
Ask HN: How to avoid losing a baby video that “violates YouTube's guidelines”? - complexworld
Years ago I uploaded to YouTube a 30 minute home video of my kids when they were babies. I wanted to avoid losing the video to a hard drive crash, and also wanted to be able to share it with family members. I never shared it publicly.<p>Big mistake!<p>Now years later, YouTube emailed me, and informed me that my home video &quot;violates guidelines&quot;. My guess is that a short sequence showing a 6 month old baby naked in a bathtub triggered some kind of porn filter :(.<p>Of course I appealed, YouTube&#x27;s decision, but to no avail.<p>The worst part is that the YouTube UI prevents downloading my video and storing it somewhere else! Four days from now YouTube will delete my home video, and it will be gone forever.<p>What can I do to avoid losing my video?
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ThrowawayR2
Use youtube-dl: [https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-
dl/index.html](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html) . It's both
free and the source is public domain: [https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
dl/](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/)

~~~
complexworld
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried to do it, but YouTube still refuses to let
me DL my video.

    
    
        app $ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12345678
        [youtube] 12345678: Downloading webpage
        ERROR: 12345678: YouTube said: This video has been removed for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines.
        Sorry about that.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
You've mentioned that you can still view it yourself so have you tried
youtube-dl with the username + password options?

~~~
complexworld
I have now tried that. But logging in isn't working for me :(

    
    
        app $ youtube-dl -u yyyyyyy@gmail.com -p zzzzzzzzz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1234343
        [youtube] Downloading login page
        [youtube] Looking up account info
        [youtube] Logging in
        WARNING: Unable to log in: HTTP Error 400: Bad Request
    

I disabled 2FA, and confirmed that my password is correct by logging out on
the web, and back in again.

------
complexworld
What ended up working in my case was to install an app called Replay Media
Catcher. It is available for both Mac and Windows. It can intercept any video
you're watching in the browser, and save it to a file.

------
elliekelly
Is it still accessible to you? If you can still play it you can screen record
it. (Command-Shift-5 on Mac)

~~~
complexworld
Yes I think that would work. Except then I've lost the sound track. Much
better than nothing. I'll use it as a last resort if I can't find a better
solution within the next 3 days.

