Two different bars
A video can fail to publish for two completely different reasons, and telling them apart saves a lot of time.
- It is not whole. Something required is missing. This is checked automatically, every time, and the Publish area lists exactly what is unmet.
- It is whole, but publishing it unattended is a known risk. Nothing is broken; the system is waiting for a person on purpose.
The full, authoritative list of both is in the app: what makes a video publishable. What follows is the short version.
1. Is it whole?
- Processing has finished. A run still in flight would overwrite whatever you published.
- It has lines. A video with no lines has nothing to learn from.
- Every line has real timestamps. A missing or zero start or stop makes the line unplayable. The check names the offending line numbers.
- It has a YouTube id, a title, a language and a non-zero duration.
If one of these is unmet, the fix is on the edit page or the setup page, and the message says which.
2. Why it is being held for a person
Each of these is a reason the run records, and the editor shows it as a sentence that says what to do:
- This language always needs a human. Our line-breaking is not trustworthy for that language yet, so nothing in it publishes automatically. Everything else was generated — check the lines and publish by hand.
- The transcript failed the quality check — it stopped part-way, looped, or has degenerate timings. Compare the other candidates and pick a better one.
- No usable transcript / none selected / the selected one was empty — choose a candidate or paste lines, then let it continue.
- A song needs a manual transcript. Machine transcripts of singing are unreliable, so music never publishes off one unchecked.
- The song's transcript was rejected by the lyrics check — an automatic comparison against published synced lyrics judged it not good enough. Its score and notes are in the lyrics-check panel.
- No synced lyrics were found, or the lyrics service was unreachable — there was nothing to compare against. Neither says the transcript is bad; review it yourself.
- The song may be instrumental — published data says the track has no vocals and we transcribed lyrics anyway, so either the transcript is invented or the wrong track was matched.
- Flagged for manual review — the run finished, but a person is meant to see the transcript it chose.
- Publishing itself failed — everything passed and the publish step errored. Usually transient; try publishing by hand.
Publishable is not the same as good
Nothing above asks whether lines break sensibly, whether the translations read like English, or whether the difficulty is right. Those are the rest of the guidelines, and they are what review is for. A video can clear every check above and still be bad.
If you cannot publish
Use Submit for review — see How to submit your changes for review.