How to Add Videos from YouTube to Google Drive
Storing and sharing videos is a core need for many YouTube creators and businesses. While YouTube offers unparalleled reach for video distribution, Google Drive provides more flexibility for organizing, edititing, and controlling access to video files.
Fortunately, it‘s simple to integrate the two platforms to get the best of both worlds. This guide will walk through the major benefits, options, and best practices for managing video workflows between YouTube and Google Drive.
Benefits of Storing Videos in Google Drive
Before diving into the how-to aspects, let‘s explore why you may want to upload YouTube videos to Google Drive in the first place:
- Easier search and organization capabilities for managing lots of videos
- More control over sharing permissions and privacy settings
- Ability to continue editing video files before final upload to YouTube
- Integration with wider Google Workspace ecosystem and related productivity apps
- Offline playback capability for times of unreliable internet connectivity
For creators producing a high volume of video content, the enhanced content management capabilities of Google Drive make it an essential companion tool to YouTube.
Drive also offers essentially unlimited storage for videos, with uploaded video files counting only partly towards your overall storage limit. For creators running into YouTube video quota restrictions, offloading files into Drive can save the day.
Uploading Google Drive Videos to YouTube
Now let‘s get into the nitty gritty details of actually transferring videos between the two platforms. We‘ll start with pushing new video files from Google Drive up to your YouTube channel.
Option 1: Manually Upload via YouTube Studio
The most straightforward method is to simply manually download the video file from Drive, then head to YouTube Studio and upload as usual. But that process can grow tedious fast.
For larger channels producing lots of content, manual video uploads don‘t scale well. Fortunately there are tools to help automate this process.
Option 2: Zapier (For Automating Workflows)
Zapier offers a handy Google Drive + YouTube integration for automatically uploading new videos from Drive to YouTube as soon as they‘re added.
The platform lets you build "Zaps" to connect triggers from one app to automatic actions in another. So in this case, when a new video file lands in your specified Google Drive folder, Zapier detects that trigger event and fires off a YouTube upload action automatically in the background.
Using Zapier to automatically upload Google Drive videos to YouTube
I recommend Zapier for anyone looking to streamline frequent video content workflows between Drive and YouTube. It only takes minutes to setup but saves tons of tedious manual work over the long haul.
Option 3: Chrome Extensions
There are also a couple handy Chrome extensions that enable one-click video transfers from Google Drive to YouTube:
- Drive to YouTube – Simple drag-and-drop uploading
- Google Drive Upload – Also includes batch uploading features
While perhaps not as fully-featured as Zapier, these extensions provide a quick way to manually push Google Drive videos to YouTube when needed.
Saving YouTube Videos to Google Drive
We‘ve covered how to upload local video files from Google Drive to YouTube. Now let‘s flip directions and explore options for downloading existing YouTube videos into Google Drive for storage and management.
Method 1: Save to Drive Button
YouTube provides a simple "Save to Drive" option for storing copies of video files from within the YouTube platform itself.
To use it, just navigate to the video you wish to save, click the "More" drop-down menu below the video frame, and select "Save to Drive":
Using YouTube‘s "Save to Drive" option
This will generate a copy of the video file in your Google Drive account associated with the logged-in YouTube account. Easy!
One limitation however is that it only works for public YouTube videos. Unlisted or private video files can‘t be downloaded with this method.
Method 2: Chrome Extensions
For downloading any YouTube video, public or private, your best bet is to use browser extensions built specifically for this purpose.
Here are some solid Chrome extensions to check out:
- Video DownloadHelper – Very full-featured tool for grabbing videos from all major platforms.
- Y2Mate – Specialized for YouTube downloads. Lets you select video quality.
- KeepVid – Another solid YouTube downloader option.
These tools will detect when you‘re on a YouTube video page and provide quick one-click options for downloading the video file directly into your Google Drive account. Much easier than manually saving copies to a local folder before uploading to Drive.
Tips for Managing Videos in Google Drive
To wrap up this guide on integrating YouTube and Google Drive for video management, here are some tips for organizing, sharing and embedding your video collection using Google Drive:
Create a Dedicated Video Folder
I recommend keeping all your YouTube-related video files in a single clearly-named Google Drive folder like "YouTube Videos". Treat this as the central repository linking projects in Drive and YouTube.
From there you can create sub-folders for organizing by categories, video series, channels, or whatever system makes sense for your needs.
Adjust Sharing Settings
A key benefit of Drive is being able share video files selectively and keep certain videos private outside of YouTube.
When uploading videos intended strictly for public YouTube distribution, make sure your Google Drive sharing permission is set to "Anyone with the link can view".
But for videos needing to remain private, choose "Only people explicitly granted permission can access" and manually add collaborators as needed.
This gives you added flexibility in controlling video visibility beyond the binary public/private settings in YouTube.
Get Embed Codes for Outside Sites
To embed Drive-hosted videos into external websites and blogs, navigate to the video file in Drive and select "Embed item" from the "More actions" menu.
This will generate an <iframe> embed code for that video to paste into any site builder or HTML editor.
So in addition to hosting videos bound for YouTube, Google Drive can serve as a simple cloud hosting solution for videos you need to display on any other sites as well.
Comparing Video Storage Limits Between Drive and YouTube
One final consideration is comparing the technical limitations around video uploads and storage in YouTube vs. Google Drive
YouTube places a cap on the total amount of video you can store:
- Up to 15 minutes total for new accounts
- Up to 500 hours for established accounts in good standing
Google Drive however measures storage by file size only, with videos counting substantially less against your quota than other files.
Specifically, every 1 GB of video uploaded to Drive counts as just 130 MB towards your account limit.
So unless you‘re uploading feature films, it‘s essentially unlimited storage for most typical YouTube-style videos.
There are also differences in the maximum file size allowed. YouTube sets hard limits of:
- 128 GB for videos under 15 minutes
- 256 GB for longer videos eligible for streaming
Meanwhile Google Drive caps individual file uploads at 5 TB — over 19 times higher than YouTube‘s current limits!
So if you‘re looking for expanded capacity for storing very long videos at high resolutions, Google Drive has a big edge over native YouTube tools.
Conclusion
Integrating Google Drive into your YouTube video management workflows unlocks huge benefits for organization, editing, sharing and storage flexibility.
Uploading existing videos from Drive to YouTube takes just a few clicks either manually or automatically. And downloading back archived YouTube videos into cloud-based Google Drive allows much easier long-term file management compared to desktop folders and hard drives.
I encourage all video creators to connect these two platforms to save time and unlock the unique advantages offered by both Google Drive and YouTube!
