Can someone explain what is the usecase of TubeArchivist? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-28 23:23 Maybe I‘m completely stuck but can somebody please explain the usecase of self hosting TubeArchivist? https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist Why would I rather download the content and watch it locally instead of watching it directly on YT? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bobbarker4444 · 2023-11-28 23:27 What if that content isn't there tomorrow? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d4nm3d · 2023-11-28 23:31 Imagine your favorite youtuber decide to just delete their channel... how would you re-watch their content or watch the content you never watched originally... Essentially it's the same use case as DVD's and Blurays... they exist so you can watch the content when you want to regardless of whether they are still available on the original platform. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-28 23:39 I‘m spending a lot of time on YT, for me this does not seem to be any _real_ issue for the last 10 years. May be an edge case but a possible use case. Are there channels or content where this applies regularly? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Enderlord0007 · 2023-11-28 23:43 Let me preface this by saying I use something different from this (Tubesync into Jellyfin) but the idea is the same. Sometimes I come across a really nice youtube video, something that I would want to rewatch 5-10 years down the line, so I download it. I don't do it for every video, just the occasional gem that I'd like to save. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Legitimate_Farm_3095 · 2023-11-28 23:50 > Are there channels or content where this applies regularly? i go to a local music festival every year and a day or two after it's over you can find many videos of performances. this fest has some performances and collaborations you won't see anywhere else. within the week many of the videos are taken down and they usually dont get reuploaded. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -my_dude · 2023-11-28 23:53 Why self host? Because you have an independent instance that can't be paywalled, deleted, or modified by a third party company like Google... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- redoubt515 · 2023-11-29 00:06 Likely, probably not. But can it happen, for sure. A somewhat popular podcaster with over 300 episodes recently dropped off the map and took down all his content without warning or explanation. That would've all been lost if not for someone having kept an archive of all the past episodes on their home server and resharing that to the community. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- space_radios · 2023-11-29 00:08 Recently I see dozens of videos lost per year, and have been on youtube since the beginning. Recorded concerts, arranged or remixed songs, general artist mixes/sets, and other music-oriented content is super easy to spam copyright violation and have youtube take down the video, and I see it happen literally monthly, some of my videos only exist in downloaded form these days. Then there's sometimes random/sudden channel takedowns, happening more frequently these past few years, where YT has some general problem with the content creator and the content creator is blindsided by the entire channel being deleted (and in some cases some videos didn't have a backup, so even the content creator can't re-upload all videos after the dust settles and YT reinstates their account). This has happened to a couple creators I've followed the past couple years. Also a number of content creators have started moving away from YT for these and other reasons associated with YT no longer being as stable/reliable a provider as they used to be (Linus Tech Tips as an example), but realistically the point is sometimes there's stuff you want to watch many years down the line and you just can't guarantee it'll be there, so you snag it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SLJ7 · 2023-11-29 00:09 Google knows exactly what you're watching and when you're watching it. Not so much if you just archive everything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2cats2hats · 2023-11-29 00:12 My cousin puts her videos of her playing guitar(originals and covers) she made over the years. She hasn't considered since YT is the only copy, if google decides to purge her account(for whatever reason... TOS, https://tosdr.org/en/service/274) she loses those videos. It doesn't matter how/when/where/why data loss can happen with cloud services. Possession is 9/10th of the law. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 00:32 Good point. Thanks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- moarmagic · 2023-11-29 00:33 Hi, i use tubearchivist a lot. My usecases: \- I follow several video essasist types whose content has been removed for various reasons- reviews of media Claimed, hit with 'inappropriate content' (spuriously, usually). In two cases, there are creators who removed a lot of their older content for reasons that I completely understand, but also want to be able to reference because they made good points. \-Another creator i follow had their channel hacked, all content replaced with bitcoinshilling. The older videos were eventually restored, but there were a couple days where the content was completely unavailible, and the restoration was not exactly guarenteed. \-i use youtube for background noise a lot. This might be one of the reasons i rewatch a lot of essays and reviews or music videos. While yes, i can use regular youtube for this, tracking, ads, etc are an issue (yes, adblockers exist, but youtube is escalating the war with them). It's easier to just pull up and watch on my own server instead. