Publishing to YouTube

Zylcut can upload an export straight from your computer to your YouTube channel, with its title, description, tags and settings, from the Export page. The video goes from your computer to YouTube directly; it never passes through zylcut.com. Instagram is coming next.

Connect YouTube

You need:

• A Google account with a YouTube channel. If you have several Google accounts, use the one that owns the channel (or is a manager of a Brand Account channel).
• Zylcut, signed in to your Zylcut account.

Steps:

1. In Zylcut, open Settings (⌘, on macOS, Ctrl+, on Windows and Linux) and go to Connected Accounts.
2. Click Connect YouTube…. Google’s sign-in page opens in your browser.
3. Choose the Google account that owns your channel. If Google then asks you to choose “your account or a brand account”, choose the one your channel belongs to: a channel with its own name is often a Brand Account.
4. Google shows Google hasn’t verified this app. See the next section: choose Advanced, then Go to Zylcut (unsafe).
5. Google lists what Zylcut asks for: to see, edit and permanently delete your YouTube videos, ratings, comments and captions. Click Continue. Zylcut uses this access only to upload what you publish, add it to the playlist you pick, set its thumbnail, and delete a video when you cancel its publish.
6. The browser says YouTube is connected. Go back to Zylcut: Settings shows your channel’s name, handle and picture. If it is not the channel you meant, click Disconnect… and connect again, choosing the other account.

Zylcut keeps the sign-in on your computer, encrypted, never in a project and never on zylcut.com.

Google’s “unverified app” screen

Google reviews every app that uploads to YouTube. Until it has finished reviewing Zylcut, Google shows a warning page when you connect: Google hasn’t verified this app. This is expected while the review is pending, and it is safe to continue:

1. Click Advanced at the bottom left of the warning.
2. Click Go to Zylcut (unsafe).
3. Continue as in Connect YouTube.

While the review is pending, Google lets at most 100 people connect Zylcut, and may ask you to connect again after a while.

Why uploads are private

YouTube also audits apps that upload videos. Until Zylcut has passed that audit, YouTube makes every video uploaded from Zylcut private, whatever you choose. The queue line on the Export page shows the privacy YouTube actually applied, and says so when it differs from what you chose. Once the audit is done, Public, Unlisted and Scheduled work as chosen.

Publish a video

1. Open the project and the scene, then the Export page.
2. Choose YouTube at the top of the settings.
3. Under Video, choose Export this scene now (it exports with the Media File settings first; the YouTube 1080p and Shorts presets suit YouTube), or a file you exported before, or Choose a file….
4. Fill in the title, description, tags, category, playlist, visibility (Private, Unlisted, Public, or Scheduled with a date and time), audience (made for kids or not) and thumbnail (an image, or Use Current Frame for the frame under the playhead).
5. Click Publish. The queue on the left shows the upload, then YouTube’s processing, then Open on YouTube and Copy Link.

The details are kept with the project, per scene. Save… beside Preset keeps the visibility, tags, category, playlist and audience as a preset for the next video of a series. The section Published from this project lists what this project published, so the same cut does not go out twice by mistake; the details are also in the project’s publish.json.

• A vertical or square video of 3 minutes or less becomes a Short on YouTube.
• An upload carries on by itself after a lost connection, and after Zylcut restarts.
• Cancel during the upload leaves nothing on YouTube. Once the file has arrived, the button reads Cancel and Delete and deletes the video from your channel.

Suggest with Agent… beside Details opens a chat with a request ready to send: the agent watches the scene and writes a title, description and tags into the form (any coding agent connected to Zylcut can do the same with its publish_draft tool). Read and change them as you like, then publish. Only you can publish: no agent tool uploads anything.

Disconnect

In Settings > Connected Accounts, click Disconnect…, then Disconnect. Zylcut forgets the account on this computer and ends its access at Google. Videos you published stay on YouTube.

You can also end Zylcut’s access from Google’s side at any time: open myaccount.google.com/permissions, choose Zylcut, and remove its access. Zylcut then asks you to connect again before the next publish.

Instagram

Publishing Reels to Instagram is coming. It will need an Instagram Professional account (Business or Creator), as Instagram’s own rules require.

Troubleshooting

“This Google account has no YouTube channel”

The Google account you chose has no channel. Either create one at youtube.com (your picture, then Create a channel), or connect again and choose the account that owns your channel.

“YouTube’s daily upload allowance for Zylcut is used up”

YouTube gives each app a daily allowance of uploads, shared by everyone who uses it, and a new app’s allowance is small. It resets at midnight Pacific time: click Retry on the queue line then. Zylcut has asked YouTube for a larger allowance.

“Your channel has reached YouTube’s upload limit for today”

YouTube limits how many videos one channel can upload in a day. Retry tomorrow. Channels verified by phone at youtube.com/verify get higher limits.

“Zylcut’s access to your YouTube channel has ended”

The access was removed at myaccount.google.com/permissions, or Google ended it (while Zylcut’s review is pending, Google can end access after about 7 days). Open Settings > Connected Accounts, connect YouTube again, then click Retry on the queue line. The upload carries on.

A file or a detail is refused before upload

Zylcut checks the file and the details against YouTube’s rules before anything is uploaded, and says what to change:

• No picture, or a format YouTube does not take: export as MP4 (H.264 or HEVC), MOV or WebM.
• Longer than 12 hours, or larger than 256 GB: export a shorter range, or at a lower bitrate.
• Longer than 15 minutes: YouTube takes these only from channels verified by phone at youtube.com/verify.
• Title: required, at most 100 characters, without < or >.
• Description: at most 5,000 bytes, without < or >.
• Tags: at most 500 characters together (a tag with a space counts 2 more).
• Scheduled: the time must be in the future.

The thumbnail was not set

YouTube allows custom thumbnails only on channels verified by phone at youtube.com/verify. A thumbnail must be a JPG or PNG of at most 2 MB. The video is published either way; set the thumbnail in YouTube Studio, or verify the channel and publish again.

The upload keeps stopping

Zylcut retries a dropped connection by itself. If the queue line says the upload stopped after several tries, check your internet connection, then click Retry: the upload carries on from what YouTube already has.