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MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

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Re: MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

#161

I don't understand one thing...why do you need to host it on a server? It can be just a standalone app on windows/Linux/mac. I recently just started using yt-dlp and have thought of making a simple app. Should I though? Are there any alternatives in existence of this kind?

yt-dlp is not even necessary. If just downloading videos from YouTube this can be done with much less code and complexity. I use a tiny C program to do it. Tiny shell scripts work just as well. What no one is discussing is that yt-dlp can no longer download itag 22 and itag 18 is now throttled.^1 This means yt-dlp has to download an audio file and a video file and use ffmpeg to merge the two. YouTube ad revenue just…

> This means yt-dlp has to download an audio file and a video file and use ffmpeg to merge the two.

IMO this is not a prob^W thing even worth bothering about. Does it bother you in any way?

Just curious.

Re: MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

#162
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you, but that’s not a solution if you have mixed interests, e.g. you want to get daily entertainment content to choose from and content that is deeper than that. You may not need it, but if you can’t do that anyway it’s indistinguishable from coping.

All I'm saying is that this appears to be an extremely niche use case, and OP's line about YouTube not wanting you to find things from channels you love is over the top. They have a very specific requirement that YouTube hadn't addressed, that's very different than YouTube being designed to prevent you from finding subscriptions.

I don’t think so. Youtube is search, explore and usage hostile for many years. Not sure how one can miss that. “Which channels have new videos” is not niche. They even have it (a blue dot), but either fail to sort or intentionally sort channels seemingly randomly. I’ve missed videos from rare channels too due to this “mechanic”.

Re: MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

#163
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just unsubscribe from the spam channel because they're producing too much noise. I don't need content producers like that in my life, and making it less obvious that they're adding mostly noise is just disguising the problem, not solving it.

Good for you, but that’s not a solution if you have mixed interests, e.g. you want to get daily entertainment content to choose from and content that is deeper than that. You may not need it, but if you can’t do that anyway it’s indistinguishable from coping.

You could use an RSS reader to subscrib to the video feeds for the channels where you don't want to miss anything. That's how I used to follow channels I care about (currently none) because I don't want to be subjected to YouTube's algorithms or have to check yet another website.

Re: MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

#164

I wouldn't mind a single program like this that let's you download from all sources: youtube, reddit, ig, twitter, facebook, etc.

I'm not sure about some of them since they are private only (you can't see anything without an account), but my go-to tool is JDownloader, that I run as a Docker container on a server

Re: MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

#165

I don't understand one thing...why do you need to host it on a server? It can be just a standalone app on windows/Linux/mac. I recently just started using yt-dlp and have thought of making a simple app. Should I though? Are there any alternatives in existence of this kind?

yt-dlp is not even necessary. If just downloading videos from YouTube this can be done with much less code and complexity. I use a tiny C program to do it. Tiny shell scripts work just as well. What no one is discussing is that yt-dlp can no longer download itag 22 and itag 18 is now throttled.^1 This means yt-dlp has to download an audio file and a video file and use ffmpeg to merge the two. YouTube ad revenue just…

> yt-dlp is not even necessary. If just downloading videos from YouTube this can be done with much less code and complexity. I use a tiny C program to do it. Tiny shell scripts work just as well.

yt-dlp is not necessary ... if you write a replacement? Ok.

Besides I doubt simple shell scripts will be able to download all videos that yt-dlp can. YouTube does not use the same protections for all videos.

Re: MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

#166
post #85

What I’d really like is a YouTube TiVo. There are about 100 channels that I watch religiously, but, release infrequently. I never want to miss a video from these channels. I also don’t want to open YouTube and sift through hundreds of releases from channels that release four times/day just to find the 1-2 videos that I actually want to watch (and will inevitably miss.) Just give me a priority feed of the stuff I actu…

I believe youtube still uses RSS. Could try using that

This is exactly what I do as well. Instead of subscribing on YouTube, I just subscribe to the RSS feeds of channels I'm interested in and then use my feedreader to go through them channel by channel.

Re: MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

#167

I don't understand one thing...why do you need to host it on a server? It can be just a standalone app on windows/Linux/mac. I recently just started using yt-dlp and have thought of making a simple app. Should I though? Are there any alternatives in existence of this kind?

yt-dlp is not even necessary. If just downloading videos from YouTube this can be done with much less code and complexity. I use a tiny C program to do it. Tiny shell scripts work just as well. What no one is discussing is that yt-dlp can no longer download itag 22 and itag 18 is now throttled.^1 This means yt-dlp has to download an audio file and a video file and use ffmpeg to merge the two. YouTube ad revenue just…

Now seeing that itag 136 is being throttled as well, at leas in some cases.

Re: MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

#168

Consider also Tube Archivist. If you just want to download a few videos it's overkill, but I use it to archive and index technical channels I like. It can do advanced full text and metadata searches on the transcription/subtitles as well as comments (and title and description). Much better than what alphabet provides, annoyingly. https://www.tubearchivist.com/

Hard pass. The file naming is predicated on having the database. For ephemeral storage this is understandable but any software that describes itself as "archival" should assume that it will not outlive the data it is preserving. I was excited to have a PeerTube clone with download capabilities until I looked at the result. `yt-dlp` and clever configs and scripts will do the archival job properly.

I like how you're willing to archive videos but refuse to archive the playback mechanism for it. Is backing up a docker image really a deal breaker for you?

Re: MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader

#170

I don't understand one thing...why do you need to host it on a server? It can be just a standalone app on windows/Linux/mac. I recently just started using yt-dlp and have thought of making a simple app. Should I though? Are there any alternatives in existence of this kind?

Celluloid streams using yt-dlp automatically if you ask it to open a supported URL. Parabolic is a purpose-made downloader that uses yt-dlp. https://flathub.org/apps/details/io.github.celluloid_player.... https://flathub.org/apps/org.nickvision.tubeconverter

flathub

I ain't clickin' that

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