Automate Uploading Videos and Parsing YouTube URL back into a sheet

ACF

Hi there,

I work for an environmental NGO. We’re making personalised videos to send out to our supporters and need some guidance.

Steps I’m planning:

Obtaining a master google sheet containing lists of the specific information we need on the users. Eg. Name, Profile pic, unique IDs etc. There’ll be approx 400 users, resulting in approx 400 personal videos
Use Templater to parse data from the master google sheet into each item in the AE composition.
Render out each video as .mp4
Automatically upload all videos to our YouTube account and publish as ‘Unlisted’
Take the URL from each unique video and put them back into the corresponding row in the original master google sheet.
We will then pass the sheet over to our comms team who can use it automatically send each user an email containing a link to their unique video.

It’s my first time using Templater, but I have a background in VizRT template building for broadcast gfx, so steps 1,2,3 and 6 seem simple enough, but I’m stumped on 4 and 5.

Does anyone know a simple way I can achieve steps 4 and 5 using the bot? I read the following in the Event Script FAQ: “You can also automate publishing output to a specific destination like an FTP site, or your YouTube, Vimeo, or JWPlatform account. You could also script notifications for when a batch of renders completes—email, text message, etc.”

This makes me think it’s maybe been done before, but I assume I will need another application to run the shell script?

I know a little bit of programming, but event scripts might be above me.

Is anyone keen to maybe help me out?

I’m running Mac OS 11.2.3 on a 2017 iMac Pro.

Thanks!

Tom

Jeff

@ACF

Thanks for the question. There are a few different methods for getting files uploaded to various video hosting services using Templater that each has its benefits and drawbacks. The first and easiest is to use the “Publish” function in Adobe Media Encoder. Adobe Media Encoder has a section in the “Export Settings” window called “Publish” that can be used to upload rendered videos to Youtube automatically. This method, of course, assumes that you’re rendering Templater replicates using AME and not rendering from AE directly. The downside to using this method is that AME has no tools to set up any kind of post-upload action. So while this is a relatively simple way to upload the rendered files to Youtube, you wouldn’t get the links back in the data source.

If it’s not 100% necessary to use Youtube specifically as the platform for your rendered videos, you might take a look at our Github Page and specifically this page to take a look at a script we developed for uploading rendered videos to Vimeo or JWPlatform. This script can probably do what you’ve described, the only difference being that it doesn’t have the functionality to upload to Youtube.

If uploading to Youtube is a necessity, you might consider using Zapier or IFTTT to accomplish that. Both of these are third-party services that can be used to route data to various sources. Finally, you could always develop a direct upload script using Youtube’s API. This method will probably be the most time-consuming of everything I’ve laid out here, but it should allow you the greatest amount of flexibility in how the data is handled. Hopefully, one of those options should give you a good starting point, but if you have any other questions, please just let us know!

ACF

Hi Jeff,

Thanks so much for your thorough feedback. After reviewing the options you’ve presented, I think I will use Zapier - As I’m a bit of a coding novice, it seems like the easiest solution for me to deploy.
I will check back in if I have any hurdles with Templater and the Bot in the process.
I appreciate your help!

Tom