How to export ALL YouTube playlists?

[maxd]

So YouTube is getting snarky about Adblockers and their subscription fee is ridiculous so it looks like it might be a good idea to export my playlists. I have about 200 playlists representing years of research and I'm not the least bit interested in having that taken from me because of their pissy new attitude.

Anyone know of a good utility that will export ALL playlists in one go? I've tried the Google Takeout method and find it decidedly underwhelming:



No titles = no good IMHO so I'm looking for something that will do a little more. Video Title and URL at a minimum, for ALL playlists, not just one.

Anyone have experience with this? Suggestions? If something promising pops up I'll give it a spin and report back on how it went.

- Max

 

[interlog]

Not tested but try this:

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if you follow step 1, the result looks like this:

 

[Guntis]

Another option:

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[justdoit]

So YouTube is getting snarky about Adblockers and their subscription fee is ridiculous so it looks like it might be a good idea to export my playlists. I have about 200 playlists representing years of research and I'm not the least bit interested in having that taken from me because of their pissy new attitude.

Anyone know of a good utility that will export ALL playlists in one go? I've tried the Google Takeout method and find it decidedly underwhelming:

View attachment 188171

No titles = no good IMHO so I'm looking for something that will do a little more. Video Title and URL at a minimum, for ALL playlists, not just one.

Anyone have experience with this? Suggestions? If something promising pops up I'll give it a spin and report back on how it went.

- Max

Rumble has this cool future

 

[maxd]

Not tested but try this:

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if you follow step 1, the result looks like this: ...

Yes, that was the same place were I found the method that I used, "Method 2". Trouble with the step 1 method you've mentioned is that it only does one playlist at a time, no batch processing of ALL playlists at one go. As a last resort I still might have to consider that though.

Rumble has this cool future ...

Interesting. Thing is I'm not trying to -- and don't want to -- export videos from YouTube, I'm just interested in preserving the playlists.

Another option:

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Thank you. I had found that but it's another "one playlist at a time" tool, not something that does ALL your playlists at once. Obviously no big deal if you have a few playlists but I've got 200+, hence the quest for something that'll batch export playlists.

Thanks for the suggestions though guys, I do appreciate the thought. And you've pretty much confirmed what I'd already suspected: there may not be anything that does what I was hoping to do.

- Max

 

[Guntis]

Ok then... if you only need to grab all your playlist titles and URLs, and save them somewhere so you can find your videos later, then here is a solution. I just realized that i'm using this scraper method for my other things and it works for YouTube as well.

1. Get

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(you don't need to customize it specifically; simply install it, and that's it)
2. Go to your YouTube playlists and open them so you can see the whole list
3. Right-click on the top one
4. Now, you should see a new option 'Scrape Similar' along with 'Paste', 'Inspect', etc
5. Click on it while having your 1st item on the list hovered over
6. ... job done! You have your 200-item list in one go with titles and URLs.




P.S ... you'll see an option at the bottom right corner to export them to Google Docs. Otherwise, just click on 'copy to clipboard' and it will paste them anywhere you want.

 

[maxd]

Cool! Sounds very promising! Thank you very much.

- Max

 

[Lemon]

I use JDownloader but that's for exporting the videos / audio really.

 

[bamberfishcake]

I know of an ancient way called pen and paper.

You buy this thing called paper, sometimes it comes in pads with lines that organise data into regular spaces.

Using a secondary device, called a 'pen' you do this thing called handwriting - an ancient form of recording data using the 'pen'.

I have found a video of this long-forgotten art. Looks a bit complicated to me but perhaps it will help. To think that people used to keep lists and organise information this way is mind-blowing.

 

[maxd]

"Pen and paper", LoL. 200+ playlists and probably close to 2500+ videos in total. You volunteering?

- Max

 

[jasonuk]

Not the cleanest of options, but if you can't find anything better and are handy with python or other language of choice, then the YouTube API is available (with results in JSON):

To pull the Playlist details, you need

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To pull the Items from a Playlist (i.e. the videos themselves) you need

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Haven't experimented with it myself beyond a quick play with the "Try this method" panel (which works with your live data if you provide permission), but will be slightly faster than stone carvings pen and paper.

 

[maxd]

And I was so looking forward to spending the next 20 years writing all that out on papyrus TP sand recycled kitchen roll cores paper.

Thanks @jasonuk , unfortunately I haven't written a line of code in 20+ years, so the PnP method would likely be faster for me at this point.

 

[bamberfishcake]

I have another idea which I think may solve the problem.

It's from a company called Polaroid and it is called the Polaroid Camera.

You aim the device at the playlist, and then it prints, somewhat magically, a picture of the playlist onto a small square sheet.



You could then stick, or preferably use your sewing skills from school, to stitch the pages together to form a list.

 

[maxd]

Another excellent suggestion that I will proceed to implement ignore with all possible haste. Many thanks.