TheFrenchGhosty's YouTube-DL Archivist Scripts

Associated Reddit /r/Datahoarder post: Here

Require youtube-dl and ffmpeg

The ultimate collection of scripts for YouTube-DL

Usage :

Install youtube-dl and ffmpeg

Create a folder where you want your videos downloaded in a drive where you have Gigabytes/Terabytes of space available

(Warning for Windows users: Because Windows is still using a path length limit of 260 characters (seriously... it's 2019), you might have problems when downloading videos with long title (or even videos with short one), supposedly there is ways to disable this limit but during my testing I couldn't make it to work, (See this youtube-dl issue for more details)

Put the folders Arctive Scripts and Archive Scripts of your OS in the created folder (Read the section named "Archive and Active Scripts?" to understand the differences)

Add content to a 'Source - XXXXXX.txt' file depending of what type of content you want to download (Read the section named "Channels, Playlists and Unique Scripts?" to understand the differences)

(Linux) Open a terminal in the folder of the script you want to use and run $ ./[SCRIPT].sh

(Windows) Open CMD/Powershell in the folder of the script you want to use and run [SCRIPT].bat or Open a .bat file directly (Note: if you open a .bat file directly, the CMD/Powershell window will automatically close when the script is done)

Done

Archive, Active and Watch Scripts?

Downloading and archiving "live" content is complicated, especially because gigabytes of it will be created each day.

Considering that I chose to separate the content:

Archive Scripts: Scripts that will download everything that was created before December 31, 2018 (included).

Active Scripts: Scripts that will download everything that was created after January 1, 2019 (included).

Watch Scripts: Scripts that wil download individual videos made by a creator that are not meant to be archived but deleted after being watched (naming scheme: Uploader - 20191231 - Title.ext).

These dates will need to be incremented every year January 1 and the content created by the active scripts will need to be moved to the archive (including the archive.log that will need to be merged).

Channels, Playlists and Unique Scripts?

Three different type of scripts are included depending of what you want to download, the only thing changing is the naming scheme

Channels : Made to download everything made by a creator (naming scheme: Uploader/Uploader - 20191231 - Title/Uploader - 20191231 - Title.ext)

Playlists : Made to download playlists made by a creator (naming scheme: PlaylistName - Uploader/20191231 - Title/20191231 - Title.ext)

Unique : Made to download individual videos made by a creator (naming scheme: Title - Uploader - 20191231/Title - Uploader - 20191231.ext)

Details :

--format "(bestvideo[vcodec^=av01][height>=1080][fps>30]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9.2][height>=1080][fps>30]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9][height>=1080][fps>30]/bestvideo[vcodec^=av01][height>=1080]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9.2][height>=1080]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9][height>=1080]/bestvideo[height>=1080]/bestvideo[vcodec^=av01][height>=720][fps>30]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9.2][height>=720][fps>30]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9][height>=720][fps>30]/bestvideo[vcodec^=av01][height>=720]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9.2][height>=720]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9][height>=720]/bestvideo[height>=720]/bestvideo)+(bestaudio[acodec=opus]/bestaudio)/best" : Courtesy of Veloldo, tell youtube-dl to download the best quality available prioritizing the most compressed/recent codecs

--verbose : Tell youtube-dl to print various debugging information

--force-ipv4 : Tell youtube-dl to use IPv4, needed because lots of hosting and VPNs providers don't support IPv6.

--ignore-errors : Tell youtube-dl to continue on download errors (for example to skip unavailable videos in a playlist)

--no-continue : Tell youtube-dl not to resume partially downloaded files and to restart from the beginning (Mainly to avoid corruption)

--no-overwrites : Tell youtube-dl not to overwrite existing files (Useful when metadata has already been downloaded)

--download-archive archive.log : Tell youtube-dl to write every video that has been downloaded in archive.log to automatically skip them next time the script is started

--add-metadata : Tell youtube-dl to write metadata to the video files

--write-description : Tell youtube-dl to write video description to a .description file

--write-info-json : Tell youtube-dl to write video metadata to a .info.json file

--write-annotations : Tell youtube-dl to write video annotations to a .annotations.xml file

--write-thumbnail : Tell youtube-dl to write thumbnail image to disk

--embed-thumbnail : Tell youtube-dl to embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art (only useful when downloading audio-only content like podcast)

--all-subs : Tell youtube-dl to download all the available subtitles of the video

--sub-format "srt" : Tell youtube-dl to prioritize .srt subtitles

--embed-subs : Tell youtube-dl to embed subtitles in the video

(Channels Scripts) --output "%(uploader)s/%(uploader)s - %(upload_date)s - %(title)s/%(uploader)s - %(upload_date)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" : Tell youtube-dl to download the videos in folders and subfolders, using the naming scheme Uploader/Uploader - 20191231 - Title/Uploader - 20191231 - Title.ext

(Playlists Scripts) --output "%(playlist)s (%(uploader)s)/%(upload_date)s - %(title)s/%(upload_date)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" : Tell youtube-dl to download the videos in folders and subfolders, using the naming scheme PlaylistName - Uploader/20191231 - Title/20191231 - Title.ext

(Unique Scripts) --output "%(title)s - %(uploader)s - %(upload_date)s/%(title)s - %(uploader)s - %(upload_date)s.%(ext)s" : Tell youtube-dl to download the videos in folders and subfolders, using the naming scheme Title - Uploader - 20191231/Title - Uploader - 20191231.ext

--merge-output-format "mkv" : Tell youtube-dl to merge the video and audio that were downloaded separately in a .mkv file

(Archive Scripts) --datebefore 20181231 : Tell youtube-dl to download everything that was created before December 31, 2018 (included).

(Active Scripts) --dateafter 20190101 : Tell youtube-dl to download everything that was created after January 1, 2019 (included).

--batch-file "Source - XXXXXX.txt" : Tell youtube-dl to look for links in Source - XXXXXX.txt

TODO (in this order):

• Make audio-only scripts (See Reddit for more details on the implementation I will use)

• Make the date flags change automatically for both Linux - OSX and Windows (Windows script will be rewritten for Powershell) (See !1 for the Linux implementation)

• Make scripts to automatically merge the Active content into the Archive (merging the archive.log) for both Linux - OSX and Windows