1.4.6: Bug fixes, including a YouTube authentication issue

A small update fixing a problem that could happen following a failed upload attempt and an issue that caused some users not being able to authenticate with YouTube.

Partial Revert of 1.4.4 and close button fix

This update removes the requirement of a personal YouTube API key introduced in version 1.4.4. You can still use your own API client's secret if you like, see this wiki page for how.

This update also fixes a bug where the close button in some dialogs does not work

1.4.4 Personal API keys

For a couple of reasons, detailed below, will all releases before this one stop working against YouTube and all users will need to create their own API key for accessing YouTube through Stekeblads Video Uploader. (Not anymore, see edit at the end of this post) This change will take effect around the weekend 12-13 June 2021. (Exact time will depend on timezones and how fast Google's systems propagate the changes around the world.) Click here to view the wiki article about creating an API key

I have been thinking for some time that the API-key Stekeblads Video Uploader uses is not secured as well as I want it to be but I have not been able to figure out how to secure it in a way that works with how I want Stekeblads Video Uploader to be. The "best" way to secure the API key I can think of would be move much of the work from the application to a server I control and require all users to sign up for an account. I do not like that solution and here is the two biggest reasons:

• I do not want your data. What is your channel name? What videos do you upload? I do not want to know that! I do not want to be responsible for any personal information if I can avoid it. By requiring all YouTube stuff to pass through a server I control I must collect and process personal information that I currently do not have.
• Having all videos that will be uploaded passing by a server I control will be expensive. I do not make any money from Stekeblads Video Uploader. It would also be a big throttle if the number of users uploading increases without proportional scaling on the server side and a lot of work managing the servers. How much traffic am I talking about? Terabytes, maybe closer to Petabytes every day. During the last 30 days almost 400 000 videos was uploaded using Stekeblads Video Uploader! That's amazing we could reach that high!

Then someone opened a security-related issue I had to do something, I do not know if its a problem in Stekeblads Video Uploader or the bad guys just (ab)used Stekeblads Video Uploader to do their things easier. But its a part in the decision.

Recently I also noticed that the API key used by Stekeblads Video Uploader is being used by someone else without permission to attempt livestreaming to YouTube in the usage statistics provided by the Google Cloud Console. This is not OK and is another reason I had to either disable the API key or secure it and regenerate it. I did not figure how to secure it properly.

While this means there is now a step extra to climb before you can use Stekeblads Video Uploader it can now be used without me being able to see anything at all about how the program is used. The source code is all open here on GitHub and with the support to now use your own API you can now be in full control. If you do not want to trust the built releases you can clone the code, go through it, build it your self and add your API key. But please, do not redistribute my releases or the once you build yourself. Write your own program and distribute it instead.

Edit: After much investigation all I can find points to what I have done has been correct and I have decided to partially revert this update. All prior versions will still stop working around the weekend 12-13 June but during that weekend will also version 1.4.5 be released adding back support for the Stekeblads Video Uploader-key but still keeping the option to use your own API key.

1.4.3 - Minor update

Updated the YouTube API and made some preparations for an coming big update.

Fixed broken tags

This update fixes a problem with tags not working at all and was caused by my changes to how I build releases. (and me not testing enough, I will try to get better at that) It also adds support for UTF-8 (all kinds of special characters) in presets, playlist names and other parts of the program, something I thought already was supported. Finally it also contains small improvements to error messages: 1) a problem in loading settings or presets at start up was reported in a problem with the translations. 2) You should get a clearer error message if you reach your personal upload limit and YouTube decides to block you from uploading for a short time (on the scale of from a few hours to a few days).

1.4.0: Automatic Updates

This release Adds an update checker that notifies you when new versions are available. It also adds support for the new YouTube option "Made For Kids" to presets and uploads.

This time the release is out before the wiki is updated, but I will be updating it soon.

1.3.3 Reduced popups

This small release will avoid showing identical error messages. If an error is caught there will not be an error popup for it if an identical error created a popup less then 15 seconds ago. This was needed as some type of errors happens once for every video and no one do not want to spend a minute on closing popups. The release also attempts to fix issue #10

1.3.2 Another small update

This release attempt to fix Issue #9: If the daily quota limit gets reached there should now only be one dialog popping up and all active uploads will be aborted (instead of one dialog per queued video). In the dialog that opens there will also be information about when the limit gets reset converted into your timezone.

There is also a little more error handling. The bugs are still there, but in more cases there should be a popup with error information that make it easier for me to find and fix them and informing the user that something went wrong instead of letting them wait on something that will never happen.

Version 1.3.1 Fixes some big problems

In version 1.3 I tried updating the YouTube API version the program uses and that broke things, like most of the things that involves YouTube. I am sorry for that!

I did actually do tests runs for 1.3 but because I had been hitting my daily limit against YouTube that day and the last few days I assumed it was the reason the tests failed without any real error messages.

This time I can tell you that this release passed my testing, both outside of my development environment and even on another computer.

Version 1.3 and File Meta Data

Unlike the pre-release of version 1.3, Stekeblads Video Uploader is still using java 8

The big features of this release is the introduction of the
$(metadata)-tag and the related Meta Data Tool

Minor changes include that some windows now remember their last size and position on screen.

There is also alot of internal changes and most of them you will not notice so I will not write about them.
(If you are interested you can look in the commit messages and the changes made in them.)
One change that is worth to tell about is that the process of applying presets is now performed in a background
thread just like the uploading so if you noticed a lag spike when applying presets to alot of videos at once it should not happen anymore.
There is also now a progress indicator next to the settings button when presets is being applied.