I’ve been using Tube Archivist to archive my YouTube playlists, but I’ve hit a portability snag. It stores all metadata in its internal database and saves video files with non-readable filenames. This makes the archive unreadable without the software and its database, which defeats the point of long-term archival storage.
Are there any tools that:
- Archive playlists with human-readable filenames (or let you control the naming scheme)
- Have an API for queuing archival jobs
- Store metadata in portable formats (e.g., sidecar JSON or YAML)
- Don’t require additional software to interpret the archive
I changed over to PinchFlat instead for Tube Archivist for these reasons. It’s even easier to setup than TA. I have mine hooked up to store the files on an SMB share that JellyFin can read.
https://github.com/kieraneglin/pinchflatWere you able to migrate your existing tubearchivist videos and metadata? I would love to switch to pinchflat, but it wouldn’t be feasible for me to redownload my entire library
No I had to start from scratch sort of. PinchFlat lets you choose a start date for downloading newer videos.
I decided to age out of my old TA library and keep the ones I wanted. Not perfect but it was an okay trade off to get away from TA’s naming system
Damn that’s what I was afraid of. Might just keep TA offline but available for already downloaded stuff and use pinchflat for everything new. Thanks for the response!