How to use Google Spreadsheets to make videos in bulk

In this guide, I’ll show you how you can use a Rocketium powered Google Spreadsheet to make videos in bulk.

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Before we begin, you would need an API access token to make videos. To get your token, click here. You’ll then see the ‘API’ option as soon as you finish creating an account.

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Once your access token is generated, we will create the Google Spreadsheet for you. It looks something like this:

Terminology

Before we begin, let us get familiarised with a few terms:

1. Video title: This is your video’s name. Use it to search for particular videos.
2. Theme: This is the theme that will be applied to your video.
3. Video link: This is the .mp4 URL of your video. Use this link to save videos to your local/cloud storage.
4. Image link: This is the .png URL of your image. Use this link to save videos to your local/cloud storage.
5. GIF link: This is the .gif URL of your image. Use this link to save videos to your local/cloud storage.
6. Error: All error messages are displayed here. I’ve explained these messages in detail below.
7. Text-formatting: The text in your videos can be formatted. You can add bold, italic, and other features.

How to use Google Spreadsheets to make videos in bulk

Step 1: Enter video title in column A

Step 2: Select a theme from the drop-down

Step 3: Jump to column J to add media files

You can ignore columns C through I for now. These will be auto-filled with the URL of the video Rocketium generates.

Your video content starts from column J. Each video scene can have only one image/video footage but multiple captions. Paste the URL of the media file in this column and use the columns on the right to add text captions. Each column represents one caption.

To add a new scene, just add the URL of the media file for the next scene.

Step 4: Go to column C and select ‘yes’

After you have finalised your content and your video is ready to be generated, go to column C and type in ‘yes’.

Tip: Drag the ‘yes’ to generate multiple videos at once.

Step 5: Run the video generation script

Look for the ‘Rocketium’ in the Google Spreadsheet options (next to ‘Help’). Click on it and select ‘Video’ > ‘Create Videos’. You will get a pop-up confirming how many videos are created.

To get the video URLs, go to the same Rocketium > Video option and select ‘Fetch videos’. The video URLs will be populated in column F automatically.

How to use Google Spreadsheets to make gifs and images in bulk

The steps above are exactly the same to generate gifs and images in bulk. However, in step 5, you would select Rocketium > GIF or Rocketium > Image to generate gifs and images respectively.

Text formatting cheat sheet

The text in your video can have certain styles like bold, italic, bumpers, etc. Follow this cheat sheet to implement text formatting to your captions.

• Bold: To highlight or bold a piece of text, enclose it within <strong> and </strong>. Example: <strong>Hey Kevin!</strong> will give the output: Hey Kevin! in the video.
• Italic: To italicise a piece of text, enclose it within <i> and </i>. Example: ‘<i>Mega</i> sale’ will give the output: ‘Mega sale’ in the video.
• Bumper: If you want a piece of text or a caption to stay visible throughout the scene, enclose it within (). Example: (Christmas Offers).
• Heading: Sometimes, you would like to add a heading to your video. This increases its size and gives the text more emphasis. To add a heading, enclose it within <h1> and </h1>. Example: <h1>50%</h1>.
• Line break: To add a line break, DO NOT press the Enter key. Use <br> instead. Example: ‘Congratulations!<br> You win’.

Error messages and what they mean

It is possible to run into some errors during this entire process. All error messages are populated in column I, marked ‘Error’.

• Unknown theme selected: This error occurs when you’ve either misspelt the theme (column B) or if the theme you’ve chosen does not exist. To fix this, go back to column B and check the spelling.
• Enter key was pressed in text in column..: This error occurs when you accidently press the Enter key while writing your text captions. To add a new line, you have to write <br>. Enter key is not recognized.
• Text in column should start with ( and end with ): This happens when you’ve missed either a ( or a ) in your caption. To fix this, go back to the column and re-check it.
• You do not have access to the selected theme: This happens when you are trying to access a theme that does not belong to you. To fix this, just check which Google account you’re logged in by clicking your profile picture in the top right of the Google Sheets.

Conclusion

By enabling users to make videos from Google Sheets, Rocketium has successfully reduced the production cost, time and manual effort needed to make videos in bulk.

You don’t need design experience, you don’t need to hire expensive agencies or video editors, and you certainly don’t need to wait for days to review and produce videos.

Some of the industries and use-cases that have already implemented this solution are:

• E-commerce: To make product videos of every listing, cart abandon videos, season greetings, and personalised videos for ALL their users. Check out some sample videos here.
• Real Estate: To make videos for every open house or new properties added to the list, personalised videos for ALL users, and to make follow-up video campaigns for video tours and property visits. Check out some sample videos here.
• Online food delivery: To make videos for every restaurant and dish that is either newly added to their list or is existing from before, to make personalised offer videos, and video ads in bulk for A/B testing. Check out some sample videos here.