Mirror YouTube channel to watch videos with best experience

Problem

If you don't pay Youtube Premium, you have to watch ads. It's annoying.

So what about watching the same video on your own server?

• You can watch the video without ads.
• You can always watch the best quality video.
• You can watch the video even if it's deleted from YouTube.
• You can watch the video even if you don't have internet access.

Step 1 - Get an Ubuntu server

Here, you can create a local server or purchase an Ubuntu server from a cloud service provider.

You can buy a pure server at Vultr, Azure, or DigitalOcean.

After you installing a pure Ubuntu, or buying a new cloud Ubuntu server, you need to first finish the basic authentication configuration.

Follow instructions here to:

• Delete other accounts.
• Create your own account instead of root.
• Disable password login and force to use SSH key to log in.
• Disable root account.
• Enable sudo without password.
• Enable firewall.
• Adjust timezone.
• Enable BBR

Best-practice for authentication after creating a new Linux server

Of course, you need to make sure that this Ubuntu server can access the Internet and can be accessed by your other servers.

Step 2 - Install Youtube-dl

You can install youtube-dl by running the following command:

echo "Installing Python"
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python-is-python3 ffmpeg atomicparsley git -y

echo "Updating Youtube DL"
pip install 'git+https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl.git@master#egg=youtube_dl'
sudo cp /home/$USER/.local/bin/youtube-dl /usr/bin/
/usr/bin/youtube-dl --version

Step 3 - Write a script to download the video

First, create a new user called jellyfin.

sudo adduser jellyfin

Then, create a new folder to store the video.

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/data/youtube
sudo chown -R jellyfin:jellyfin /mnt/data

You can write a script to download the video from YouTube.

sudo touch ./run_youtube.sh
sudo vim ./run_youtube.sh

In the vim editor, you can write the following script:

#!/bin/bash

sudo chown -R jellyfin:jellyfin /mnt/data
find /mnt/data -type d -print0 | sudo xargs -r -0 chmod 0777 # Any user can read, write, and list
find /mnt/data -type f -print0 | sudo xargs -r -0 chmod 0666 # Any user can read and write

# Check if the mount point is available. Right here I used a remote mount to store the youtube videos.
if df -Th | grep -q "/mnt/data"; then
    echo "Mounted!"

    # Define channel URLs
    user_urls=(
        "https://www.youtube.com/@thu4878/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@user-lk3gk5sd7n/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@TchLiyongle/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@SONAR606/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@anduinxue4729/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@STBoss/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@gleekid/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@paperclip6992/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@xdiaocha/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@GPINTALK/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@xiaohan-ufo/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@JaredOwen/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@user-og1rx7gc6o/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@geekerwan1024/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@wbclg/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@user-darkcarrot/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@AkilaZhang/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@dacongmovie/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@chesspage1real/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@BossPrating/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@ssrphysics/videos"
        "https://www.youtube.com/@One-In-a-Billion/videos"
    )

    # Loop through user URLs and start a new tmux session for each channel
    for url in "${user_urls[@]}"; do
        # Extract the user ID from the URL
        user_id=$(echo "$url" | grep -oP '(?<=youtube.com/@)[^/]+')
        echo "Starting download $url"
        date
        # Start a new tmux session for the channel
        tmux new -d -s "$user_id" "\
    youtube-dl \
        -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best' \
        --download-archive '/mnt/data/youtube/$user_id.txt' \
        --write-description \
        --write-info-json \
        --write-annotations \
        --write-thumbnail \
        --write-sub \
        --all-subs \
        --ignore-errors \
        --merge-output-format mp4 \
        --add-metadata \
        --embed-subs \
        --embed-thumbnail \
        --sleep-interval 50 \
        --max-sleep-interval 100 \
        -o '/mnt/data/youtube/%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s' $url"
        sleep 800
    done
else
    echo "Not mounted!"
    # Alert.
    echo "Backup failed! `date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"`" | sudo tee -a /etc/motd
    exit
fi

Now allow the script to be executed.

sudo chmod +x ./run_youtube.sh

To make sure the script works, you can run it manually.

./run_youtube.sh

That will start downloading the videos from the YouTube channels you specified.

The script might be slow and take a long time to finish. You can use tmux ls and tmux a -t <session-name> to check the progress of the download.

Step 4 - Run the script regularly

You can use crontab to run the script regularly.

crontab -e

And then add the following line to the crontab file:

40 3 */3 * * /home/<YOUR-USER-NAME>/run_youtube.sh

That will run the script every 3 days at 3:40 AM.

Of course, you can change the time to whatever you want.

Step 5 - Install Jellyfin

You can install Jellyfin by running the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apt-transport-https

wget -O - https://repo.jellyfin.org/ubuntu/jellyfin_team.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [arch=$( dpkg --print-architecture )] https://repo.jellyfin.org/ubuntu $( lsb_release -c -s ) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jellyfin.list

sudo apt update
sudo apt install jellyfin

After the installation, you can access Jellyfin by visiting http://<your-server-ip>:8096.

Step 6 - Add the video folder to Jellyfin

You can add the video folder to Jellyfin by visiting http://<your-server-ip>:8096/web/index.html#!/dashboard.

Click the Add Media Library button and select the folder you created.

The path of the folder should be /mnt/data/youtube.

Step 7 - Enjoy

Now you can watch the videos on your own server without ads.

You can also use Jellyfin app to watch the videos on your phone, tablet, or TV.

Step 8 - Play with other players like VLC

You can also use other players like VLC to watch the videos.

But before doing that, you need to expose the video folder to the Internet via a web server.

You can use Aiursoft.Static to do that.

To install Aiursoft.Static, you can run the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install dotnet8
sudo dotnet tool install Aiursoft.Static --tool-path /opt/static || sudo dotnet tool update Aiursoft.Static --tool-path /opt/static
sudo chmod +x /opt/static/static
/opt/static/static --help

Then you can run the following command to start the web server:

cd /mnt/data
/opt/static/static --path /mnt/data -p 48466 --allow-directory-browsing --enable-webdav

Now you can use your browser to visit http://<your-server-ip>:48466 to watch the videos in the folder.

Of course, you want to make the web server run in the background.

You can use systemd to do that.

First, create a new service file:

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/static.service

And then write the following content to the file:

[Unit]
Description=Serves static files for '/mnt/data' on port 48466
After=network.target
Wants=network.target

# Before starting, run:
# find /mnt/data -type d -print0 | sudo xargs -0 chmod 0777
# find /mnt/data -type f -print0 | sudo xargs -0 chmod 0666
# So www-data user can read the files
[Service]
User=www-data
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
ExecStart=/opt/static/static --path /mnt/data -p 48466 --allow-directory-browsing --enable-webdav --enable-webdav-write
WorkingDirectory=/mnt/data
LimitNOFILE=1048576
KillSignal=SIGINT
Environment="ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production"
Environment="DOTNET_PRINT_TELEMETRY_MESSAGE=false"
Environment="DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1"
Environment="ASPNETCORE_FORWARDEDHEADERS_ENABLED=true"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now you can start the service:

sudo systemctl enable static
sudo systemctl start static
sudo systemctl status static

Now you can use your browser to visit http://<your-server-ip>:48466 to watch the videos in the folder.

To watch the videos in VLC, you can copy the video URL and paste it into VLC.

Enjoy!