[HN Gopher] Archived YouTube Video Finder
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       Archived YouTube Video Finder
        
       Author : pabs3
       Score  : 138 points
       Date   : 2023-11-11 08:20 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (findyoutubevideo.thetechrobo.ca)
 (TXT) w3m dump (findyoutubevideo.thetechrobo.ca)
        
       | jchw wrote:
       | I know there are probably a ton of much more academic use cases
       | for this kind of tool, but for me personally, I'm mostly
       | interested to use it to figure out what exactly got removed from
       | a playlist (or liked videos or etc.) because it always bothers me
       | when I can't remember what's no longer there.
        
         | causality0 wrote:
         | Yes. I always feel violated when a Liked video or a Watch Later
         | video is suddenly gone without even the video title available.
        
           | j45 wrote:
           | I almost feel like I should have a backup of my BB liked or
           | saved videos
        
             | flir wrote:
             | A dash of yt-dlp and a cron job. If you've got a media
             | server, it's the way to go for subscribing to content
             | you're interested in.
        
               | avhon1 wrote:
               | The tricky bit is that you have to get your youtube
               | cookie in order for yt-dlp to get your own liked videos.
               | I expect it to be a lot more LoC to authenticate and get
               | the cookie than to do everything else (which is a one-
               | liner in yt-dlp), so I just do it manually once in a
               | while.                 yt-dlp -f
               | "best[height<=480][fps<=30]"+bestaudio --cookies
               | cookies.txt --download-archive archive.txt --all-subs
               | --embed-subs --embed-metadata --merge-output-format mkv
               | --sponsorblock-mark all -o "%(channel)s/(%(upload_date)s)
               | %(fulltitle)s.%(ext)s"
               | "https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=LL"
        
               | flir wrote:
               | I solved this by making my own "To watch..." playlist
               | which was available to anyone who had the link.
               | 
               | But I'm one of those "solve the unstable server by
               | rebooting it once a day" guys, so...
        
               | crtasm wrote:
               | If you're logged in on a browser on the same machine you
               | can use the --cookies-from-browser option instead of a
               | cookies.txt
        
             | kmfrk wrote:
             | I recently found ytdl-sub which is basically a metadata
             | wrapper around yt-dlp to help you save videos in a format
             | library software like Plex etc supports. Rather than having
             | some horribly named videos with metadata files just taking
             | up space.
             | 
             | https://github.com/jmbannon/ytdl-sub
        
             | progman32 wrote:
             | There's also tube archivist, which is a whole archival
             | front end and back end. Bit more complicated to set up but
             | once you do, you also get a nice web UI of your videos that
             | is similar to YouTube. It even shows comments.
        
         | tech234a wrote:
         | Filmot has a userscript for this that searches their archive
         | for metadata and shows thumbnails from the Wayback Machine:
         | https://filmot.com/moresearch
        
       | preciousoo wrote:
       | I've been looking for something like this for years.
       | 
       | > If you don't have the link, this site won't help you.
       | 
       | Nvm.
        
         | SushiHippie wrote:
         | https://archive.org/details/movies?tab=collection
         | 
         | You can search the internet archive directly though
        
       | jaimehrubiks wrote:
       | YouTube recently deleted a video of mine for violating their ToS
       | (my video just showcased a YouTube DL UI I built). I'm super sad
       | because somehow I did not have a backup as I expected it to last
       | forever in YouTube. I miss the video and it seems it's not
       | archived anywhere
        
         | ApolloFortyNine wrote:
         | It's almost definitely in Google takeout if you select your
         | YouTube videos.
         | 
         | But also losing something small like that is a small price to
         | pay for ensuring what you truly care about (photos/documents)
         | are truly backed up.
        
         | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
         | But didn't you get involved in youtube-dl tooling knowing that
         | nothing can be assumed to last forever in youtube?
        
       | sandyarmstrong wrote:
       | How timely! Just the other day I was looking for an old
       | conference talk I was involved in, that for some reason had been
       | taken down from YouTube. It was a decent amount of work even
       | finding a link to convince myself it had ever existed.
       | 
       | Fortunately, the Wayback Machine had a copy at decent resolution.
       | 
       | Thanks for sharing. <3
        
       | IAmNotACellist wrote:
       | Cultural rot caused by YouTube taking down old videos is a
       | serious problem.
       | 
       | There was a YouTube channel I was following for about 15 years,
       | of an older woman who had pet foxes. Her health started declining
       | and she always had on her channel something like, "I'll leave
       | these videos up forever." She passed away and YouTube deleted all
       | her content.
       | 
       | The problem is 100x worse for any political content. My YouTube
       | bookmarks from just the past few years is a graveyard of
       | information that's not convenient to have around. It's even true
       | for politics-related jokes, songs, and memes. They seem to be
       | selected for deletion more often than not, within a few years.
        
         | qiine wrote:
         | I have a playlist with 285 videos, and youtube just says
         | "Unavailable videos are hidden".
         | 
         | It's the worst, I have no idea what is missing. I don't even
         | know how much is missing and I am sure the number will keep
         | increasing over time, not even sure they will bother to tell me
         | that there are missing videos at this rate.
        
