n8n Workflow: YouTube Thumbnails & Quote Cards from Google Drive

Turn new Google Drive videos into YouTube thumbnails & quote cards—automatically

This n8n workflow watches a specified Google Drive folder for new videos, transcribes the audio with OpenAI, generates a thumbnail headline plus pull quotes, sends everything to Canva/Canvora for visual design, and then creates a Gmail draft containing the results for review.

What this workflow does

• Detects new uploads in Google Drive: triggers when a new file is created in your chosen folder.
• Downloads and transcribes: pulls the video from Google Drive and uses OpenAI to transcribe the audio.
• Extracts visual-ready copy: uses OpenAI to produce a short thumbnail headline and three pull-quotes from the transcript, formatted into a single concept payload.
• Generates visuals with Canvora: sends the concept to the Canvora API to create a YouTube thumbnail and quote card visuals.
• Polls for completion: checks generation status, handling success, failure, or timeouts.
• Creates an approval draft in Gmail: builds an HTML review message with the generated image URLs and creates a Gmail draft including an edit link.

Use cases

• Podcast-to-YouTube repurposing: when new episodes are uploaded to Drive, automatically generate thumbnail + quote cards.
• Content teams: speed up creative review—design assets arrive in Gmail draft form instead of manual creation.
• SaaS operators: turn video uploads into consistent marketing assets with minimal operational effort.

Technical details

• Google Drive trigger for “new file created” and video download
• OpenAI for audio transcription and text extraction (headline + 3 pull-quotes)
• Canvora API integration using X-API-Key header authentication
• Polling via wait, conditional handling via if and code
• Gmail draft creation with generated image URLs for review
• Includes helper nodes such as no op and sticky note

Requirements: a free Canvora account (API keys available on all plans), plus connected Google Drive, Gmail, and OpenAI credentials.