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 00:36 Good points! Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- c_one · 2023-11-29 00:44 Didbt set it up rn, but will tomorrow. I think its perfect if u got childs. So you can define what they can see. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pairofcrocs · 2023-11-29 00:46 Look though your liked videos and see how many are "Content Unavailable". This was enough for me to start archiving YT videos ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 00:52 Good idea, will check that. 👍🏻 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- askaway0002 · 2023-11-29 01:31 Hmmm. My docker container for tubearchivist has suddenly stopped working. Sad. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ChurchOfSatin · 2023-11-29 01:58 I saw a person post a really good comment in regards to this a few days ago. They said they don’t want their kids going on YouTube. But there are videos they want to watch on YouTube. So they download the videos and put them on their media server. So the kids have their own playlist of videos to watch. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- s_and_s_lite_party · 2023-11-29 02:12 Something else that hasn't been mentioned, I don't know about tubearchivist, but with youtube-dl etc. you can change the format, saving an mp3 for example. Probably 90% of my YouTube downloads are mp3 for my music collection, and only a handful of video. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Stradivari1 · 2023-11-29 02:22 I wonder if this can be used to bypass Ads? I don’t mind 1 or 2 but it shows up like every 2 mins ---------------------------------------------------------------------- crysisnotaverted · 2023-11-29 03:26 There are many niche guides I have used where the video is gone because people have nuked channels or their Google account has been banned for some unrelated reason. There's like one working guide I've found for reseting a specific Cisco Catalyst POE switch with a certain firmware version with all of the commands you have to enter to fully wipe out the old password. If that's gone, then that's a $1000 piece of hardware that's just e-waste. It will never make it to the secondhand market because it would have 0 utility unless you want to use hot air rework stations to remove chips or other exotic stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EleventyTwatWaffles · 2023-11-29 03:38 last i looked it was a bloated mess ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sevlonbhoi1 · 2023-11-29 03:43 I just use it to be prepared in case youtube wins the ongoing adblocking war. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BeYeCursed100Fold · 2023-11-29 06:08 Yep, I've been with YT since before Google bought them and have seen way too many good videos/og content get removed. Now YT is starting to limit "free" users to 340p while paid users can watch the video in HD or UHD. Fucking Capitalism. The ending to fixation of the world. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification (fucking hilarious that Wikipedia is begging for donations in the enshittification article). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jippen · 2023-11-29 06:16 Content disappearing is a big reason, but it's also great for channels that post b-roll or green screen videos/effects/etc if you like video editing. Sure, you can grab them manually, or you can just have your folders of source materials available at the speeds of your local network, already stacked up and ready to work with. Also, as someone in the infosec industry, a lot of conference talks and guides and useful videos get blown away whenever YouTube goes on a "hacking tutorial purge". This has already killed multiple channels full of useful guides. Plus, YouTube has reencoded old videos and won't let you access the originals pre automated upscaling. YT is not a backup or an archival site. So, if that's something you want, you have to DIY it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I_Arman · 2023-11-29 06:47 YouTube is absolute garbage at deciding if something was "watched" or not. Sure, you can watch a playlist, but if you want to watch content in order, or if a YouTuber has a bunch of content and you want to watch all of it, often the only option is to download it and track it yourself. That, and I'm a big fan of archiving important data. If YouTube removes a channel, or it gets hacked, or the YouTuber deletes their own content, it's just gone. I might not feel like archiving someone's game stream or a Minecraft tutorial, but an entertaining video I can see myself watching again? Yep, that gets downloaded. Finally, I'm a bit of a completionist. Many TV shows have special clips they only show on YouTube, or that eventually make it to YouTube, things that don't make it to DVDs, that nonetheless are part of the TV show; by downloading those clips, I can add it to the media I already own. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 07:10 This is something i did not think about, but you are completely true. I had as well issues with watching big playlists beein played in the right order. Thanks for your insights. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 07:11 Thanks 👍🏻 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 07:11 Can you explain more? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 07:12 Good Point! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 07:13 Maybe take a look at the setup guide, Maybe there were some changes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 07:14 I coule imagine that the downloaded content doesn‘t contain ads - but its only a guess. I think i will set TubeArchivist by my own next days. