Archive YouTube NOW! (And your fav websites too!) - Archival Tools List

[BlazingCobaltX]

Based on seeing this post a while back (and a video of Jacob Geller) I started taking archiving very seriously. So far I got to downloading half my playlist on Spotify until I ran out of time and had to do other stuff. ...Haven't been back at it since. In the moment I get stuck on the decision on whether something is really worth it to download and archive for myself. It feels wasteful to download everything, especially knowing some stuff isn't that special to me, but the continuous dilemma is wasting me precious time.

For music, so far, I have been using whatever service gives me the highest quality of the song. If the song has a FLAC somewhere, I get that, otherwise I make do with YouTube downloads of HQ videos of the song (the service I found for Spotify downloads only goes up to 360p). cobalt has been spotty for me. Some downloads ended up being unplayable files, and I had to repeat the process several times to get a working audio file. Kinda weird.

[alexela64]

hi -- coming back to this thread because I want to know if anyone has a method of saving instagram posts efficiently? especially multi-slide/carousel posts  
I've had no problems using yt-dlp for most videos but i really don't feel like right click save image-ing all the hundreds of posts I want to archive ://

[orchid]

hi -- coming back to this thread because I want to know if anyone has a method of saving instagram posts efficiently? especially multi-slide/carousel posts  
I've had no problems using yt-dlp for most videos but i really don't feel like right click save image-ing all the hundreds of posts I want to archive ://

Instaloader! i archive lots of Instagram accounts and definitely recommend it. logging in allows you to save stories & highlights as well. use the "-F" parameter when updating your archives. i use the following:

Code

instaloader ACCOUNT --login YOUR_USERNAME --stories --highlights

[alexela64]

Instaloader! i archive lots of Instagram accounts and definitely recommend it. logging in allows you to save stories & highlights as well. use the "-F" parameter when updating your archives. i use the following:

Code

instaloader ACCOUNT --login YOUR_USERNAME --stories --highlights

Thank you so much! I had to do a little troubleshooting around logins since I have private accounts, but this is perfect for what I'm looking to do!!   

[brightbluebug]

i haven't seen this mentioned here yet but jdownloader2 is great for downloading videos from youtube and other sites! it downloads description, audio, thumbnail, and metadata along with the video, and works with playlists and channels too.

https://jdownloader.org/jdownloader2

also, if you know a site in danger or at high risk of being taken down, archiveteam can help

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Main_Page
https://chat.hackint.org/#/connect?join=archiveteam-bs

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Hey, just dropping by to say thank you for showing me Stacher: it's been the most reliable video downloader I've had so far!  I've been using it to download all the art tutorial videos I'm finding useful.

Isn't it a fun idea, to almost create like a little Internet for you?  As in, archiving everything you love from it, and have a local copy within your PC or an external hard drive.  If only I could be a little more organized and disciplined to do it more often 

Not necessarily video-related, but here's a little tip for you artists from here: make a folder system where you save all the art that speaks to you. A pose, a palette, or a scene you find cool. You can have several subfolders for poses, character designs you like, clothes, props... just to keep it a lil organized, but loose enough so you'll revisit the art every now and then.

I don't think it's stealing art, since you're keeping it for yourself instead of publishing it or making a keychain out of it: it's good to keep the art that inspires you close instead of lost in the big vast sea of the Net.

[infinitysnapz]

+1 for stacher; i used to use ClipGrab as my main downloader, and it's very simple - but it can also be quite limiting at times - i'm a big data-hoarder, and the ability to grab entire youtube channels and "subscribe" to them is an absolute lifesaver. the best archival solutions are ones that are set and forget:

i've also found the ability to convert these downloaded into another format for editing or compiling to be a very nice feature too

[candycanearter07]

I'm starting to worry that yt-dlp will become less effective, youtube really seems to be pushing blocking a lot of that kinda stuff which SUCKS.

[celestialAbyss]

For me, I've mainly been using YT-DLP for downloading YouTube videos, but I used to do it manually. It sucked back then, I'm glad I managed to sort out the efficiency of it.
I also have a Tumblr account that I had really been meaning to archive, but I kept struggling on how to. I used TumblThree for a bit, using another computer because mine runs Linux Mint, but I've moved over to tumblr-backup, which is so much better.


I'm pretty glad that both of them are open source!

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
https://github.com/cebtenzzre/tumblr-utils

[WhiteFelineWonder]

Ooh, this topic has piqued my interest 
It's definitely handy to download and save videos from YouTube (or really, anywhere for that matter). I've actually been recently picking up more steam on downloading and saving videos (though I have been doing this for a while) in case YouTube either age restricts or removes a video straight up, or if a video is privated by the channel. I've done this for YouTube Poops, nostalgic videos, random videos, even some series like Terrible Mouse & Helluva Boss. Then again, I only really save videos in 480p since I personally don't need the typical "4k" or "8k" resolution since I'm not gonna be seeing these on a huge screen.

One thing I use to download videos is NewPipe, it's a frontend for YouTube for Android devices that I LOVE using to not just watch and listen to videos but to also download (and even watch and listen to stuff from other platforms like SoundCloud for instance!)!
I personally use a fork of NewPipe called PipePipe, which not only broadens the kinds of platforms I can watch to NicoNico & BiliBili but also implements Sponsorblock, super handy to skip all the ramblings and get straight to the meat and potatoes of a video.
NewPipe and its forks can download videos in a broad range of video and audio qualities. The default for me is AVC1 480p for videos. I like having MP4s

Another tool I use is cobalt.tools, which has come in handy for saving stuff that's not just on YouTube but elsewhere as well. Broad range of supported platforms though it has been trying to work around the issue that YouTube has these days.

There's also Invidious (it's more of watching videos but I feel it's good to mention here), which is a YouTube frontend for browsers. I swear there used to be plenty of instances but now there's a few thanks to again, YouTube being YouTube.

Saving and downloading videos feels good, man. If you know of a video (or really any media) you really like, it's good to save it before that platform has it next on the chopping block.
Good to have backups of what you save too, in case one spot isn't working.

[⋆Spicy_vinta⋆]

I just proved to myself today exactly why this is necessary as i deleted a more than 100 song yt playlist completely by accident because you tube didn't give me the notification that asks if your sure. My Instagram account also got hacked and i lost nearly 1000 saved videos and posts from when i first made my account to.

Which is ironic because i was just trying to edit the name before i downloaded it and stored it on another drive i had. For now i mostly plan on archiving my own videos, music and playlists using and LGBTQ+/leftist channels that have content about important topics.

Ive already witnessed some of those videos be taken down or removed for seemingly trivial reasons.Hoping I can get some larger drives in the future and find some time to better sort the files especially because i've been using cnvmp3 which is very inefficient for installing large amounts of videos and cannot do playlists as the name implies

*sorry if some of the stuff in this reply was irrelevant to the topic*