows up.
NotebookLM tells you what the PDF is about. Filmina explains what slide 22 says, while you are looking at slide 22.
What NotebookLM does well
- It's free and it runs in the browser, with nothing to install.
- Many sources at once. One notebook takes dozens of documents: the slides, the course handout, three papers and your own notes, all together.
- It answers with citations. You ask it something and it replies marking which source each thing came from, which is what makes it trustworthy compared to a loose chat.
- The audio is genuinely entertaining. Two voices in dialogue are much easier to listen to than a single narrator, and that is what gets you through twenty minutes.
- It's good for dead time: the bus, the gym, doing the dishes.
As a first pass over a subject you have never touched, it is excellent. If you haven't tried it yet, try it.
Where it stops being enough
There is no slide in front of you
The podcast exists on its own. You hear «the key concept here is conditional independence» and there is no way to know that came from slide 12, or to look at the formula while it is being explained to you. When the exam comes, what you will have in front of you is the PDF, not the audio, and the bridge between the two is yours to build.
Filmina doesn't exist without the PDF: what you hear is the slide you are looking at, and while it speaks a frame surrounds the block it is talking about. When you open that PDF again in finals week, you recognise the page because you have already been through it.
It picks what to tell, and doesn't tell you what it left out
A ten-minute summary of sixty slides is, necessarily, a selection. The two hosts grab whatever strikes them as juicy, build a narrative and leave out half. It is usually a good selection. But it is not your syllabus: it is theirs.
Filmina goes in the order of the document and covers every block. And not because we ask the model nicely: after each explanation is generated it is verified in code that no block of text on the page was left uncovered, and if one is missing it is requested again on its own. Coverage is checked, not trusted.
You don't get to choose the depth
The audio comes at whatever length it comes. Filmina has three levels and they change at any moment: summary for the quick pass, full for everything the slide says, extended when you also want examples, the why and the usual mistakes. The same slide, three depths, without uploading anything again.
It has quotas, and it needs internet
The free plan allows a few audios per day, and each one is generated on Google's servers. Filmina generates on your Mac, with no limit on anything, and the whole document is prepared behind you while you listen to the first slide.
Your notes get uploaded
For NotebookLM to work, the PDF has to be on Google. For a lot of material that makes no difference. For a thesis draft, a report from work or course material that isn't yours, maybe it does.
Filmina vs NotebookLM, point by point
| What matters | Filmina | NotebookLM |
|---|---|---|
| What you hear | The explanation of the slide you are looking at | Two hosts talking about your sources as a whole |
| Relation to the page | A frame surrounds the block being explained | None: the audio goes its own way |
| Coverage | Every block, verified in code | A selection, at whatever length comes out |
| Depth | Three levels, switchable on the fly | Whatever the model decides |
| Several sources together | No: one PDF at a time | Yes, dozens per notebook |
| Asking it things | There is no chat | Yes, with citations to the source |
| Where it runs | On your Mac, offline | On Google's servers |
| Usage limits | None | A few audios per day on the free plan |
| Pricing | One payment of US$ 39 at launch, US$ 19 for students | Free, with paid plans for more quota |
Two different uses of the same PDF
The honest comparison is not which one is better, but which moment each one is for.
NotebookLM, for the first pass
You don't know what the course is about, you are on your way to class and you want to arrive with a general idea. Or you have five different sources and you need to see them together.
Filmina, for the pass that counts
You already know what it is about, you are sitting with the slide in front of you and what you need is someone to explain that slide, skipping nothing and pointing at the part they are talking about.
Using them together works well: the podcast on the commute, Filmina at the desk.
My take
Ignacio Prados
@ignaprados
I use NotebookLM a lot. I turn the lecture into a podcast and listen to it while I do something else: driving, travelling, or with my hands busy on anything else. For revising it is great.
What does not happen is understanding a lecture by listening to it straight through. For that I need to see the slides and hear the explanation at the same time, and that is why I made Filmina.
What NotebookLM has and Filmina doesn't
- Chat with your sources, with citations. Filmina has no chat: it explains the slide, full stop.
- Many documents at once in a single notebook.
- It runs in any browser, on Windows and on the phone too. Filmina is macOS 13 or later only.
- It's free.
- It reads images and diagrams. Filmina works on the text only: if there is a figure, it tells you and tells you to look at it.
Frequently asked questions
Is Filmina an alternative to NotebookLM?
For studying a PDF with the screen in front of you, yes. For building a notebook with ten sources and asking it questions, no: NotebookLM does that and Filmina doesn't.
Does NotebookLM make audio in languages other than English?
Yes, it is no longer English only. Some options, like choosing the length of the audio, are still English only.
How many audios can I make per day?
On the free plan it is a few, and it goes up with Google's paid plans. In Filmina there is no quota: the limit is your Mac.
Does Filmina also make a podcast out of the PDF?
No. It is one voice explaining the slide you are looking at, in the order of the document, marking on the page what it is talking about.
Are my notes uploaded to a server?
In NotebookLM yes, because the processing is Google's. In Filmina no: the model and the voice are installed on your Mac and the file never leaves your folder.
Keep comparing
- Filmina vs SpeechifyThe best known text-to-speech reader, against an explanation.
- Filmina vs ChatGPTWhat happens when you upload a sixty-slide PDF to the chat.
- Why I made FilminaWhere it came from: an exam, a hundred slides and no tool that did the job.