I saw a person post a really good comment in regards to this a few days ago. They said they don’t want their kids going on YouTube. But there are videos they want to watch on YouTube. So they download the videos and put them on their media server. So the kids have their own playlist of videos to watch.

I just use it to be prepared in case youtube wins the ongoing adblocking war.

Niche reason: I’m in China and YouTube is blocked. My server has VPN access, but my Kodi system on my TVs doesn’t.

That said, I hadn’t heard of this project, but I’ll probably install it now instead of manually using yt-dlp.

YT videos get taken down for any reason these days - fake copyright claims, hacking or just the creator getting fed up with YT’s policies. Entire channels vanish with no warning. Valuable videos that generate income suddenly become private only. It is not an open platform, it’s a monetised platform first and foremost.

If you have these videos under your control, then if they’re no longer watchable online, you still have them. That’s exactly what TA is for and does a superb job of. Basically every YT video I watch that I think is useful, I hit the Save button. Some of them are indeed no longer available. I have entire channels downloading so if the creator does close up shop, at least I’ve got their latest.

Obviously you need a lot of storage space - mine is over 5TB and growing. But it’s worth it.

Also, it avoids the YT before, mid and after ads.

Google knows exactly what you’re watching and when you’re watching it. Not so much if you just archive everything.

Hi, i use tubearchivist a lot. My usecases:

- I follow several video essasist types whose content has been removed for various reasons- reviews of media Claimed, hit with ‘inappropriate content’ (spuriously, usually). In two cases, there are creators who removed a lot of their older content for reasons that I completely understand, but also want to be able to reference because they made good points.

-Another creator i follow had their channel hacked, all content replaced with bitcoinshilling. The older videos were eventually restored, but there were a couple days where the content was completely unavailible, and the restoration was not exactly guarenteed.

-i use youtube for background noise a lot. This might be one of the reasons i rewatch a lot of essays and reviews or music videos. While yes, i can use regular youtube for this, tracking, ads, etc are an issue (yes, adblockers exist, but youtube is escalating the war with them). It’s easier to just pull up and watch on my own server instead.

Didbt set it up rn, but will tomorrow. I think its perfect if u got childs. So you can define what they can see.

Hmmm. My docker container for tubearchivist has suddenly stopped working. Sad.

I wonder if this can be used to bypass Ads? I don’t mind 1 or 2 but it shows up like every 2 mins

last i looked it was a bloated mess

Content disappearing is a big reason, but it’s also great for channels that post b-roll or green screen videos/effects/etc if you like video editing.

Sure, you can grab them manually, or you can just have your folders of source materials available at the speeds of your local network, already stacked up and ready to work with.

Also, as someone in the infosec industry, a lot of conference talks and guides and useful videos get blown away whenever YouTube goes on a “hacking tutorial purge”. This has already killed multiple channels full of useful guides.

Plus, YouTube has reencoded old videos and won’t let you access the originals pre automated upscaling. YT is not a backup or an archival site. So, if that’s something you want, you have to DIY it.

Have you never seen content you like disappear from the internet without a trace?

Whether it’s music that your streaming provider no longer has license for, media that gets dropped by Amazon or Netflix, or content on YouTube that’s here one day and gone tomorrow?

If you haven’t, stick around a bit!

Imagine your favorite youtuber decide to just delete their channel… how would you re-watch their content or watch the content you never watched originally…

Essentially it’s the same use case as DVD’s and Blurays… they exist so you can watch the content when you want to regardless of whether they are still available on the original platform.

What if that content isn’t there tomorrow?

Why self host? So you can have an independent instance that can’t be paywalled, deleted, or modified by a third party company like Google…