archiving_livestreams.md

Archiving Livestreams

This guide covers on how to record ongoing or scheduled livestreams. This is useful for streams that will not be archived later on.

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
  • Installing FFMpeg on Windows
  • Installing ytarchive on Windows
• Using ytarchive
  • Saving a normal stream
  • Saving a members only stream
  • Advanced usage
• using yt-dlp
• Troubleshooting/FAQ
  • When I run a command in Command Prompt, I get 'xxxx' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

Prerequisites

Installing FFMpeg on Windows

Follow the guide shown in the README

Installing ytarchive on Windows

1. Download ytarchive from https://github.com/Kethsar/ytarchive/releases/latest
   • If you get a virus warning on your anti-virus, it's a false-positive. Read here.
2. Move ytarchive.exe to a permanent location (eg. C:\Program Files\ytarchive)
3. Open Command Prompt in elevated mode

Open the start menu by pressing the ⊞ windows key, type cmd, right click Command Prompt and clicking Run as administrator.

4. Modify the following command by replacing C:\Path\To\ytarchive with the folder path where you are storing ytarchive.exe and run the command in Command Prompt by pasting the command in(CTRL+V) and pressing enter.

setx /M PATH "%PATH%;C:\Path\To\ytarchive"

Example: If you were to store ytarchive.exe in C:\Program Files\ytarchive you would run the command setx /M PATH "%PATH%;C:\Program Files\ytarchive"

5. Verify that it has installed correctly by opening a new Command Prompt without elevated mode, typing ytarchive -h and pressing enter.

Using ytarchive

Saving a normal stream

1. Open Command Prompt.
2. Change the directory of Command Prompt by modifying the following command, replacing C:\Path\To\stream with the folder path you want to save the stream to.

pushd "C:\Path\To\stream"

Example: If you were to save the stream in C:\Users\anon\Videos you would run the command pushd "C:\Users\anon\Videos"

3. Type ytarchive into Command Prompt and pressing enter.
4. Paste the URL of the stream you wish to save. (eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYnk9EnrnOE)
5. If you are saving a stream that has been scheduled but not yet started, it will ask you if you will wait until the start of the livestream. Type poll then 15 to check if the stream has started every 15 seconds.
6. Enter the quality option you desire from the list shown.

Generally when archiving streams for public sharing it is advised to use the best quality. You may choose to use 720p or lower if you have bad internet or low diskspace.

7. Once the stream ends, ytarchive will automatically mux the stream into an .mp4 videofile.

Saving a members only stream

Make sure you have membership of the channel and are logged into YouTube or it will not work.

NOTE: the extention for chrome has recently been deleted by google, i will add an alternative once i find one

1. Install the extension cookies.txt for Firefox. This will let us extract cookies from your YouTube which will be used to authenticate ytarchive.
2. go to youtube.com then click on the cookies.txt extension in the top right hand corner of the browser and click the Export ↓ button to save the cookies. Move the file to a location of your choice.

Please note that cookies can give someone full access to your account, do NOT share them.

3. Change the directory of Command Prompt by modifying the following command, replacing C:\Path\To\stream with the folder path you want to save the stream to.

pushd "C:\Path\To\stream"

Example: If you were to save the stream in C:\Users\anon\Videos you would run the command pushd "C:\Users\anon\Videos"

4. Modify the following command by replacing C:\Path\To\youtube.com_cookies.txt with the folder path where you are storing the cookie file.

ytarchive -c youtube.com_cookies.txt

Example: If you were to store cookie in C:\Users\anon\Desktop\youtube.com_cookies.txt you would run the command ytarchive -c youtube.com_cookies.txt

You may find that sometimes authentication will fail. This is most likely due to old cookies which can be caused by logging out. Simply repeat step 2 to replace your current cookie file.

Advanced usage

If you wish to learn the CLI commands yourself, use the ytarchive -h command or refer to this README.

• Download the stream to the current directory with the best quality

ytarchive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGjAGh1zVQg best

• You can replace best with different quality options:

  audio_only, 144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 720p60, 1080p, 1080p60, best

• The --add-metadata flag is used to add metadata to the video file which is a nice way to save the description without the need of an additional file

The description will be saved as Comment to view or copy it open the files propeties and then go to the datails tab

• The -o flag is used to download the video to a different directory or to name the download file. The available placeholders are

 id (string): Video identifier
 url (string): Video URL
 title (string): Video title
 channel_id (string): ID of the channel
 channel (string): Full name of the channel the livestream is on
 upload_date (string: YYYYMMDD): Technically stream start date, UTC timezone - see note below
 start_date (string: YYYYMMDD): Stream start date, UTC timezone
 publish_date (string: YYYYMMDD): Stream publish date, UTC timezone
 description (string): Video description [disallowed for file name format template]

You can add ~\ at the start of -o as a shortcut to your home directory (eg. C:\Users\anon).

Using the filename [%(channel)s][%(upload_date)s] %(title)s (%(id)s) is preferred when gathering large amounts of video as it makes the video files more searchable.

• The -r X flag is used to re-check if the stream is up every X seconds. You can use this for streams that might start earlier than scheduled

• The --threads X flag is used to set the number of threads to use for downloading audio and video fragments. A sane number for this would be something between 2 and 8. The total number of threads running will be X * 2 + 3. Main thread, a thread for each audio and video download, and X number of fragment downloaders for both audio and video.

Setting this to a large number has a chance at causing the download to start failing with HTTP 401. Restarting the download with a smaller thread count until you no longer get 401s should work. Default is 1.

• The -t flag is used to embed the original stream thumbnail in the downloaded video file.

this will also show the thumbnail as file preview if your file explorer supports it (mp4 has thumbnail embeded)

• The --write-thumbnail flag is used to save the thumbnail as an image file and the --write-description flag to save the description as a .description file.

using yt-dlp

yt-dlp has added new flags that can make it function similar to ytarchive, though its currently considered broken

--wait-for-video <DelayInSeconds> to wait for scheduled streams and --live-from-start to start downloading from the start

yt-dlp --live-from-start --wait-for-video 15 <youtubeurl>

Troubleshooting/FAQ

When I run a command in Command Prompt, I get 'xxxx' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

• try reopen cmd/powershell they need to be restarted for new installed programs to be recognized