Archiving YouTube

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Bonzi Baptist

Bonzi Baptist

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Aug 13, 2025
Hello, Kiwifarms. I was going to post this thread in the technology subforum, but I figured it would get more traction here. To make a long story short, I need help archiving YouTube or, more specifically, determining how to archive YouTube videos in mass and which videos should be archived along with other issues relating to it, such as which videos are available in other formats like DVD, CD, etc., and which videos would be lost to time should YouTube shut down in the future. Ideally, Kiwifarms users can help me make a list of YouTube channels and YouTube videos worth archiving, along with channels not worth archiving, after YouTube announced its plan to mandate IDs and other controversies. This issue has become more urgent, and I want to take action before it's too late.

TLDR: I need Kiwi Farms to help me archive YouTube before it's too late.
 
There's preservetube which is used by people who make lolcow threads, and it allows easy downloads, or you can yt-dlp a bunch of random videos you want. There is other methods too but I don't remember them
 
I don't say this to mean, but this reads as, "I thought of an idea today, don't know how to do it, and busted in an Internet forum talking about it."

Not sure why you need this. Technically it's really not difficult. It's just $. If you have to ask how, don't bother.

You could also just Google this and probably find a few projects that already do this.

And also you could just fast forward to not worrying about it because it's YouTube. First of all, YouTube itself probably has an archive on actual tape in a cave somewhere like GitHub. Second, if you wanted to do this, you'd just spend a weekend getting it started and a few weeks refining. Not hard, just time and money.

TL;DR: It's OK, we don't need you to archive YouTube.
 
This has literally been posted before.
Saddam Hussain Obama

Thread 'youtube archive project'

so i have a genius idea and im wondering you guys thoughts we need an archive site maybe a peertube instance for all of the good youtube videos meaning none mr beast gaming slop im very worried with the prospects of youtube deleting everything thats not music videos with the 2 year account deletion period they proposed this would mean so much early 2000s kino would be lost forever im sure with P2P we could make it cost feasable please let me know your thoughts i would be willing to upload to it
The Gad Crusader

Thread 'Possible Call to Archive a lot From YouTube'

I'm sorry if this is in the wrong forum and if this is stupid to tell the farms but a lot of lolcow videos may disappear from YouTube. A thing called Coppa just got put in action and supposedly this will cause YouTube to start deleting any and all videos if they can not make money starting December 10. It is possible this is just another scare that will lead to nothing or a complete misunderstanding but just in case I'm saving any essentials / potential stuff I can. Again, may be dumb to tell you lot and it may not happen but I just wanted to let you know.
Reactions:Late x 7 Dumb x 5 Like x 1 Lunacy x 1 Autistic x 2

>thinks a tech issue will get more traction outside of the tech subsection because ????
Also OP is a faggot.
 
Faceless Whore said:
This has literally been posted before.
Saddam Hussain Obama

Thread 'youtube archive project'

so i have a genius idea and im wondering you guys thoughts we need an archive site maybe a peertube instance for all of the good youtube videos meaning none mr beast gaming slop im very worried with the prospects of youtube deleting everything thats not music videos with the 2 year account deletion period they proposed this would mean so much early 2000s kino would be lost forever im sure with P2P we could make it cost feasable please let me know your thoughts i would be willing to upload to it
The Gad Crusader

Thread 'Possible Call to Archive a lot From YouTube'

I'm sorry if this is in the wrong forum and if this is stupid to tell the farms but a lot of lolcow videos may disappear from YouTube. A thing called Coppa just got put in action and supposedly this will cause YouTube to start deleting any and all videos if they can not make money starting December 10. It is possible this is just another scare that will lead to nothing or a complete misunderstanding but just in case I'm saving any essentials / potential stuff I can. Again, may be dumb to tell you lot and it may not happen but I just wanted to let you know.
Reactions:Late x 7 Dumb x 5 Like x 1 Lunacy x 1 Autistic x 2

>thinks a tech issue will get more traction outside of the tech subsection because ????
Also OP is a faggot.
Click to expand...
These existing threads are a funny reminder of how many "crises" YouTube has survived over the years. But even if that's the case, it's still not a bad idea to raise awareness about archiving YouTube videos even if it's been previously mentioned before. Also, no, I'm not a fag; I am super straight.
 
