Error on "Read Binary Files" node, File size is greater than 2 GB

[forsalebypwner]

Hello! I am new to using n8n, I am self-hosting and using n8n via docker. I am trying to run a workflow with the end goal of uploading a video to YouTube. In all of the examples I see for the YouTube node, the “Read Binary File” node must precede the YouTube node in order to upload. My workflow is failing on the “Read Binary Files” node with the error “ERROR: File size (5632971432) is greater than 2 GB”. The file is indeed ~5.6GB, my question is: is there any way around this file size limit? Is this documented anywhere? I was unable to find anything about this limit. Is there another way to use the YouTube node that doesn’t involve the “Read Binary Files” node?

Thanks in advance!

[RicardoE105]

Welcome to the community @forsalebypwner

Where is the file? If you are trying to grab the file from the same machine where you are running n8n, you have to use the read binary file.

The 2GB size limitation it’s the NodeJS max file size by default. Not sure if this can be overridden. @jan might have a better insight.

ERROR: Cannot create a string longer than 0x3fffffe7 characters

Yes, that will currently not be possible with n8n. The reason is the design. It was simply never written to handle huge files. That is maybe something that will change in the future but that would require a bigger refactor. Technical explanation. All data in n8n gets saved as JSON. All binary data gets converted to base64 and so also saved as a string. The maximum size of a string in Node.js is 1GB. Considering that base64 increases the file size, does it mean that the maximum file size n8n can…

Javascript Read large files failed

What's the maximum size of a Node.js Buffer

[jan]

No nothing can be changed. The answer I gave in the post you linked above explains the current limitations.