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Significant-Neat7754 · 2023-11-29 07:33 My only problem with TubeArchivist is that it's not compatible with Jellyfin (since the metadata isn't downloaded). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- l31bn1tz · 2023-11-29 07:41 It's also quite easy to use. I used it for example to download yt video on my phone before taking off on plane. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Cybasura · 2023-11-29 07:48 Tube Archiving? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gargravarr2112 · 2023-11-29 08:27 YT videos get taken down for any reason these days - fake copyright claims, hacking or just the creator getting fed up with YT's policies. Entire channels vanish with no warning. Valuable videos that generate income suddenly become private only. It is not an open platform, it's a monetised platform first and foremost. If you have these videos under your control, then if they're no longer watchable online, you still have them. That's exactly what TA is for and does a superb job of. Basically every YT video I watch that I think is useful, I hit the Save button. Some of them are indeed no longer available. I have entire channels downloading so if the creator does close up shop, at least I've got their latest. Obviously you need a lot of storage space - mine is over 5TB and growing. But it's worth it. Also, it avoids the YT before, mid and after ads. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- King_Kr · 2023-11-29 08:55 My problem is with Plex, I have the agent but apparently since Plex updated it broke the YouTube agent, tried every possible fix but could not get it to work ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Significant-Neat7754 · 2023-11-29 09:04 Tube Archivist is kind of like its own ecosystem and one is supposed to use it as a standalone solution. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Illustrious-Many-782 · 2023-11-29 09:44 Niche reason: I'm in China and YouTube is blocked. My server has VPN access, but my Kodi system on my TVs doesn't. That said, I hadn't heard of this project, but I'll probably install it now instead of manually using yt-dlp. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lxprsub0 · 2023-11-29 11:06 Like his name and what most of people explain, you archive videos and keep them locally whatever happens to them online. But, personnaly, I use it mostly to watch videos with a better latency and almost no loading time, and I feel TubeArchivist very confortable to use (I use FreeTube as well, for less important channels) as you can share play status between clients. I only keep videos I want to archive. I delete most of them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fuuman1 · 2023-11-29 11:27 Check out the following repository: [https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist- jf](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist-jf) ​ Just add this service to your tubearchivist compose fileand setup a jellyfin library as described. It adds Youtube channels as show and years as its seasons to Jellyfin. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Fuzzy-Ad-4000 · 2023-11-29 11:48 Me and my wife use it as a personal YouTube without the ads. The webui is good enough and with the companion app we can go to YouTube and pick out whatever videos we want to watch. The download and processing takes at most a minute or two for me. It passed the wife test and that's good enough for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thutex · 2023-11-29 11:56 came here to say basically the same thing: preservation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nashosted · 2023-11-29 12:26 For me it's more than just preservation. It's about an ad free experience and controlling what my kids consume from the platform. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AuthenticImposter · 2023-11-29 13:32 Have you never seen content you like disappear from the internet without a trace? Whether it’s music that your streaming provider no longer has license for, media that gets dropped by Amazon or Netflix, or content on YouTube that’s here one day and gone tomorrow? If you haven’t, stick around a bit! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fprof · 2023-11-29 14:01 Check your favorites or likes videos. Scroll back. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fy_pool_day · 2023-11-29 15:56 I use tubesync. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EleventyTwatWaffles · 2023-11-29 16:14 it took up like a gig of memory before i even had even logged into it. i think it’s because the author uses elasticsearch which just felt like overkill for what i thought it aimed to accomplish ---------------------------------------------------------------------- froli · 2023-11-29 16:14 You're probably getting downvoted because you didn't mention that the quality restrictions were for downloads, not stream. To add, download quality restrictions or the ability to download videos at all for that matter, varies between countries. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhuriousGeorge · 2023-11-29 16:37 Not an option with TA at the moment, but it is one of the items on the roadmap ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhuriousGeorge · 2023-11-29 16:41 There's definitely some overhead. ES is used as a DB to integrate search functionality. I know you can do close or similar with other DBs, but that's what they went with. It works pretty good on my archive (as far as the team is aware, I'm the heaviest user). I've got comments, subtitles in ES as well, all searchable. You can limit the RAM ES has available to it with Java arguments if you care. