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Archive Team is a loose collective of rogue archivists, programmers, writers and loudmouths dedicated to saving our digital heritage. Since 2009 this variant force of nature has caught wind of shutdowns, shutoffs, mergers, and plain old deletions - and done our best to save the history before it's lost forever.


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Tutorial: How to archive youtube videos on wayback machine

So, as most of you guys know you can't (at least for now) backup youtube videos on wayback machine, if you try to submit a normal youtube address, such as "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0WNiGn68h8" you will end up with some error message and archiving a blank screen instead (https://web.archive.org/web/20200217183200/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0WNiGn68h8 ).

But, well, I found out that technically you can archive the direct link for that video on wayback machine, the direct link is the link for when you want to download a video from youtube for instance, it usually looks like this:

https://r3---sn-n4v7snee.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?expire=1581986087&ei=x9xKXvXDAY7Dkgb-ubfYCw&ip=74.82.60.197&id=o-ADwowOKO5P1QQR0cvJdrSWhiEGkGSgg5KhCOpaOCmS82&itag=18&source=youtube&requiressl=yes&mm=31%2C29&mn=sn-n4v7snee%2Csn-n4v7knls&ms=au%2Crdu&mv=m&mvi=2&pl=21&gcr=us&initcwndbps=418750&vprv=1&mime=video%2Fmp4&gir=yes&clen=7288939&ratebypass=yes&dur=362.811&lmt=1568526068979793&mt=1581964424&fvip=3&fexp=23842630&c=WEB&txp=8311222&sparams=expire%2Cei%2Cip%2Cid%2Citag%2Csource%2Crequiressl%2Cgcr%2Cvprv%2Cmime%2Cgir%2Cclen%2Cratebypass%2Cdur%2Clmt&lsparams=mm%2Cmn%2Cms%2Cmv%2Cmvi%2Cpl%2Cinitcwndbps&lsig=AHylml4wRQIgWE4qG2ts-ifrRnXoQgZwWNpQ5Z45f0EJIvlpZ88OMoECIQCXJjLV8vAjQ_AlSrjHHw1pmlsPJs1IxN1t9iOEOqn1Ug%3D%3D&sig=ALgxI2wwRgIhANbx5KB2-EOIXDacs4bFEsmex7FFQienhtFEbuVIlEmpAiEAxaLfWqZOkdBUaZqVqUJ6qpyPvzLFhTzawzSN9Rgz3Cc=

If you submit this link to wayback machine it will archive it, as you can see here.

Although there are 4 issues with this approach:

  1. Your IP address gets attached to that direct link url, for instance, in the link above your IP address would be "74.82.60.197", so if you are archiving some sensible information, it would be handy if you used a proxy so that your IP doesn't get archived along with the video you saved.

  2. You are only archiving the video in itself, this doesn't include title, description, commentaries, etc, it's just the video in itself.

  3. Maybe the biggest problem: this URL has no visible relation with the original video URL, what I mean is that just by looking at the original video URL and then looking at this direct link URL you couldn't find out any relation between them, any pattern in common, nothing. So, when archiving content like this you would need to create some text or spreadsheet with the original video URL and its backup direct link URL, otherwise you would get lost in no time.

  4. This doesn't work 99% of the times, but it work most of the times. If it doesn't work try just generate another direct link youtube URL (just install Save From or go to some of those web pages that allow you to download youtube videos and copy the link they will give you).

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u/Whopper_Jr avatar

They will still delete videos unfortunately. The only failproof is to download them and store a copy (or two) on external drives. Even cloud storage will delete videos they don’t want to store. Pretty wild

u/eric1707 avatar

You are always taking chances when trusting other people, if you want to be 100% sure, archive yourself, this goes to everything.

u/Whopper_Jr avatar

And that goes for trusting people who make drives unfortunately. A backup for the backup ;)

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u/DoomTay avatar

Wait what? Are there any examples of this?

u/Whopper_Jr avatar

Absolutely—RSD videos removed from YouTube, then archive backups removed, then storage on mega removed. I’m sure there are other examples, but that’s one I’ve had personal experience with

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u/sowachowski avatar

it no longer archives it as its in the block list :( any other suggestions?

(also yes i know this is 2 years old lol)

So you're telling me i can upload a video using the wayback machine and in recent youtube it would show up to that date?

Basically uploading videos from the past?

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u/eric1707 avatar
Edited

Also, just to finish it off, technically, there are some youtube videos on wayback machine that were somewhat properly archived (usually videos that got relevant/famous) but I think it's not something that the average person can do. I think you need to have some special access to the site or something like that. For instance, Elliot Rodger videos (sorry I couldn't find a better example that I could demonstrate to you guys) wore archived, as you can see here: https://web.archive.org/web/20180215124900/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KP62TE1prs

u/JustAnotherArchivist avatar

More issues: DASH videos can't be archived this way, you can only grab a limited quality version of the video like this because YouTube splits audio and video into separate streams for the highest resolutions, and probably a few other similar technical problems I can't think of right now.

Also, your WBM link for the video is dead; unless that's another temporary index issue, they probably purged it already. IA does not want this.

Perhaps suitably, 3 years later, the example link no longer works, but the archived one does.

Beautiful song in this titleless, descriptionless, commentaryless, etc.less video.