           | rmwaite wrote:
           | If you view your playlist on a desktop browser you can make
           | it show you the unavailable videos in the list. Then you can
           | grab those IDs and try to find them via the Wayback Machine,
           | etc. Hope this helps.
        
             | qiine wrote:
             | hum I don't see how to do that anymore
        
               | tech234a wrote:
               | It's in the ... menu at the left.
               | 
               | Also Filmot has a userscript for this that searches their
               | archive for metadata and shows thumbnails from the
               | Wayback Machine: https://filmot.com/moresearch
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | https://github.com/bibanon/tubeup
         | 
         | Docker: https://github.com/etnguyen03/docker-tubeup
         | 
         | Content uploaded to the Internet Archive is stored as
         | <service>-<identifier>. Please don't abuse, use judiciously.
         | When in doubt, contact Patron Services (info at archive dot
         | org) prior to archival ops. They can also assist with
         | establishing a collection for multiple items if warranted. It
         | costs the Internet Archive $2/GB to store bits in perpetuity;
         | consider donating if it is within your means.
         | 
         | (content uploaded with this will be excluded by Archive search
         | due to spammers and other bad actors, you will have to
         | reference the identifier directly to access or use tools like
         | this post; anything flagged by a copyright holder using the
         | DMCA will be made unavailable, so keeping a local copy might be
         | prudent)
        
         | Dwedit wrote:
         | Now you've learned the hard way that bookmarking is not enough,
         | you need to save a local copy as well.
        
           | IAmNotACellist wrote:
           | I have, but it's not easy to share those with others, and of
           | course no one is discovering them now
        
             | genewitch wrote:
             | I hate to do the HN thing, but nextcloud has a feature to
             | use yt-dlp (or whatever), feed it a url, it will put it in
             | your folder. You can share the folder or the file, even
             | with the same URI (the hash yt gives videos, I mean).
             | 
             | I've done this by hand a lot - I have probably a half TB of
             | 480p rips from YouTube and Twitter, as well as a bunch from
             | reddit - though reddit has always been a pain in the ass.
             | 
             | I say use something like nextcloud because there's turnkey
             | Linux images available, so you only need a host that
             | supports that feature to get started. Furthermore, once you
             | have the video "local", in the future if some decentralized
             | video sharing service launches you'll be 90% of the way
             | there by merely having canonical links to content available
             | publicly.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Peertube can also do some fanciness:
               | https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use/channel-sync
        
         | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
         | What happened to the foxes.
        
         | asveikau wrote:
         | A while back there was a hacker news story about someone who
         | used AI to clean up the long lost Steely Dan song "the second
         | arrangement". I was looking for it again on YouTube and it's
         | now private, I presume thanks to a complaint from the record
         | company. (There's still a wav file out there thankfully.) I
         | feel like if the company was smart they'd put the track on all
         | the streaming services, maybe even print a 7" 45 of it (vinyl
         | boom anyone?) or include it on a Gaucho remaster... Then it
         | could make some revenue.
        
       | spandextwins wrote:
       | I always wondered how a company could offer free video hosting in
       | exchange for mining them and creating AI. Once they've been mined
       | and they know who watches them, the content becomes superfluous
       | and I suppose it can get deleted. So that is where we are now.
        
       | kmfrk wrote:
       | Does anyone have a good example video that's no longer around to
       | test with?
        
         | spondylosaurus wrote:
         | I do! Just the other day I was trying to find this:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__-NKgcRM2c
         | 
         | Tried it twice in the Archive Finder tool: first time had no
         | hits (and the Wayback Machine timed out), but the second time
         | the Wayback Machine didn't time out and returned a download
         | link for me that included an intact video file.
         | 
         | For this particular video I did find a reupload on Niconico
         | when I was originally searching
         | (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm11640795, if you're curious)
         | but the archive finder tool is a game-changer.
        
         | az226 wrote:
         | Not archived across the board for a video I tried.
        
       | c_s_guy wrote:
       | Interestingly, my YouTube playlists now say "unavailable videos
       | are hidden" so I can't get the link.
        
       | edgineer wrote:
       | IMO the top motivation and method of using this tool both is when
       | you notice videos in a playlist going dark.
       | 
       | On desktop, you'd view the full playlist and notice "Unavailable
       | videos are hidden" at the top. Click the kebab menu and "Show
       | unavailable videos" and the list will populate grey-icon videos
       | which do still link to the broken video so you can get the ID.
       | 
       | But videos will also be broken in a way that this method does not
       | reveal (it will only show private and deleted videos). Copystruck
       | or georestricted videos you'll only find out once you attempt to
       | view. Use a YouTube playlist downloader to quickly see which
       | those are.
       | 
       | And then there will be videos you know existed but aren't in a
       | playlist--I have relied on googling around for old forum and blog
       | posts that include the link in order to get the original ID, if I
       | didn't click on a broken link in the first place.
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-11 23:00 UTC)