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhuriousGeorge · 2023-11-29 16:43 This is not true, the metadata is all passed to the ES database. There is a plugin for Jellyfin and Plex ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SamSausages · 2023-11-29 17:14 I can't tell you how many channels have disappeared and been memory- holed. Especially since censorship went into overdrive around 2019. Data hoarders can show you how the world was before all that happened. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 17:18 I'm using Plex as well, is there any hope that it can be used with that, would be great to be able to watch the downloaded videos from the couch ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nitsky416 · 2023-11-29 17:19 Same ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Significant-Neat7754 · 2023-11-29 18:29 It's not a plugin though, is it? It doesn't have a repository. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhuriousGeorge · 2023-11-29 19:21 There's a repository for it. I believe it's listed in the docs, but managed outside the organization by someone that's been a steady contributor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Significant-Neat7754 · 2023-11-29 19:32 I think the developers have made it amply clear that this is not a plugin though: [https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist-jf/issu es/4#issuecomment- 1542299988](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist- jf/issues/4#issuecomment-1542299988) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pea_gravel · 2023-11-29 20:31 I use ytdl-sub and add everything to my Plex. That way I don't have to deal with ads and also, some channels like Practical Engineering are worth sharing with your users ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skylinar · 2023-11-29 20:33 Interesting, also a Plex user here. Can you give more detailed info how to setup? Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pea_gravel · 2023-11-29 20:49 Sure, here's the project https://github.com/jmbannon/ytdl-sub ---------------------------------------------------------------------- swuxil · 2023-11-29 22:03 All the time. For example Bob The Builder S01 German, just vanished few months ago. My child really did not like that. Or when I go through some links for music videos I bookmarked (I reject creating an account for YT) every now and then some get removed - copyright claims, not in your country, account closed, video set to private, ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- swuxil · 2023-11-29 22:06 Whats so special about the reset process of that switch? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhuriousGeorge · 2023-11-29 22:29 Fine, technicalities... it's a docker container that acts as a translation layer to enable your collection to be displayed in jellyfin by using your TubeArchivist database. Same premise by a different name ---------------------------------------------------------------------- crysisnotaverted · 2023-11-29 23:30 It's a pain in the ass if you have none of the passwords. I think the switch had 3 separate passwords I had to remove. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- evan326 · 2023-11-29 23:34 This is the way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SawkeeReemo · 2023-11-30 01:56 That’s actually really smart. Gotta remember that for when/if the condom ever breaks. Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhuriousGeorge · 2023-11-30 02:27 As King_Kr mentioned, there is a Plex Agent. I don't personally use it, but according to them, there appears to be issues. The maintainer of that agent recently had their dev computer die and is in the process of cobbling another together. I'm sure if there are GitHub issues that they will address once they get connected again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- terAREya · 2023-11-30 19:04 Years ago there was this funny clip of Ben Affleck doing various different Boston accents on the Jimmy Kimmel show. Super funny and became one of those clips that I would seek out a few times a year to rewatch and have a laugh. It got pulled for for copyright or something which was weird because its really like a 3 minute clip. In any event its gone, forever. Cant find it anywhere. ​ Tubearchivist allows us to grab things we plan on rewatching over and over. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vikarti_anatra · 2023-12-03 15:11 I usually just use Peertube's import function to import clips I like for some reason to my /r/Peertube instance. Sometimes I even use automated channel import. I usually add link to original source on youtube and link to page where I did find link to youtube to description and rest of description stays original. Disadvantanges: \- this require more disk space than plain download because original copy is being stored in addition to transcoded version. It's ok with me so far. \- transcoding needs cpu power. Since I got remote transcoding working - it's not problem anymore. \- somebody could see this as copyright violation and NOT fair use. I did not get any reports on this so far. It's unlikely I will get into serious trouble even years ago and now my situation is even better for me in this regard (this is due to local laws). And it IS fair use in my opinion: original description (with all payment/ad links if it have any) is present. Original integrated ads are here. Advantages: \- People other than me and my family could find and look at those videos