Your self hosted YouTube media server
## Table of contents:
* [Wiki](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/wiki) with [FAQ](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/wiki/FAQ)
* [Core functionality](#core-functionality)
* [Screenshots](#screenshots)
* [Problem Tube Archivist tries to solve](#problem-tube-archivist-tries-to-solve)
* [Connect](#connect)
* [Extended Universe](#extended-universe)
* [Installing and updating](#installing-and-updating)
* [Getting Started](#getting-started)
* [Potential pitfalls](#potential-pitfalls)
* [Roadmap](#roadmap)
* [Known limitations](#known-limitations)
* [Donate](#donate)
------------------------
## Core functionality
* Subscribe to your favorite YouTube channels
* Download Videos using **yt-dlp**
* Index and make videos searchable
* Play videos
* Keep track of viewed and unviewed videos
## Tube Archivist on YouTube
[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8H8Z01c0Ys)
## Screenshots
*Home Page*
*All Channels*
*Single Channel*
*Video Page*
*Downloads Page*
## Problem Tube Archivist tries to solve
Once your YouTube video collection grows, it becomes hard to search and find a specific video. That's where Tube Archivist comes in: By indexing your video collection with metadata from YouTube, you can organize, search and enjoy your archived YouTube videos without hassle offline through a convenient web interface.
## Connect
- [Discord](https://discord.gg/AFwz8nE7BK): Connect with us on our Discord server.
- [r/TubeArchivist](https://www.reddit.com/r/TubeArchivist/): Join our Subreddit.
## Extended Universe
- [Browser Extension](https://github.com/tubearchivist/browser-extension) Tube Archivist Companion, for [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/tubearchivist-companion/) and [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tubearchivist-companion/jjnkmicfnfojkkgobdfeieblocadmcie)
- [Tube Archivist Metrics](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist-metrics) to create statistics in Prometheus/OpenMetrics format.
## Installing and updating
Take a look at the example `docker-compose.yml` file provided. Use the *latest* or the named semantic version tag. The *unstable* tag is for intermediate testing and as the name implies, is **unstable** and not be used on your main installation but in a [testing environment](CONTRIBUTING.md).
For minimal system requirements, the Tube Archivist stack needs around 2GB of available memory for a small testing setup and around 4GB of available memory for a mid to large sized installation.
Tube Archivist depends on three main components split up into separate docker containers:
### Tube Archivist
The main Python application that displays and serves your video collection, built with Django.
- Serves the interface on port `8000`
- Needs a volume for the video archive at **/youtube**
- And another volume to save application data at **/cache**.
- The environment variables `ES_URL` and `REDIS_HOST` are needed to tell Tube Archivist where Elasticsearch and Redis respectively are located.
- The environment variables `HOST_UID` and `HOST_GID` allows Tube Archivist to `chown` the video files to the main host system user instead of the container user. Those two variables are optional, not setting them will disable that functionality. That might be needed if the underlying filesystem doesn't support `chown` like *NFS*.
- Set the environment variable `TA_HOST` to match with the system running Tube Archivist. This can be a domain like *example.com*, a subdomain like *ta.example.com* or an IP address like *192.168.1.20*, add without the protocol and without the port. You can add multiple hostnames separated with a space. Any wrong configurations here will result in a `Bad Request (400)` response.
- Change the environment variables `TA_USERNAME` and `TA_PASSWORD` to create the initial credentials.
- `ELASTIC_PASSWORD` is for the password for Elasticsearch. The environment variable `ELASTIC_USER` is optional, should you want to change the username from the default *elastic*.
- For the scheduler to know what time it is, set your timezone with the `TZ` environment variable, defaults to *UTC*.
### Port collisions
If you have a collision on port `8000`, best solution is to use dockers *HOST_PORT* and *CONTAINER_PORT* distinction: To for example change the interface to port 9000 use `9000:8000` in your docker-compose file.
Should that not be an option, the Tube Archivist container takes these two additional environment variables:
- **TA_PORT**: To actually change the port where nginx listens, make sure to also change the ports value in your docker-compose file.
- **TA_UWSGI_PORT**: To change the default uwsgi port 8080 used for container internal networking between uwsgi serving the django application and nginx.
Changing any of these two environment variables will change the files *nginx.conf* and *uwsgi.ini* at startup using `sed` in your container.
### LDAP Authentication
You can configure LDAP with the following environment variables:
- `TA_LDAP` (ex: `true`) Set to anything besides empty string to use LDAP authentication **instead** of local user authentication.