Bonzi Baptist said:
These existing threads are a funny reminder of how many "crises" YouTube has survived over the years. But even if that's the case, it's still not a bad idea to raise awareness about archiving YouTube videos even if it's been previously mentioned before. Also, no, I'm not a fag; I am super straight.
Click to expand...

The awareness is already there. YouTube in a PR "crisis" doesn't mean starting the sisyphean task of archiving billions of videos.

ArchiveTeam exists, yt-dlp exists, PreserveTube exists, most major or noteworthy YouTubers have been archived in some capacity.

OP is a fag, and super gay.
 

Try this, it works for me and you don't need a command line.

Just download what you find personally important or interesting, maybe a particular channel. You can't save everything or even a significant portion of YouTube, so you should focus on what you want to remain available in 100 years. Mind the quality, you can save a lot of space by being choosy and going down to 480p/720p wherever the image quality isn't important.

Hard drives are in the ballpark of $10/terabyte. Refurbished enterprise drives may be a good option since they are generally considered more reliable than consumer crap. You can get an external enclosure if the HDD is internal and this is more convenient for you. So if you have $300 to spend, you can probably get 20-28 TB, no trouble. If you don't have $300 to spend, get a job.

If you are serious, you'll want backups/redundancy so a single drive failure doesn't wipe out all the stuff.
 
Preservetube works wonders for smaller videos (sub 20 min). For anything larger I would recommend downloading it with yt-dlp, compressing it down with the code found in the archiving 101 thread (maybe change the '22' to '28'), and cutting it up into 100-200MB size videos.

I had chatgpt write me the exact code to use. Some audio compression and lowering the video to 360p.
 
Bonzi Baptist said:
These existing threads are a funny reminder of how many "crises" YouTube has survived over the years. But even if that's the case, it's still not a bad idea to raise awareness about archiving YouTube videos even if it's been previously mentioned before. Also, no, I'm not a fag; I am super straight.
Click to expand...
This is the gayest thing anyone has ever said in the history of gay.
 
Are you lazy? Don't answer that, because we know the real answer.

If there is one thing that always bug me about these threads from these kind of users, is that it speaks volumes of how incurious they are to try something they want to do.

It's like at work, I've had people ask me the store closing time to where I work and I know they have a fucking phone in their pockets that they obliviously glue themselves to that could easily tell them. You're one of those people.
 
Bonzi Baptist said:
These existing threads are a funny reminder of how many "crises" YouTube has survived over the years. But even if that's the case, it's still not a bad idea to raise awareness about archiving YouTube videos even if it's been previously mentioned before. Also, no, I'm not a fag; I am super straight.
Click to expand...
So what are you going to do? They already recommended you a bunch of things, like Preservetube (it won't be able to archive a good amount of YT, it does not have the resources/storage), or yt-dlp so that you yourself can do it.

How much storage do you have or are willing to get? How are you going to maintain it? Are you going to select videos individually? Which ones will you leave out? Do you realize how much data that is?
 
is there an alternate yt-dlp for us Win7 luddites?
 
We Are The Witches said:
So what are you going to do? They already recommended you a bunch of things, like Preservetube (it won't be able to archive a good amount of YT, it does not have the resources/storage), or yt-dlp so that you yourself can do it.

How much storage do you have or are willing to get? How are you going to maintain it? Are you going to select videos individually? Which ones will you leave out? Do you realize how much data that is?
Click to expand...


"Every day, 720,000 hours worth of content is uploaded to YouTube."

720,000 hours is 82.14 years, roughly equivalent to the average life expectancy in the US at 80.1 years.

"Most estimates conclude that YouTube has at least one exabyte (1,000,000 terabytes) of storage space in its data centers."

One exabyte is 10% of estimated global IP traffic. Or roughly equivalent to 1/5 of the estimated content of all words ever spoken.

 
rando[Numbers] said:

"Every day, 720,000 hours worth of content is uploaded to YouTube."

720,000 hours is 82.14 years, roughly equivalent to the average life expectancy in the US at 80.1 years.

"Most estimates conclude that YouTube has at least one exabyte (1,000,000 terabytes) of storage space in its data centers."

1,000,000 terabytes is an exabyte. That’s 10% of estimated global IP traffic. Or roughly equivalent to 1/5 of the estimated content of all words ever spoken.

Click to expand...
Let's archive YouTube in VHSs!

lebowski.webp
 
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