I’m trying to use the import extension on Chrome to import a Japanese Podcast and make it a lesson, but I keep getting an error message that “the submitted file is empty”. Captions are available and on the language they are supposed to be, so I’m not sure what the problem is. This is my first time trying to import content so I’m not sure if it’s a bug with the system or that I’m doing something wrong, can anyone help?
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Me too. I’m experiencing the same problem when I wanna import an Indonesian video. I also kept getting the error message starting from yesterday. Before yesterday, It was working as usual.
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Ahh so hopefully it is just a bug that will be fixed soon, maybe i just have bad timing. Luckily it will be a while until i have the skill level to make use of the podcast anyway (i was just experimenting with the system), I’ll just hope its fixed by then
This problem started yesterday. I use the LingQ web browser extension to import about 2 YouTube videos per day, and I have only had this problem yesterday and today.
I don’t think that the LingQ extension has changed, so YouTube must have changed something to break things for the extension.
Hopefully LingQ can quickly find a way to make a fix for YouTube’s changes.
In the meantime, if you can independently download the subtitles from YouTube (I use JDownloader 2), then you can use the “Import” button near the top of a typical LingQ web page, select “Lesson”, supply the subtitle file, and a thumbnail (also downloaded with JDownloader), and links, and manually fill in all the details (yes, it’s a lot more work). And you can generate a lesson that way. That’s what I’m doing right now. But I do it to share the lessons with others, so it’s worth the effort.
Note: Even JDownloader is having a little trouble downloading files from YouTube. I had to try 3 times before it was able to find the subtitle file with the good creator-provided subtitles. The first 2 times it could only find the YouTube auto-generated subtitles, which are horrible.
Can you guys please share some video URL’s you have a problem with? Thanks!
Thank you for the immediate response Mr. Zoran. I also tried for other videos as well, but even other videos can not be imported smoothly. Here is one example(the link that I want to import) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3jbQKAcFNg&t=7s
Same happens when trying to upload the Podcast I am always uploading: https://youtu.be/dM6fPja2Oig?si=oiQpTH_pJyojMIzz
if you have multiple yt accounts try switching account, that worked for me.
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No, i only have one account that i use for everything 
Thank you so much for sharing this. It worked for me as well. 
Nonetheless, I hope it will be fixed soon, as I have a dedicated YouTube channel for each language which I built over years.
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Thanks everyone, we will have it fixed.
This is the main one i was trying to import
Same (for Korean tho), I can’t import anything from youtube without getting an error message like “unavailable” or “the item is empty” when I have imported lots before! Hopefully it gets fixed soon!
I’ve also had problems with importing YouTube videos since about 5 days ago. The lessons will import ok but without audio. My old imported lessons still work. I think YouTube changed something on their end. I tried to download the audio myself to import it into the lesson but that doesn’t work anymore.
$ yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 "https://youtu.be/uixjTMhE1e4?si=3Q0FgOcyM7UqDUnL"
[youtube] Extracting URL: https://youtu.be/uixjTMhE1e4?si=3Q0FgOcyM7UqDUnL
[youtube] uixjTMhE1e4: Downloading webpage
[youtube] uixjTMhE1e4: Downloading ios player API JSON
[youtube] uixjTMhE1e4: Downloading android player API JSON
[youtube] uixjTMhE1e4: Downloading player b2858d36
WARNING: [youtube] uixjTMhE1e4: nsig extraction failed: You may experience throttling for some formats
n = IdVWbi0GCkxWooyh ; player = https://www.youtube.com/s/player/b2858d36/player_ias.vflset/en_US/base.js
[info] uixjTMhE1e4: Downloading 1 format(s): 18
ERROR: unable to download video data: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
Thanks everyone, we are working on this and trying to figure it out.
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Just wanted to report back on the YouTube audio issue - I was able to successfully import a lesson a few moments ago. Hopefully everyone else in the thread can confirm whether the other import issues are resolved.
Edit: I discovered the audio would fail to import because I was importing a video from a playlist. If I opened the video itself in its own tab (minus the playlist), it imported just fine. I was also able to download the audio with yt-dlp with this workaround.
Thanks!
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I am having the same issue. I have imported some videos from YT and now I am asked to generate audio lessons for each one of them separately.
Until yesterday, It used to be automatically done upon importing using the addon.
Same issue here. Youtube imported video lessons don’t provide any more possibility to see the video.
@berilo1 This is related to reaching the transcription limit mentioned on the other thread you were included in.