- `TA_LDAP_SERVER_URI` (ex: `ldap://ldap-server:389`) Set to the uri of your LDAP server.
- `TA_LDAP_DISABLE_CERT_CHECK` (ex: `true`) Set to anything besides empty string to disable certificate checking when connecting over LDAPS.
- `TA_LDAP_BIND_DN` (ex: `uid=search-user,ou=users,dc=your-server`) DN of the user that is able to perform searches on your LDAP account.
- `TA_LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD` (ex: `yoursecretpassword`) Password for the search user.
- `TA_LDAP_USER_BASE` (ex: `ou=users,dc=your-server`) Search base for user filter.
- `TA_LDAP_USER_FILTER` (ex: `(objectClass=user)`) Filter for valid users. Login usernames are automatically matched using `uid` and does not need to be specified in this filter.
When LDAP authentication is enabled, django passwords (e.g. the password defined in TA_PASSWORD), will not allow you to login, only the LDAP server is used.
### Elasticsearch
**Note**: Tube Archivist depends on Elasticsearch 8.
Use `bbilly1/tubearchivist-es` to automatically get the recommended version, or use the official image with the version tag in the docker-compose file.
Stores video meta data and makes everything searchable. Also keeps track of the download queue.
- Needs to be accessible over the default port `9200`
- Needs a volume at **/usr/share/elasticsearch/data** to store data
Follow the [documentation](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/docker.html) for additional installation details.
### Redis JSON
Functions as a cache and temporary link between the application and the file system. Used to store and display messages and configuration variables.
- Needs to be accessible over the default port `6379`
- Needs a volume at **/data** to make your configuration changes permanent.
### Redis on a custom port
For some architectures it might be required to run Redis JSON on a nonstandard port. To for example change the Redis port to **6380**, set the following values:
- Set the environment variable `REDIS_PORT=6380` to the *tubearchivist* service.
- For the *archivist-redis* service, change the ports to `6380:6380`
- Additionally set the following value to the *archivist-redis* service: `command: --port 6380 --loadmodule /usr/lib/redis/modules/rejson.so`
### Updating Tube Archivist
You will see the current version number of **Tube Archivist** in the footer of the interface so you can compare it with the latest release to make sure you are running the *latest and greatest*.
* There can be breaking changes between updates, particularly as the application grows, new environment variables or settings might be required for you to set in the your docker-compose file. *Always* check the **release notes**: Any breaking changes will be marked there.
* All testing and development is done with the Elasticsearch version number as mentioned in the provided *docker-compose.yml* file. This will be updated when a new release of Elasticsearch is available. Running an older version of Elasticsearch is most likely not going to result in any issues, but it's still recommended to run the same version as mentioned. Use `bbilly1/tubearchivist-es` to automatically get the recommended version.
### Alternative installation instructions:
- **arm64**: The Tube Archivist container is multi arch, so is Elasticsearch. RedisJSON doesn't offer arm builds, you can use `bbilly1/rejson`, an unofficial rebuild for arm64.
- **Helm Chart**: There is a Helm Chart available at https://github.com/insuusvenerati/helm-charts. Mostly self-explanatory but feel free to ask questions in the discord / subreddit.
- **Wiki**: There are additional helpful installation instructions in the [wiki](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/wiki/Installation) for Unraid, Truenas and Synology.
## Potential pitfalls
### vm.max_map_count
**Elastic Search** in Docker requires the kernel setting of the host machine `vm.max_map_count` to be set to at least 262144.
To temporary set the value run:
```
sudo sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144
```
To apply the change permanently depends on your host operating system:
- For example on Ubuntu Server add `vm.max_map_count = 262144` to the file */etc/sysctl.conf*.
- On Arch based systems create a file */etc/sysctl.d/max_map_count.conf* with the content `vm.max_map_count = 262144`.
- On any other platform look up in the documentation on how to pass kernel parameters.
### Permissions for elasticsearch
If you see a message similar to `failed to obtain node locks, tried [/usr/share/elasticsearch/data]` and `maybe these locations are not writable` when initially starting elasticsearch, that probably means the container is not allowed to write files to the volume.
To fix that issue, shutdown the container and on your host machine run:
```
chown 1000:0 -R /path/to/mount/point
```
This will match the permissions with the **UID** and **GID** of elasticsearch process within the container and should fix the issue.
