YouTube to Anchor.fm - An automation tool to publish your podcast

This action will upload an audio file from a given YouTube video automatically to your Anchor.fm account.

It is very useful in a scenario where you have a YouTube account and also a podcast over Spotify, Anchor.fm, Play Music, iTunes etc.

In our live show (Schrodinger Hat) we had this necessity. So we built it for the open source community.

Every contribution it is appreciated, also a simple feedback.

How it works

The action will start every time you push a change on the episode.json file. Into this file you need to specify the YouTube id of your video.

The action uses a docker image built over Ubuntu. It takes some time to setup the environment before runnign the script.

NOTE: in order for the script to run its necessary for there to be at least one episode already published on anchorFM manually, because on a brand new anchor fm account the steps to publish are bit different, it asks questions about the channel.

How can I use this as a Github action?

You can use the latest version of this action from the GitHub Actions marketplace.

In your repository root directory you should add a episode.json file containing your YouTube video id, e.g:

{
  "id": "nHCXZC2InAA"
}

Then you can add under the .github/workflows directory this yml:

name: 'Upload Episode from YouTube To Anchor.Fm'

on:
  push:
    paths: 
      - episode.json
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  upload_episode:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Upload Episode from YouTube To Anchor.Fm
        uses: Schrodinger-Hat/youtube-to-anchorfm@v2.0.0
        env:
          ANCHOR_EMAIL: ${{ secrets.ANCHOR_EMAIL }}
          ANCHOR_PASSWORD: ${{ secrets.ANCHOR_PASSWORD }}
          EPISODE_PATH: /github/workspace

NOTE: you need to set up the secrets for ANCHOR_EMAIL and ANCHOR_PASSWORD. This environment variables are mandatory as they specify the sign in account.

How can I setup for development and use the script locally?

To run the script locally, you need python3 and ffmpeg to be avaliable in PATH which are used by the npm dependency youtube-dl-exec.

Clone the repository and run npm ci to install the exact dependencies that are specified in package-lock.json.

After that, you can edit episode.json that is located at the root of this repository. It is recommended to specify the id of a short youtube video in episode.json for testing.

Then, make sure to setup your .env file in the root of this repository so you can put the environment variables that you normaly specify in the Github action YAML file.

To do that, you can copy .env.sample into a file with name .env.

Make sure to specify the mandatory environment variables for logging in to Anchorfm, ANCHOR_EMAIL and ANCHOR_PASSWORD.

Finally, you can do npm start to execute the script.

How to upload a YouTube playlist to Anchorfm using this script?

Currently, you can process a full playlist (one way only) with

curl https://scc-youtube.vercel.app/playlist-items/PLoXdlLuaGN8ShASxcE2A4YuSto3AblDmX \
    | jq '.[].contentDetails.videoId' -r \
    | tac \
    | xargs -I% bash -c "jo id='%' > episode.json && git commit -am % && git push"

https://scc-youtube.vercel.app/playlist-items is from https://github.com/ThatGuySam/youtube-json-server

jo is a json generator https://github.com/jpmens/jo

tac is a command present in most linux distributions and on mac with brew install coreutils. Its from reversing the list from older to newer. Remove if you want to upload in the order presented on YouTube.

jq is a json processor https://stedolan.github.io/jq/

This must be run on the folder where your episode.json is.

Environment variables

Draft Mode

By setting the SAVE_AS_DRAFT, the new episode will be published as a draft. This can be useful if you need someone else's approval before actual publication.

env:
   SAVE_AS_DRAFT: true

Audio conversion options

ffmpeg is used to convert the video to MP3. It's possible to pass arguments to ffmpeg with POSTPROCESSOR_ARGS environment variable.

See -postprocessor-args syntax and options on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#post-processing-options.

The example below convert the video to mono audio.

env:
   POSTPROCESSOR_ARGS: "ffmpeg:-ac 1"

Explicit Mode

By setting the IS_EXPLICIT, the new episode will be marked as explicit.

env:
   IS_EXPLICIT: true

Thumbnail Mode

By setting the LOAD_THUMBNAIL, the new episode will include the video thumbnail as the episode art.

env:
   LOAD_THUMBNAIL: true

Add YouTube URL to Podcast Description

By setting the URL_IN_DESCRIPTION, the Podcast description will include the YouTube URL on a new line at the end of the description. It is recommended to set it, for if the YouTube video has no description it will fail to save the new episode. Setting it to true guarantees to always have a description.

env:
   URL_IN_DESCRIPTION: true

Set a publish date for the episode

By setting SET_PUBLISH_DATE, the new episode can be scheduled for publishing the episode on the date that the youtube video is uploaded. Please note that the scheduling will work if SAVE_AS_DRAFT is not set, because Anchofm doesn't store publish date for draft episodes. If SET_PUBLISH_DATE is not set, then Anchorfm will choose the current date for publishing.