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Ask HN: How to avoid losing a baby video that “violates YouTube's guidelines”?

by complexworld on 6/3/20, 2:35 PM with 7 comments

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.

Big mistake!

Now years later, YouTube emailed me, and informed me that my home video "violates guidelines". My guess is that a short sequence showing a 6 month old baby naked in a bathtub triggered some kind of porn filter :(.

Of course I appealed, YouTube's decision, but to no avail.

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.

What can I do to avoid losing my video?

by ThrowawayR2 on 6/3/20, 2:46 PM
Use youtube-dl: 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/
by complexworld on 6/3/20, 6:11 PM
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.
by elliekelly on 6/3/20, 2:43 PM
Is it still accessible to you? If you can still play it you can screen record it. (Command-Shift-5 on Mac)