### Disk usage
The Elasticsearch index will turn to *read only* if the disk usage of the container goes above 95% until the usage drops below 90% again, you will see error messages like `disk usage exceeded flood-stage watermark`, [link](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist#disk-usage).
Similar to that, TubeArchivist will become all sorts of messed up when running out of disk space. There are some error messages in the logs when that happens, but it's best to make sure to have enough disk space before starting to download.
## Getting Started
1. Go through the **settings** page and look at the available options. Particularly set *Download Format* to your desired video quality before downloading. **Tube Archivist** downloads the best available quality by default. To support iOS or MacOS and some other browsers a compatible format must be specified. For example:
```
bestvideo[VCODEC=avc1]+bestaudio[ACODEC=mp4a]/mp4
```
2. Subscribe to some of your favorite YouTube channels on the **channels** page.
3. On the **downloads** page, click on *Rescan subscriptions* to add videos from the subscribed channels to your Download queue or click on *Add to download queue* to manually add Video IDs, links, channels or playlists.
4. Click on *Start download* and let **Tube Archivist** to it's thing.
5. Enjoy your archived collection!
## Roadmap
We have come far, nonetheless we are not short of ideas on how to improve and extend this project. Issues waiting for you to be tackled in no particular order:
- [ ] User roles
- [ ] Podcast mode to serve channel as mp3
- [ ] Implement [PyFilesystem](https://github.com/PyFilesystem/pyfilesystem2) for flexible video storage
- [ ] Implement [Apprise](https://github.com/caronc/apprise) for notifications ([#97](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/97))
- [ ] User created playlists, random and repeat controls ([#108](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/108), [#220](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/220))
- [ ] Auto play or play next link ([#226](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/226))
- [ ] Show similar videos on video page
- [ ] Multi language support
- [ ] Show total video downloaded vs total videos available in channel
- [ ] Add statistics of index
- [ ] Download speed schedule ([#198](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/198))
- [ ] Auto ignore videos by keyword ([#163](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/163))
- [ ] Custom searchable notes to videos, channels, playlists ([#144](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/144))
- [ ] Download video comments
Implemented:
- [X] Implement complete offline media file import from json file [2022-08-20]
- [X] Filter and query in search form, search by url query [2022-07-23]
- [X] Make items in grid row configurable to use more of the screen [2022-06-04]
- [X] Add passing browser cookies to yt-dlp [2022-05-08]
- [X] Add [SponsorBlock](https://sponsor.ajay.app/) integration [2022-04-16]
- [X] Implement per channel settings [2022-03-26]
- [X] Subtitle download & indexing [2022-02-13]
- [X] Fancy advanced unified search interface [2022-01-08]
- [X] Auto rescan and auto download on a schedule [2021-12-17]
- [X] Optional automatic deletion of watched items after a specified time [2021-12-17]
- [X] Create playlists [2021-11-27]
- [X] Access control [2021-11-01]
- [X] Delete videos and channel [2021-10-16]
- [X] Add thumbnail embed option [2021-10-16]
- [X] Create a github wiki for user documentation [2021-10-03]
- [X] Grid and list view for both channel and video list pages [2021-10-03]
- [X] Un-ignore videos [2021-10-03]
- [X] Dynamic download queue [2021-09-26]
- [X] Backup and restore [2021-09-22]
- [X] Scan your file system to index already downloaded videos [2021-09-14]
## Known limitations
- Video files created by Tube Archivist need to be playable in your browser of choice. Not every codec is compatible with every browser and might require some testing with format selection.
- Every limitation of **yt-dlp** will also be present in Tube Archivist. If **yt-dlp** can't download or extract a video for any reason, Tube Archivist won't be able to either.
- There is currently no flexibility in naming of the media files.
## Donate
The best donation to **Tube Archivist** is your time, take a look at the [contribution page](CONTRIBUTING.md) to get started.
Second best way to support the development is to provide for caffeinated beverages:
* [GitHub Sponsor](https://github.com/sponsors/bbilly1) become a sponsor here on GitHub
* [Paypal.me](https://paypal.me/bbilly1) for a one time coffee
* [Paypal Subscription](https://www.paypal.com/webapps/billing/plans/subscribe?plan_id=P-03770005GR991451KMFGVPMQ) for a monthly coffee
* [ko-fi.com](https://ko-fi.com/bbilly1) for an alternative platform
## Sponsor
Big thank you to [Digitalocean](https://www.digitalocean.com/) for generously donating credit for the tubearchivist.com VPS and buildserver.
