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YouTube error: Media type 'text/html; charset=utf-8' is not supported

  • 29 December 2022
  • 13 replies
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Userlevel 2
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Hello,

I cannot figure out how to get Zap to take video url from Google sheet field and upload it to youtube.

Google sheet is tested ok (description, title, keyword field tested ok).

But zap gives back this error for url field and doesn't upload the file to youtube:

Media type 'text/html; charset=utf-8' is not supported

What am I doing wrong? The url is a link to Google drive video file. But zap takes it as text.

Thank you for any help.

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Best answer by Vesna 4 January 2023, 08:15

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13 replies

Userlevel 7
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Hi @Vesna!

A common reason that users run into this error is when the video that they are trying to upload is in an mp4 format. 

 

.mp4 files are officially supported by YouTube but can cause issues, his is because .mp4 files are not necessarily formatted according to YouTube's specs. There’s an explaination about that in this thread from Google’s support Community: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/1686164?msgid=1686235

MP4 is a "container" and can contain data encoded in different codecs. YouTube recommends H.264 video with AAC audio. You can see YouTube's recommendations here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

 

Could be the issue here? 

Thanks!

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Unfortunately, no.

I tried mov and mp4 formats.

Error the same: The app returned "Media type 'text/html; charset=utf-8' is not supported.".

it seems to me the problem is that zap is not taking the link from the Google sheet to pick up the video but actually zap sends url as txt to youtube?
How to make zap read this sheet field as a link where video should be taken from and then actually send the video to youtube?

 

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Hi @Vesna, thanks for the extra details!

The link from the Google sheet needs to be a direct download link. If it’s not, the Zap would see the link as a text and upload it as such. 

Google Drive links usually are not direct download links which can cause this issue. To work around this, I suggest:

  1. In the Google sheet, include the filename of the file that needs to be uploaded to YouTube
  2. In the Zap, add a Google Drive “Find a File” action step in between the Google Sheet and YouTube step. 
  3. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Use the filename from the Google sheet step as a search parameter for the Google Drive “Find a File” step

Adding the Google Drive “Find a File” should then provide an action File that can be mapped onto the YouTube step and ideally help upload the video.

You can learn more about how files work in Zapier via this help doc: https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8496259603341-Different-field-types-in-Zaps#file-fields-0-5

 

Can you give that a try and see if it works?

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Hello,

 

I have been given the same solution in Zapier community by staff member Paolo and also by email support from Abdullah. But I was afraid this procedure might worry me about not having two files with the same names. So, I googled how to create a direct download link for Google drive file.

https://www.makeuseof.com/create-direct-link-google-drive-files/ - it has instructions for manually creating a download link and a link generator script.

 

So, I created excel formula which would substitute file/d with uc?=id and /view?usp=drivesdk with &export=download

 

=concatenate(SUBSTITUTE(substitute(B2;"file/d/";"uc?id=");"/view?usp=drivesdk";"&export=download"))

 

So I have a column with the correct download links for the zap.

So, yes, I was correct, zap considers shared drive links in the sheet field as text and not as a source of a file.

 

My next step will be to make additional zap to take all new videos when they appear in a specific drive folder and populate them as new raws in sheet so I don't have to do anything except upload videos. And then zap takes them to Google sheet and from the sheet to YouTube and from YouTube to social platforms. 😳🥱👍

 

I only suggest if Zap support in the future can be faster and also include as many tricks like this as possible in online help pages because it would make Zapier it so much quicker, easier, and more productive. Especially if we are paying users it would be nice not to wait for days for the solution. 😊

 

So, I am sending this solution to both: email support and the Zapier community forum. I hope it is helpful to others who wish to automate as much media and social work as possible. 🤓✌️

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hey there, @Vesna! Whoa, this is great - thanks so much for sharing your solution with the community! I’m confident it will help anyone who stumbles along the topic with the same issue. 

With over 5,000 apps (‼️) on the Zapier platform, it’s also a perfect example of how cool and helpful a community can be to users! We’re so grateful to app experts, like yourself, for sharing their expertise with other users in our community. We truly do lean into that domain knowledge when offering recommendations on troubleshooting! Cause while our support team is incredible, it’s impossible to know all the tricks for thousands of apps. 🙂

All that being said though, we can’t thank you enough for sharing your candid feedback with us. It helps us continue to improve and offer neat tools for ya’ll. 🤗

Happy zapping! ⚡️

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Can you please make feature request to add this link conversion into Zap system so we don't have to do the magic happening manually?

It would be a time saver and on the line of the core purpose of Zapier 👍❤️

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @Vesna!

I’d love to understand exactly what you’re looking for with this feature request. Would you like the YouTube step to automatically detect Google Drive files an convert the url? Or would you like a specific type of link to be included in the Google Drive new file trigger?

 

Thanks!

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Hello,

My youtube zap is taking the video link from Google sheet to try upload it from drive to youtube.

But it doesn't recognize it as video source, it sees it as txt data. That is because previous zap that fills the Google sheet with new videos in Google drive folder pastes In Google sheet the view link of a file and not download link.

That is why I wrote that excel formula to convert view link to download link when pasting it to Google sheet.

It would be cool and huge time saver if this converted download link would be made by zap instead of view link.

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @Vesna 

Thanks for clarifying that you’d like a download link included in the data from the Google Drive trigger. There isn’t a current feature request for that so it’s not something that I can add, but if you get in touch with the Support Team, they’ll be able to take a look and add that feature request for you. 

 

Thanks!

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Oh, but it seems you haven't seen that it actually is available. It was made known to me it is an action under Google drive named "web content" which you can see in the screenshot Zapier staff member @shalgrim posted here: 

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hey @Vesna ahh, this is great to know! Thanks coming back to share. Is there anything else we can help with on this particular thread? I see you’re still in conversation with Scott on the thread you referenced and don’t want to miss any more steps due to multiple people trying to help on separate threads. 😉

It sounds like y’all are wrapping up suggestions for a workflow you’re navigating so if there isn’t anything else we can help with on this thread, I’m going to encourage you to continue the conversation with Scott. 

Thanks again for the education and brilliant solution you shared earlier!

Userlevel 2
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Nothing in this thread anymore, you can close it. I'll continue in other thread what is left to solve.

Thank you.

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

@Vesna thanks for letting us know! Sounds good. 🙂