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Downloads Page#

Accessible at /downloads/ of your Tube Archivist instance, this page handles all the download functionality.

Rescan Subscriptions#

The Rescan Subscriptions icon rescan icon will start a background task to look for new videos from the channels and playlists you are subscribed to.

Tube Archivist will get available videos, shorts and streams from each channel. You can define the channel and playlist page size on the settings page. With the default page size, expect this process to take around 2-3 seconds for each channel or playlist you are subscribed to. A status message will show the progress.

Then for every video found, Tube Archivist will skip the video if it has already been downloaded or if you added it to the ignored list previously. All other videos will get added to the download queue. Expect this to take around 2 seconds for each video as Tube Archivist needs to grab some additional metadata and artwork. New videos will get added to the end of the download queue.

Download Queue#

The Start Download icon download icon will start the download process. This will prioritize videos added as auto start or as download now, starting from the top of the queue. Once the process has started, a progress message will show with additional details and controls:

  • The stop icon stop icon will gracefully stop the download process, once the current video has been finished successfully. This will also reset the auto start behavior to avoid confusion.
  • [Currently broken] The cancel icon close icon is equivalent to killing the process and will stop the download immediately. Any leftover files will get deleted, the canceled video will still be available in the download queue.

After downloading, Tube Archivist tries to add new videos to already indexed playlists and, if activated on the settings page, get comments for the new videos.

Add to Download Queue#

The Add to Download Queue icon add icon opens a text field to manually add videos to the download queue. Add one item per line. The Add to queue will add the videos as regular items to the queue, where you'll be able to ignore undesired videos before starting the queue. If you add them with Download Now, this will start the download automatically with priority.

You have a few options:

Videos#

Add a video URL to download a single video.

Channels#

Add a channel to download the complete channel, or a channel sub page to download a partial channel.

Playlist#

Add a playlist to download all videos in the list. When adding a playlist to the queue, this playlist will automatically get indexed.

The Download Queue#

Below the three action buttons is the download queue. New items will get added to the end of the queue, the next video to download once you click on Start Download will be the first in the list.

You can filter the download queue with the filter dropdown box, the filter will show once you have more than one channel in the download queue. Select the channel to filter by name, the number in parentheses indicates how many videos you have pending from this channel. Reset the filter by selecting all from the dropdown. This will generate links for the top 30 channels with pending videos.

Every video in the download queue has two buttons:

  • Ignore: This will remove that video from the download queue and this video will not get added again, even when you Rescan Subscriptions.
  • Download now: This will give priority to this video. If the download process is already running, the prioritized video will get downloaded as soon as the current video is finished. If there is no download process running, this will start downloading this single video and stop after that [currently broken - after downloading the selected video, it will currently go through the entire queue].

Failed videos will show an error message of what went wrong and will give you additional options with how to continue. Usually this means the video in the queue is no longer available on YouTube. Tube Archivist will not retry to download a failed video.

You can flip the view by activating Show Only Ignored Videos. This will show all videos you have previously ignored.
Every video in the ignored list has two buttons:

  • Forget: This will delete the item from the ignored list.
  • Add to Queue: This will add the ignored video back to the download queue.

You can delete your download queue from the Settings page.