media_archivist

Cross-source media indexer. Builds a local JSON database of stream metadata from YouTube, YouTube Music, Internet Archive, Bandcamp and SoundCloud.

Backend	Library	What you can index
YouTube	tutubo	channels, playlists, videos (no API key)
YouTube Music	tutubo.ytmus (via ytmusicapi)	tracks, albums, artists, playlists
Internet Archive	internetarchive	items, collections
Bandcamp	py_bandcamp	tracks, albums, artists, tag/search
SoundCloud	nuvem_de_som	tracks, sets, profiles, search

media_archivist is metadata-only: it indexes streams. It does not download them. Pair it with yt-dlp (or SoundCloud's resolve_stream, Bandcamp's track.stream) for on-demand extraction, or use the JSON DB to drive dataset-collection scripts, recommender experiments, OVOS skills, etc.

Ships as both a Python library and a media-archivist CLI.

Install

pip install media_archivist                 # core (YouTube + IA + YT Music)
pip install media_archivist[bandcamp]       # + py_bandcamp
pip install media_archivist[soundcloud]     # + nuvem_de_som
pip install media_archivist[all]            # everything

CLI

Every subcommand takes either:

• --db-file PATH, explicit path to a .json file (recommended for datasets you want to commit alongside scripts), or
• --db NAME, auto-place under XDG at ~/.local/share/media_archivist/<NAME>.json.

# Index a channel, a playlist, or individual videos
media-archivist add --db-file talks.json https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips
media-archivist add --db-file talks.json --blacklist "#shorts" \
    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...

# Browse the DB
media-archivist list  --db-file talks.json --limit 20
media-archivist list  --db-file talks.json --grep "review" --json
media-archivist stats --db-file talks.json

# Pair with yt-dlp, index once, download on demand
media-archivist urls --db-file talks.json --grep "tutorial" | yt-dlp -a -

# Drop dead videos / unwanted titles
media-archivist prune --db-file talks.json --unavailable --blacklist sponsor

# Background-monitor a set of URLs (re-syncs every --interval seconds)
media-archivist monitor --db-file talks.json --interval 600 \
    https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips \
    https://www.youtube.com/@SomeOtherChannel

# Internet Archive
media-archivist add --db-file ia_movies.json --ia classic_cartoons
media-archivist urls --db-file ia_movies.json | xargs -n1 -P4 wget

# YouTube Music, rich track metadata (artist, album, year, duration, explicit)
media-archivist add --db-file songs.json --music --skip-explicit "lo-fi beats"
media-archivist add --db-file songs.json --music \
    "https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL..."

# Bandcamp, tracks have direct stream URLs in the entry
media-archivist add --db-file bandcamp.json --bandcamp \
    "https://artistname.bandcamp.com/album/some-album"
media-archivist add --db-file bandcamp.json --bandcamp "ambient drone"

# SoundCloud, search, profile, or set URLs
media-archivist add --db-file sc.json --soundcloud \
    "https://soundcloud.com/some-artist"
media-archivist add --db-file sc.json --soundcloud "footwork"

Pick the backend with --ia, --music, --bandcamp, or --soundcloud (default: YouTube). Every other subcommand (list, export, urls, prune, merge, stats, …) works the same way against any backend's DB.

DBs are plain JSON, edit, back up, version-control, share. With --db NAME the file is managed under XDG via json_database.

Homelab / HTTP service

media-archivist serve exposes a FastAPI HTTP API on port 8000. The Docker image includes yt-dlp and stores everything under /data.

# One command brings up the service with a persistent named volume,
# automatic restart-on-reboot, and a /healthz healthcheck.
docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml up -d

The service is single-tenant, no authentication. It is designed to run on your LAN or behind your existing reverse proxy (Caddy, Traefik, nginx). Do not expose port 8000 directly to the internet.

Integration endpoints

Endpoint	Purpose
GET /strm/{id}	Returns playable URL as text/plain, drop into .strm files for Jellyfin / Kodi.
GET /m3u	M3U playlist of stream URLs. Accepts source, where, has_stream, limit.
GET /feed.rss	RSS feed for podcast clients or Freshrss. Accepts limit.
GET /healthz	Liveness check for Uptime Kuma, Docker, k8s. Returns {status, version, db_path}.
GET /providers	Inspect which metadatarr providers are active (available, media, modality, genre_filter).
POST /canonicalize	Run the resolver against the DB. Body: {providers?, stamp_rows?, max_workers?}.
GET /quarantine	List entries the resolver could not confidently match.
POST /quarantine/{id}/accept	Accept a quarantined row (optional ?canonical_id= to link).
POST /quarantine/{id}/reject	Reject and force a fresh canonical_id.
GET /docs	Auto-generated OpenAPI / Swagger UI.

See docs/deploy.md for the full route table, Systemd unit, and reverse-proxy tips. For Jellyfin .strm export see docs/jellyfin.md.

Building datasets

media_archivist is metadata-only: it indexes streams. Downloads happen on demand via yt-dlp (or any other tool that reads URLs). The export, import, merge, and stats subcommands turn the JSON DB into a workable dataset.

