How to Use tl;dv for Meeting Notes and Clips

To use tl;dv, connect your calendar and set what gets auto-recorded, let the tl;dv bot join the call, mark the moments that matter while the meeting runs, and afterward highlight a section of the transcript to turn it into a shareable clip. The clip is the reason most people choose this tool: instead of sending someone a forty-five minute recording and asking them to find the part that concerns them, you send them ninety seconds. One thing has to work first, and per tl;dv’s own Zoom documentation (checked 2026-08-04), if the bot cannot join the meeting, it is not recorded at all.

What tl;dv is for, and the one job it does differently

tl;dv records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, with automatic speaker recognition. That much it shares with every other bot-based notetaker in the category, including the ones covered in our guides to Otter and Fireflies.

The difference is what happens after. tl;dv is built around extracting short pieces from long recordings and sending them onward. If your problem is that nobody reads the notes and nobody watches the recording, that is the job this tool is aimed at. If your problem is simply remembering what was decided, a plainer notetaker will serve you just as well, and the hub guide on how to choose an AI meeting note taker covers that decision.

Step 1: Connect a calendar and choose what gets recorded

Connect the calendar your meetings live on, then set the automatic recording scope. Per tl;dv’s Zoom documentation, auto-recording is enabled through preferences with options including all meetings, internal meetings, or external meetings.

That internal and external split is more useful than it first appears. Recording every external call while leaving internal ones alone is a defensible default for client work: the calls you most need a record of get captured, and the informal internal conversations where people speak loosely do not. Pick the scope deliberately rather than defaulting to everything, because the blanket setting is the one that later produces an awkward conversation.

Step 2: Getting the bot into the call, and what stops it

This is where tl;dv differs from tools that quietly capture your device audio, and it is worth being clear-eyed about.

tl;dv sends a bot into the meeting as a participant. Per its Zoom documentation, the bot will ask to join, and if it cannot join, the meeting is not recorded. The host has to admit it. That is a hard dependency on someone else’s action, and it is the single most likely way to end up with no recording of a meeting you were counting on.

The practical consequences:

• In a call you host, you admit the bot yourself and it is a non-issue.
• In a client’s or vendor’s call, somebody on their side has to let it in. If they are not expecting it, they may not. Mention it beforehand rather than hoping.
• In a locked-down corporate tenant, the bot may be blocked outright by policy, and no amount of retrying will change that.

tl;dv’s documentation also notes you can deny the bot access on a per-meeting basis, or remove it from a meeting at any time. That matters when a scheduled call turns into a conversation that should not have a recorder in it.

Manual recording is available too. Per the same documentation, users with the desktop app can click to start recording and invite the bot, or use a record button on the homepage and paste in a meeting URL. That is the path for a call that was never on your calendar.

If the bot dependency is a problem rather than a detail, that is a signal worth taking seriously, and our guide to bot in the call versus bot-free capture covers what you give up either way.

Step 3: Marking moments while the meeting runs

While the meeting is recording, you can flag important moments, and those notes are timestamped and stay attached to the recording.

This is the habit that makes the whole tool work, and it takes about a second. When someone says the thing you know you will want to send to a colleague, mark it. You are not writing notes; you are dropping a pin. Afterward, the pins are how you find the two minutes that matter inside an hour of audio, instead of scrubbing a timeline trying to remember roughly when it happened.

If you skip this step, tl;dv degrades into an ordinary notetaker with an extra bot in the call.

Step 4: Turning a transcript section into a clip

After the meeting, highlight the relevant part of the transcript and tl;dv generates a clip from it. Working from the transcript rather than the video timeline is the point: you can read to find the exact sentence, then cut from there.

A clip is worth sending when the recipient needs the tone as well as the content. A customer’s exact wording about a problem, a stakeholder’s actual objection, a decision stated in someone’s own voice. All of these land differently in thirty seconds of audio than in a line of summary text, which is precisely why people ignore summaries and act on clips.

When the content is all that matters, send the summary line instead. A clip that could have been a sentence wastes the recipient’s time, and doing that repeatedly trains people to ignore your clips too.

Step 5: Combining clips into a reel

Individual clips can be combined into a reel, so a stakeholder gets the through-line without the full meeting.

This is most useful across meetings rather than within one. Five customers raising the same objection in five separate calls is an argument. Sending five separate clips is a chore that nobody completes. The reel is the version people actually watch, and it is the strongest reason to use this tool if you do research, discovery, or sales calls at any volume.

Where tl;dv is the wrong pick

If your meetings are in person, the bot has nothing to join, and capturing AI notes for in-person meetings covers what to do instead. If a visible bot in the participant list would damage a client relationship, the bot dependency is a structural problem rather than a setting. And if you never share anything from your meetings, you are paying a bot-admission tax for a clipping feature you will not use.

Feature names, supported platforms, and recording behavior change often in this category. Confirm the current details on tl;dv’s own site before relying on any specific one.

FAQ

Does tl;dv join meetings as a visible bot?
Yes. Per tl;dv’s Zoom documentation (checked 2026-08-04), a tl;dv bot asks to join the meeting as a participant, and if it cannot join, the meeting is not recorded. Everyone in the call can see it.

What happens if the host does not admit the bot?
Nothing is recorded. tl;dv’s documentation is explicit that the meeting will not be recorded if the bot cannot join, so on calls you do not host, mention it in advance.

Can I record a meeting that is not on my calendar?
Yes. Per the same documentation, you can start recording from the desktop app to invite the bot, or paste a meeting URL into the record option on the homepage.

How do I make a clip in tl;dv?
Highlight the relevant section of the meeting transcript and tl;dv generates a shareable clip from that section. Clips can then be combined into a reel.

Does tl;dv work for in-person meetings?
It is built around a bot joining a video call, so a face-to-face meeting gives it nothing to join. See our guide to capturing AI notes for in-person meetings for approaches that work in a room.