Support

Support is handled by one person, by email. Write to ethan@buildtuber.com and you will normally get a reply within a day or two. There is no ticket queue and no chat widget, so the email is the whole system.

Before you write, the sections below cover setup and the problems that come up most often. Most reports turn out to be one of them.

Setting up the add-on

The product is a Google Sheet you copy into your own Google account, driven from a sidebar, plus a Colab notebook that renders the final MP4. Setup runs once.

1. Copy the Sheet to your own Google account.
2. Open the sidebar from the BuildTuber menu.
3. Paste your Gemini, ElevenLabs and Runware API keys into the CONFIG sheet. Each key stays in your own Sheet and is sent only to the provider it belongs to.
4. Upload three reference images in the sidebar: one of your character, plus two frames that contain that character.
5. Click Build Style Profile, which reads those images into a reusable style.
6. Add a video title in the sidebar, paste your narration into the STORYBOARD sheet one scene per row, then click Generate Video Assets.

The README tab inside the Sheet carries the same steps plus a quick-start, and it travels with your copy, so it stays available offline from this page.

The first five videos are free

You can run the add-on end to end without a licence key for your first five videos. The sidebar shows how many are left. Leave the LICENSE row in the CONFIG sheet blank until you want to remove the cap, then paste the key from your purchase into it and click Activate.

The count is by video, not by day, and follow-up work on a video you already started does not spend another slot.

Problems that come up most

A provider rejects the key

The three keys are separate accounts with separate billing. A key that is valid but has no credit on it fails the same way a wrong key does. Check the balance on the provider's own dashboard first: Google AI Studio for Gemini, and the billing page on ElevenLabs and Runware.

Gemini specifically needs billing enabled on the Google Cloud project behind the key. A key created without it will work for some calls and fail on others, which reads like an intermittent bug and is not one.

Frames come back weak, or wrong

Use per-scene redo rather than regenerating the batch. Tick the rows you want and regenerate only those. If a whole run looks off, the style profile is usually the cause: rebuild it from clearer reference images, where the character is large in frame and lit plainly.

A run stops partway

Apps Script caps how long one execution may run, so a long video is processed across several passes and each stage keeps its own checkpoint. Re-running resumes from where it stopped rather than starting over.

That also means a re-run does not bill you twice. The storyboard stage skips rows that already hold a prompt, so Gemini is not called again for them, and the frames stage skips frames already marked DONE, so Runware is not called again either.

The render notebook fails in Colab

The notebook is driven by one value: the Render ID you copy from the sidebar once a video shows Render DONE. Paste it into Step 1 and run the cells in order. Nearly every failure at this point is one of two things.

Either the Render ID is missing or belongs to a different video, in which case Step 1 stops immediately. Or Step 2 authorised a different Google account from the one that owns the Sheet, so the frames and audio are not visible to it. Re-run Step 2 and pick the account that owns the Sheet.

Costs are not what you expected

BuildTuber adds no markup and never handles your provider spend. Every charge is billed to you by Google, ElevenLabs or Runware directly, at their rates, and the MODELS tab shows the per-model cost the Sheet is using. If a figure there is stale against the provider's current price, edit it: it is a field, not a constant.

Reporting a problem

Send it to ethan@buildtuber.com. A report that includes the following is usually answered in one reply instead of three:

• What you clicked, and what happened instead of what you expected.
• The exact error text, copied rather than described.
• Which stage it failed at: prompts, frames, voiceover, render plan, or the Colab render.
• Roughly how many scenes are in the video.

Do not send API keys, and do not paste them into a screenshot. Nothing in a support reply needs them, and a key in an email is a key you have to go and rotate.

Your data

What the add-on reads, what leaves your account, and which provider receives what is set out in full on the privacy page, including each provider's own position on training models with API input.

Billing, licences and refunds

Purchases are handled by Whop, which issues your licence key and your receipt. Access questions, lost keys and payment problems are quickest through the Whop account you bought with. The refund position is on the terms page.

BuildTuber does not process payments and never sees your card details.