Scripted uploads to youtube.

• upload video files from local disk or from the web.
• ratelimit upload bandwidth

Grab a precompiled binary for Linux, Mac or Windows or build it yourself.

Talking to the Youtube API requires oauth2 authentication. As such, you must:

1. Create an account on the Google Developers Console
2. Create a new project for this app
3. Enable the Youtube API (APIs & Services -> Enable APIs and Services -> Click 'ENABLE APIS AND SERVICES' top right). Select 'YouTube Data API v3'
4. Create OAuth consent screen (APIs & Services -> OAuth Consent Screen)
   • Add a test user. This can be any Google User account but it should correspond with the Youtube account where videos will be uploaded.
5. Create Credentials (APIs & Services -> Credentials -> click 'CREATE CREDENTIALS'), select 'OAuth client ID', select 'Web application'
   • Add an 'Authorized redirect URI' of 'http://localhost:8080/oauth2callback'
6. Download the client secrets JSON file (click download icon next to newly created client ID) and save it as file client_secrets.json in the same directory as the utility e.g.

{
  "web": {
    "client_id": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com",
    "project_id": "youtubeuploader-yyyyy",
    "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
    "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
    "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
    "client_secret": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "redirect_uris": [
      "http://localhost:8080/oauth2callback"
    ]
  }
}

NOTE 1 Google will apply 'private' status on videos uploaded to newly created projects - from Google's Announcement:

All videos uploaded via the videos.insert endpoint from unverified API projects created after 28 July 2020 will be restricted to private viewing mode. To lift this restriction, each project must undergo an audit to verify compliance with the Terms of Service.

See Issue #86 for more information.

NOTE 2 By default you will only be able to upload ~6 videos every 24 hours due to quota restrictions set by Google. See Issue #119 for more information.

At a minimum, just specify a filename:

./youtubeuploader -filename blob.mp4

If it is the first time you've run the utility, a browser window should popup and prompt you to provide Youtube credentials. A token will be created and stored in request.token file in the local directory for subsequent use. To run the utility on a headless-server, generate the token file locally first, then simply copy the token file along with youtubeuploader and client_secrets.json to the remote host.

Full list of options:

Usage:
  -cache string
        token cache file (default "request.token")
  -caption string
        caption filename. Can be a URL
  -categoryId string
        video category Id
  -chunksize int
        size (in bytes) of each upload chunk. A zero value will cause all data to be uploaded in a single request (default 16777216)
  -debug
        turn on verbose log output
  -description string
        video description (default "uploaded by youtubeuploader")
  -filename string
        video filename. Can be a URL. Read from stdin with '-'
  -language string
        video language (default "en")
  -limitBetween string
        only rate limit between these times e.g. 10:00-14:00 (local time zone)
  -metaJSON string
        JSON file containing title,description,tags etc (optional)
  -metaJSONout string
        filename to write uploaded video metadata into (optional)
  -notify
        notify channel subscribers of new video. Specify '-notify=false' to disable. (default true)
  -oAuthPort int
        TCP port to listen on when requesting an oAuth token (default 8080)
  -playlistID value
        playlistID to add the video to. Can be used multiple times
  -privacy string
        video privacy status (default "private")
  -quiet
        suppress progress indicator
  -ratelimit int
        rate limit upload in Kbps. No limit by default
  -recordingDate value
        recording date e.g. 2024-11-23
  -secrets string
        Client Secrets configuration (default "client_secrets.json")
  -sendFilename
        send original file name to YouTube (default true)
  -tags string
        comma separated list of video tags
  -thumbnail string
        thumbnail filename. Can be a URL
  -title string
        video title
  -version
        show version

NOTE: When specifying a URL as the filename, the data will be streamed through the localhost (download from remote host, then upload to Youtube)

If -quiet is specified, no upload progress will be displayed. Current progress can be output by sending signal USR1 to the process e.g. kill -USR1 <pid> (Linux/Unix only).

Video title, description etc can specified via the command line flags or via a JSON file using the -metaJSON flag. An example JSON file would be:

{
  "title": "my test title",
  "description": "my test description",
  "tags": ["test tag1", "test tag2"],
  "privacyStatus": "private",
  "madeForKids": false,
  "embeddable": true,
  "license": "creativeCommon",
  "publicStatsViewable": true,
  "publishAt": "2017-06-01T12:05:00+02:00",
  "categoryId": "10",
  "recordingdate": "2017-05-21",
  "playlistIds":  ["xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx", "yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"],
  "playlistTitles":  ["my test playlist"],
  "language":  "fr"
}

• all fields are optional
• use \n in the description to insert newlines
• times can be provided in one of two formats: yyyy-mm-dd (UTC) or yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss+zz:zz
• any values supplied via -metaJSON will take precedence over flags

Based on Go Youtube API Sample code

Thanks to github.com/tokland/youtube-upload for insight into how to update playlists.