It is time to start archiving. Actually, It's well past time to do that, but you can still start.
With the MSM denying or down playing riots, arson, thievery, etc., we may at some point have to pull out videos or pdfs that we've saved over time to disprove talking points.
I'll go over a few things that I do to archive.
I am a Linux user/root. Some of the things that I plan to cover may not translate correctly for windows users. Macs run a bastardized version of BSD Unix, so these things should work on those platforms too.
Say there's something on YouTube that you'd like to have so you can watch it at your own leisure when you're not online. Perhaps it's a blender how-to, a speech, a non-copyrighted or open source show, or whatever. youtube-dl is the tool you need.
What is it?
youtube-dl is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like. The project is currently being developed at GitHub.
There was a link to supported sites but it appears to be dead. I, from personal experience, know that you can grab video from these sites: YouTube, BitChute, Twitter provided that the title is not too long.
It may work on others. YMMV.
You can download directly from at least two video hosting sites: lbry.tv and odysee.
After installing youtube-dl, go to the directory where you'd like to save the downloads.
For me this would be:
cd ~/Downloads
Then copy the video url that you'd like to download. (This is one of my YT videos.)
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBTENXSBthI
If you cut and paste the above, you'll get a copy of my Shrimping Illinois Style video that you can watch any time.
But what if you only want the audio portion?
Using the same program you could simply do this:
youtube-dl -x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBTENXSBthI
Audio extraction requires the following: ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe.
If I don't tell it what kind of audio file to extract, I get an opus file. If you want some other format you would use --audio-format FORMAT instead of the -x. Valid formats are aac, flac, mp3, m4a, opus, vorbis, or wav.
I usually just download the whole video then import the audio into audacity (File > Import > Audio), normalize and clean up the audio, then export it as ogg.
If you're using your phone, the easiest thing to do is to just do screenshots.
If you're on a desktop using Brave, you can hit CTRL-S to save the current page as html. This will also save the images and preserve the links on the page. If memory serves, it creates a sub-directory for all the supporting images and such.
I tend to save the page as a pdf to keep things more portable. PDF stands for portable document format after all...
To do this, simply hit CTRL-P and a dialog will pop up. Change from your default printer to Save as PDF, hit the save button and save it where you want it.
This is where things may or may not work for you. You'll have to do your own research.
I have this handy app on my phone called KDE Connect. You have to have the app on your phone and the program also on your computer for the two to communicate.
I do not use the full functionality of KDE Connect. I use it to transfer files back and forth to my devices and I use it on my phone to send web pages to my laptop. That way I don't have to go typing everything in and getting bad urls. You've had to type in those long passwords from steemit or hive or somewhere similar. It's a pain.
Just click on share and send it to one of my laptops. And yes, you can connect to more than one computer at a time and similarly your computer can connect to more than one device.
Archive everything you find questionable. Everything. And be quick about it!
I missed the opportunity to archive a video that was posted just yesterday. I don't know if I'll be able to find it again anywhere.
Don't miss the chance like I did.
Top image by Michal Jarmoluk
