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I'm in a situation where I'm trying to add about ~4,000 videos to a YouTube playlist. With the cost-based quota system I can only add about 200 a day, which puts me at about three weeks for this project. Also the list of videos I need to add will continue to grow until I finalize the playlist as it is somewhat submission-based.

Is there some other endpoint I'm missing that would allow for the bulk addition of videos to a single playlist with a lower overall cost? Otherwise, what I'm mostly interest is learning if it possible to pay for a one-off increase and get one day of high quota points? The application for expansion seems to be for More Official Projects and not just someone trying to avoid doing this all manually.

I'm also still a little confused about some aspects of the cost-based quotas as on the dashboard it says I'm allocated 1.8mm per minute, which seems incongruent against the 10k per day limit.

If it matters, I have all of the ids of the videos in both a plaintext document and as a csv if one works better than the other.

halfer
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kittyray
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2 Answers2

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Ever wondered how to do that in a single request without using any quota?

Go on your playlist by using the well-known YouTube interface: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAYLIST_ID

Click on ⁞, then click Add videos, type in the search bar (of Video search) a video id, noted YOUR_VIDEO_ID. Then select a suggested video.

Open the Network tab of your web-browser by using Ctrl + Shift + E (on Firefox) and filter XHR requests. Make sure to tick Persist Logs checkbox.

Now click on Add videos.

You should see a request to edit_playlist, copy it as cURL (by right-clicking). Change at the end:

"actions":[{"addedVideoId":"YOUR_VIDEO_ID","action":"ACTION_ADD_VIDEO"}]

to:

"actions":[{"addedVideoId":"YOUR_VIDEO_ID_0","action":"ACTION_ADD_VIDEO"}, {"addedVideoId":"YOUR_VIDEO_ID_1","action":"ACTION_ADD_VIDEO"}, ..., {"addedVideoId":"YOUR_VIDEO_ID_3999","action":"ACTION_ADD_VIDEO"}]

Where YOUR_VIDEO_ID_0 is your YOUR_VIDEO_ID and YOUR_VIDEO_ID_1 the second video you want to add to the playlist and so forth. Don't modify ACTION_ADD_VIDEO.

Execute the modified cURL request in a terminal and that's it! It works.

Note: YouTube playlist are limited to up to 5,000 videos don't go higher than that or you would receive the error Maximum playlist size exceeded.

Benjamin Loison
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  • Only 50 videos can be done at a time. I mapped all 2500 of my videos to individual CURL requests inside a shell script, then just ran the shell script. Voila. Thanks for the help Benjamin! – Riveascore Feb 28 '23 at 19:12
  • [I confirm](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8wZFyWE1ZaJwtCN9YksMIzpP9XSwbWjc) that my answer works for at least 4,000 videos with a single request. Thanks to this Python code `pyperclip.copy('","action":"ACTION_ADD_VIDEO"},{"addedVideoId":"'.join(['e0Ajl1dCPQo' for i in range(4000)]))` and [this curl argument](https://stackoverflow.com/a/54091092). – Benjamin Loison Mar 01 '23 at 17:06
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Is there some other endpoint I'm missing that would allow for the bulk addition of videos to a single playlist with a lower overall cost?

No there is not. Even batching is not going to change the cost of the request. Im acutally not sure if the YouTube api even supports the batching endpoint.

I found a note in the change log march-11,2015 that says it is supported but i cant find any docs. Its still not going to help you as it doesn't change quota cost.

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Otherwise, what I'm mostly interest is learning if it possible to pay for a one-off increase and get one day of high quota points?

Not one off, but you should consider applying for a quota extension. The initial 10k quota is designed for development and testing. Its not meant for large scale applications running in production.

I'm also still a little confused about some aspects of the cost-based quotas as on the dashboard it says I'm allocated 1.8mm per minute, which seems incongruent against the 10k per day limit.

each request costs something against your daily allotted quota.

Linda Lawton - DaImTo
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  • Thank you! This is technically still testing. I plan to use it for this one project to compile all these videos and then never again. I don't have a website or anything associated it, so I'm not sure if I'd qualify, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to try and maybe I'll use it for more things in the future. Thanks for the advice! – kittyray Apr 22 '22 at 14:02
  • You can try and ask for the extension it wont hurt – Linda Lawton - DaImTo Apr 22 '22 at 14:15