GitHub - dessalines/torrent-tube: A set of tools to help decentralize youtube videos.
github.com
A set of tools to help decentralize youtube videos. - dessalines/torrent-tube

YouTube is still one of the major points of centralization on the internet, so I’ve been brainstorming ways around the problem.

From the readme:

Torrent-Tube is a set of tools to help decentralize YouTube videos, by moving them to torrents, which can be shared by many people. It includes:

  • A Torrent-Tube search site which searches the Torrents-csv search engine to see if the given YouTube video already exists, and is being seeded.
    • It does this by extracting the YouTube [VIDEO_ID] from a link, which you can also do manually if you like (IE, the text after watch?v=...).
  • A script to download, and create torrent files from YouTube videos, with a uniform naming style and format, taken from TheFrenchGhosty’s YouTube-DL-Scripts.
  • You will need to upload these torrent files yourself to a service (details below), and seed them.

Torrent-Tube Search

In the future, it may be possible to create a browser plugin that checks a video link that you’re currently watching for existing torrents.

Create torrent script

Requirements

Instructions

Copy a YouTube video URL.

# Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/dessalines/torrent-tube

# Run the script
./create_torrent.sh [YOUTUBE_URL]

The video will download, and is saved in the videos folder. The torrent file is saved in the torrents folder.

Add the torrent to your torrent app, such as qbittorrent.

  • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
    0·
    28 days ago

    https://github.com/jmbannon/ytdl-sub

    Nice, seems very similar to TheFrenchGhosty’s scripts that are being used here.

    Creating an individual torrent for every video doesn’t seem like a great solution, because the typical channel has lots of videos, up to thousands.

    It’s def a tradeoff, and you’re correct that we could potentially seed entire channels.

    But seeding single videos is IMO better for a few reasons:

    • Torrent clients won’t have to select a subset of files.
    • Its more future proof (ie you don’t have to make a new torrent after the channel releases a new video)
    • Searching for individual videos is easier, since the torrent name can contain the youtube video_id
    • Seeders won’t have to dedicate massive hd space to entire channels, especially since high quality videos nowadays can already be over 1GB. They just seed the specific videos they think are worth keeping.

    The main problem I foresee, is streamlining the process of creating and uploading torrents, so that people actually do it.

    And a browser plugin could potentially help.