Automating upload, scheduling and thumbnail generation

Drone Ah

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Hello,

I am a newbie Let's player, only started a couple of months back. The sheer amount of manual work involved in uploading videos is very frustrating. I looked around and could only find TubeBuddy, which while it could be helpful, was not quite what I was looking for. What I want is:
  • Auto upload (watch a folder and upload videos automatically)
  • Auto-generate titles, descriptions and tags (I just copy and paste different bits together to generate this just now)
  • Auto schedule (each playlist gets episodes 2 or three times a week on a set schedule)
  • Auto-generate the thumbnail (I can do the screenshot, but then it just needs to put an overlay on top and an episode number)
And that it. Since I couldn't find anything, I started working on putting together myself, but then I realised that someone here might know of something. Is there anything that could help me?

If there isn't, I have a few followup questions:
  • Would you guys be interested in such an application
  • Are there any other features that would be valuable
  • Would you be willing to pay for it? and if so, how much?
Thanks for reading this long post and thanks in advance for any feedback
 

ASMR Amour

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I mean honestly people consider youtube a job for a reason because it takes time and work. No i don't know of anything that does exactly what you want unless you want to hire sometime to do those things for you. I would not pay for a program to do those things for me, because everything would look the same as anyone else who uses the program. I'm a fan of doing the work myself
 

Crown

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If anyone needs an app like this, it's because they are mass-uploading several videos per day which probably means they are stealing other people's content.
 

ASMR Amour

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If anyone needs an app like this, it's because they are mass-uploading several videos per day which probably means they are stealing other people's content.
nah when I did my gaming channel I would record a ton in one day and chop up the gameplay and i would have like 8 videos to upload. Doesn't mean they are stealing. Sometimes I get multiple videos ready all the same time even now with my ASMR channel, because I like to relax for a week between working on youtube.
 

UhoohExtra

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I would say people that upload infrequently would not need to automate something they are not doing anyway. And people that upload lots are gonna be more serious youtubers that are pretty creative people and perfectionists.. They are not going to want automated suggested stuff thrown out of a computer. They will be very specific and take care to do all those things properly. Definitely would not pay for it. Also automating youtube stuff or interfering with it can get your channel removed. Its just not a good idea, doesn't mean your next one won't be though! :)
 

ASMR Amour

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I would say people that upload infrequently would not need to automate something they are not doing anyway. And people that upload lots are gonna be more serious youtubers that are pretty creative people and perfectionists.. They are not going to want automated suggested stuff thrown out of a computer. They will be very specific and take care to do all those things properly. Definitely would not pay for it. Also automating youtube stuff or interfering with it can get your channel removed. Its just not a good idea, doesn't mean your next one won't be though! :)
THIIIIIS! lol my perfectionism comes into play often with my youtube content. Also if I do it myself and it sucks I only have myself to blame. Having a program do alot of the stuff for me would be annoying because it wont look that great either i feel like. Also autimating tags and titles would it do a good job with SEO or no? probably not.
 

UhoohExtra

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creator studio already gives some automation. It suggests three different thumbnails. All of which most people will ignore and time to make their own. Also you already set basic parameters for all uploads, your preferences etc. Then you only have to tweak them if needed.
 
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ASMR Amour

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creator studio already gives some automation. It suggests three different thumbnails. All of which most people will ignore and time to make their own. Also you already set basic parameters for all uploads, your preferences etc. Then you only have to tweak them if needed.
Exactly! I have some basic things I already copy and paste into my description box to keep things short and so I don't forget anything that I would like to put in there. That helps alot. Tagging isn't that hard to me either so idk its fine thats not that autimated for me I use tubebuddy some for that
 
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Drone Ah

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Wow, that's a lot of very useful feedback. Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply.

I agree with the fact that custom content within the descriptions and so on is important. In fact, that's exactly what I do. I have a description for each playlist which I combine with a synopsis for the episode, along with some links and credits for each episode.

The title for each episode is a combination of the episode number, a unique title name and the playlist that it's a part of.

I use Google Sheets to combine the different bits of text together and then I copy and paste. I enjoy the writing of the separate parts. The manual process of combining the different parts is what frustrates me, along with the tedious part of copy and paste.

It is also true that it is only an issue for frequent uploaders. I do let's play videos and I currently record about 5 hours of video and split it into 10 videos across the week. I just get sick of the copying an pasting and would struggle to do many more videos mainly because of that, but I guess it's just me.

There is also the issue with making mistakes with copy/paste/scheduling as well (which has happened to me)

I see a lot of let's players just have the same description blanket copied across all the episodes for a playlist as well, which I don't want to do.

Thanks once again for your thoughts. It is much appreciated :D
 
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KatyAdelson

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I do wish there was a better (or bigger) description box and tags section to write in. The main YouTube one is kind of small and cramped, and I always have to click on the actual video to check for basic grammar mistakes and whatnot. I don't think I'd want to automate it tho...

What would be super helpful would be some sort of thumbnail editor. You could select the video, and it pops into a program where you can scroll to your favorite frame. Then you could have all these editing tools, filters, overlays, text and saved thumbnail templates that could auto-pop on top of it. There already are plenty of tools out there that can do this (picmonkey, canva, even photoshop for those who really know what they are doing), but to have one that is specific to making YouTube video thumbnails would be neat. I really like the filter tools of PicMonkey (you can erase parts of the filter where you don't want the picture affected), but they now charge money for their program, and I think a lot of YouTubers stopped using it.