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

[Melooon]

Archive NOW!

Earlier this year YouTube reported that they would be deleting old videos from inactive accounts, they later rolled that back saying they would not, but Iv seen some reports floating around the old accounts are getting deleted anyway. A few people have spotted old accounts that are mysteriously vanishing.

While it's hard to verify why exactly those videos are vanishing; Overall it's a good ongoing reminder that you can't rely on companies (or even other individuals) to archive your favourite videos and other online media! You must do it! Once something is gone, it's too late 

It really doesn't matter if it's an important piece of media or just a video or website you liked as a kid. Web media is worth saving, and if you have ever loved a piece of web media it's even more worth saving! This goes for videos you like, forums you visit, websites you visit etc. Especially including more obscure websites (like ones made by this community - web revival sites are actually the most at risk of being lost).

Also don't depend on Archive.org!! The Internet Archive is a wonderful resource and it's great to add your archives to it, but you really should be keeping local archives too.

Some great programs Im aware off that can be used for local archiving are listed here: (Feel free to mention more)

YouTube and other videos:

• YouTube DL Gui - Simple-ish local downloader, though possibly abandoned? (Mac?, Windows, Linux) Free (very easy)
• Stacher - same as above but different! (Mac?, Windows, Linux) Free (very easy)
• Downie - a simple downloading program (Mac) Paid or with SetApp (very easy)
• YouTube DLP - a command line program (Mac, Windows, Linux) Free (quite techy)

Websites and Forums:

• SiteSucker - a great easy to use downloader (Mac, iOS) Paid on modern macs, free on retro ones (very easy)
• HTTrack - like SiteSucker for Windows however its abandonware and may be outdated (Windows, Linux) (easy)
• ArchiveBox - command line or with a UI, this is prob the most up to date Windows option (Mac, Windows, Linux) Free (a bit techy)
• wget - because people will shout if I don't mention it (Mac, Windows, Linux)  Free (very techy)

Use this tool to download sites from the WayBackMachine  (quite techy, but not too hard)

Most arching programs do have a bit of a learning curve to get what you want, but it's worth it! Ideally, you want websites and video archives to be browsable and functional when you check back on them in the future, a broken or obscure archive is not a very good archive - so keep your organization in check too! Archive whole youtube channels if possible, not just one video, and archive whole websites not just one page.

If you are making local archives, consider investing in a good big hard drive and make sure to follow good backup advice so that your archives are not lost!!

What archiving tips do you have and how do you organize your archives??

I have a few archive folders, both for my projects and also for other unique archive projects (like all the sites or videos from a particular creator).

Happy archiving! 

[Gans]

Archiving, a topic of no mercy. You'll quickly pile up a lot of GB when saving lots of videos and will quickly realise, that your hard disk isn't big enough to save the whole internet on it.

To download Youtube videos, I watch them on an Invidious instance, like yewtu.be. Then right-click on the video and select "Save video As..."
(See the image in the attachments)
Set the video quality to "medium" if a reduction of the file size is desired.
Usually, podcasts on Youtube come with an unnecessary video stream. I let Audacity or VLC extract the audio. For non-music, lowering the quality to 64 kbits and going mono instead of stereo also reduces the file size a lot.

I've archived around 70 videos/podcasts. That's all my capacity for cultural preservation can offer, the hard disks are out of space. I guess you somewhat have to specialise on the topics, you're really interested in. So now it's up to you to save the other 999999999 videos.

Archiving websites is much easier fortuneatly. Press CTRL+S, select complete web page. And done. Always useful, if you see a nice design of which you want to copy the source code, because then you have it on the disk.

[Melooon]

Archiving websites is much easier fortunately. Press CTRL+S, select complete web page

You can definitely do that for a quick archive, but I'd always advocate for saving whole websites instead of just pages, and for that, it's good to have a proper crawling program to find everything on the site for you! All of the programs I listed allow you to enter a URL and it will rip the entire site, even pages you didn't know existed for later exploration

You'll quickly pile up a lot of GB when saving lots of videos and will quickly realise, that your hard disk isn't big enough

This is painfully true! Though it really depends on the videos - I downloaded 3500 short meme videos today and it came to a total of 4.7GB (because they were all a few seconds long) - yesterday I did an archive of about 250 1950s movies and that hit 90GB - the average older Youtube channel with around 300 videos comes in at around 10-20 GB!

Good 5TB hard drives are about 180 euro, and you want redundancy; so 5TB of redundant storage is 360 euro. That means each channel costs around 1 euro to archive at maximum quality (I tend to keep things maxed)!

Uggh I'll be reaching for my wallet soon! I was already running out of storage before I started this venture But I think 5TB should be plenty for all the channels I personally would want to keep, along with most of the sites (which are MUCH smaller - you could prob archive most of Neocities on a 5TB drive)

So its an investment, but not an unreasonable one!

[Dodge2667]

archiving is great, but it's very easy (in my experience) to fall into the trap of saving everything because, as Melon rightly said: /you can't rely on others/

the difference being that i try to save things that are useful to me or others: examples of modern-day history that shouldn't repeat itself that is tied into something i've created highlighting why the example is bad; saving films because i really enjoyed them and now they're in the top five of all time. these are prominent examples of why /i/ save things (albeit other folks have different ideas as to what's important which are just as valid!)

i think it's equally important to teach yourself and others to let go of stuff that disappears of the web as it is to teach yourself and others how to save things, especially when it comes to creative media. the amazing property of the web is that stuff like my website lasts as long as it needs to. yes, it's a place where i can share resources that should long outlive me - but it's also a place where i express myself, ergo the torches for both should always be passed onto another person so that they can step into the limelight and people can enjoy them for who they are. at least, that's my two cents with stuff like music: i'd never hear of any new indie bands if i only listened to the stuff i have downloaded!