Self-Hosted Main

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.

I just use it to be prepared in case youtube wins the ongoing adblocking war.

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.

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.

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.

Didbt set it up rn, but will tomorrow. I think its perfect if u got childs. So you can define what they can see.

Hmmm. My docker container for tubearchivist has suddenly stopped working. Sad.

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

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.

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.

Tube Archiving?

It's also quite easy to use. I used it for example to download yt video on my phone before taking off on plane.

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.

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.

Google knows exactly what you're watching and when you're watching it. Not so much if you just archive everything.

Why self host? So you can have an independent instance that can't be paywalled, deleted, or modified by a third party company like Google...

What if that content isn't there tomorrow?

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.

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.

For me it's more than just preservation. It's about an ad free experience and controlling what my kids consume from the platform.

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!

I use tubesync.

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.

last i looked it was a bloated mess

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