# Build an index of three channels into one explicit file
media-archivist add --db-file documentaries.json \
    https://www.youtube.com/@FreeDocumentary \
    https://www.youtube.com/@FDSpace \
    https://www.youtube.com/@FreeDocumentaryOcean

# Project specific fields → CSV (great for pandas / sklearn)
media-archivist export --db-file documentaries.json --format csv \
    --fields videoId,title,url,published,tags,description \
    -o documentaries.csv

# JSONL is the canonical "one-row-per-line" format for ML pipelines
media-archivist export --db-file documentaries.json --format jsonl \
    -o documentaries.jsonl

# Just URLs (txt) for downstream tools
media-archivist export --db-file documentaries.json --format txt \
    -o urls.txt

# Inspect coverage before training
media-archivist stats --db-file documentaries.json

# Merge per-topic indexes into a master dataset
media-archivist merge --db-file all_docs.json \
    space.json ocean.json nature.json --overwrite

# Round-trip: import an existing JSONL produced elsewhere
media-archivist import --db-file talks.json talks.jsonl --overwrite

Output formats

--format	Use case
jsonl (default)	streaming pipelines, HuggingFace datasets, jq
json	small datasets, human inspection
csv	pandas, spreadsheets, list/dict fields auto-serialized to JSON strings
txt	flat URL list for yt-dlp -a - / wget -i / xargs

Combine with --fields to project only what you need, --grep to filter by title substring, and --limit N to cap row count.

Stored fields per video

field	source
videoId, url, title, thumbnail	tutubo Video
tags	union of Video.keywords and inferred Video.tags
is_live, published, views, description	tutubo channel-grid metadata
playlist	only set when archived from a playlist

See examples/ for end-to-end dataset-creation scripts.

YouTube (library)

from media_archivist import YoutubeArchivist

archivist = YoutubeArchivist(
    db_path="./talks.json",       # explicit file (or use db_name="..." for XDG)
    blacklisted_kwords=["#shorts", "trailer"],
    required_kwords=[],           # all must appear in the title
)

# Channel, handles /channel/, /c/, /@handle, /user/
archivist.archive("https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips")

# Playlist
archivist.archive("https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...")

# Single video (watch / youtu.be / shorts URLs)
archivist.archive("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ")

# All playlists of a channel
archivist.archive_channel_playlists("https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips")

# Drop entries whose videos are no longer reachable
archivist.remove_unavailable()

for entry in archivist.sorted_entries():
    print(entry["title"], entry["url"])

Note on duration: tutubo's bare Channel.videos / Playlist.videos iterators don't expose track length, so --min-duration is a no-op for plain channel scrapes. It does apply when length is available, i.e. with --music (YT Music tracks), --bandcamp, --soundcloud, --ia, and YouTube search-result previews. published is a relative string ("2 days ago") rather than a timestamp.

Background monitor

from media_archivist import YoutubeMonitor

mon = YoutubeMonitor(db_name="my_channels")
mon.start()
mon.monitor("https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips")  # re-syncs every sync_interval
mon.sync("https://www.youtube.com/@SomeOtherChannel")  # one-shot

YoutubeMonitor.bootstrap_from_url(url) seeds an empty database from a remote JSON dump, handy for distributing pre-built indexes.

YouTube Music (library)

from media_archivist import YoutubeMusicArchivist

m = YoutubeMusicArchivist(db_path="./songs.json", skip_explicit=True)
m.archive_search("lo-fi beats")
m.archive_playlist("https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...")
m.archive_album("MPREb_xxx")          # browseId
m.archive_artist("UCxxx")             # channelId

Each entry includes artist, album, year, duration (seconds), explicit, video_type (MUSIC_VIDEO_TYPE_ATV etc.), audio_only, music_video.

Bandcamp (library)

from media_archivist import BandcampArchivist

bc = BandcampArchivist(db_path="./bandcamp.json")
bc.archive("https://artist.bandcamp.com/album/some-album")
bc.archive_artist("https://artist.bandcamp.com")
bc.archive_search("ambient drone")

Each entry stores artist, album, track_number, duration (seconds), thumbnail, and stream (a direct audio URL when Bandcamp exposes one).

SoundCloud (library)

from media_archivist import SoundCloudArchivist

sc = SoundCloudArchivist(db_path="./sc.json", resolve_streams=True)
sc.archive("https://soundcloud.com/some-artist")     # profile
sc.archive("https://soundcloud.com/some-artist/sets/some-set")  # set
sc.archive_search("footwork")

resolve_streams=True calls nuvem_de_som's stream resolver per track and stores the resulting MP3/HLS URL under stream.

Internet Archive (library)

from media_archivist import IAArchivist

ia = IAArchivist(db_path="./ia_movies.json")
ia.archive("classic_cartoons")           # collection or single item id
ia.archive_item("Popeye_forPresident")

Stream URLs are filtered to formats in IAArchivist.VALID_FORMATS (MPEG2, Ogg Video, 512Kb MPEG4, h.264).

Filtering helpers

All archivists inherit from JsonArchivist:

• remove_keyword(kwords), drop entries whose title matches any keyword
• remove_missing(keys), drop entries missing any of the given fields
• remove_below_duration(minutes), drop entries shorter than N minutes
• sorted_entries(), entries sorted by upload_ts (descending)

Metadata providers

media-archivist canonicalize enriches indexed entries with external IDs and structured metadata via the cross-source resolver in metadatarr. The provider registry, dispatcher, and ~24 built-in providers (MusicBrainz, Wikidata, TMDB, AniList, Jikan, Google Books, LibriVox, Apple Podcasts, *arr family, Discogs, Blu-ray.com, DVDCompare, OpenLibrary, Anna's Archive, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube / YouTube Music, Metal Archives, …) all live in metadatarr and self-register on import. See docs/metadatarr.md for the full table.

The resolver gates providers on three independent axes: media (MediaType), modality (PlaybackModality, AUDIO / VIDEO / TEXT / INTERACTIVE / UNKNOWN), and genre_filter (genre tag set). Callers constructing Signals directly can pass modality=PlaybackModality.AUDIO to restrict resolution to audio-only providers. See docs/metadatarr.md for details.

License

Apache-2.0