Google Video (Archive)
- See also Google Video Warroom.
| Google Video | |
| |
 Google Video logo | |
| URL | http://video.google.com |
| Project status | Closing in 2011-04-29[1] |
| Archiving status | In progress... |
| Project source | Unknown |
| Project tracker | Unknown |
| IRC channel | #archiveteam |
Google Video is a video sharing website which is shutting down.
If you want to save your own videos, see the announcement and tools below.
If you want to help archive Google Video, get some machines running and join us in IRC (EFNet #archiveteam / #googlegrape)
Joining the archival effort
The automatic scripts only work on FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows and maybe OS X. They also seem to work fine in Cygwin. Alternatively, you can run *nix in a virtual machine (given you have a fast enough machine).
Anyone can help out, but we would *really* appreciate it if you'd use an *NIX system over any thoughts of doing it on a Windows system. If you however choose to pursue the Magical World of Windows - please make sure that what you are collecting is not damaged as a consequence of running it on a Windows system.
In any case, the first thing to do is to please add your name/nickname to this list, along with the storage and bandwidth you have available.
What can I do?
The two main tasks are: indexing and downloading. The easiest and least taxing is indexing (see Google Video Warroom#Indexing Videos To Identify Related Videos). If you have some extra bandwidth and space think about running Listerine to download videos. Both of these tasks are automated and can be left running in the background. It is often good practice to start a few process of each at once.
FAQ
- Is there any estimate on how many videos are on Google Video?
- Wikipedia said it has 2,500,000 videos, a semi-official Google blog mentioned 2.8M
- Is there anything about grabbing metadata for vids? like descriptions?
- Googlegrape does that, it saves the html of the video download page
- What happens to the data after you claim a seed on the wiki and download it?
- We've got 140TB of space allocated to us on archive.org, and can get more
- Is there already some space where it can be uploaded to?
- Not yet, the effort is still young and things take time to organize.
- How can I split seed files if I want to download fewer videos or share the task with others?
- On *nix machines use: split --lines=500 [seedfile] [seedfile] to create a set of files each 500 lines in length in the form seedfileaa seedfileab ... etc.
- How can I check if there are duplicates in a seed file?
- On *nix machines use: sort [infile] | uniq -d to show all duplicates.
- How can I remove duplicates from a seed file before I start to use it?
- On *nix machines use: sort [infile] | uniq -u > [outfile] to produce a new seed file with duplicates removed.
- If I wanted to run more than one listerine process, do I just make multiple clones? Do I need a different username for each?
- Only if you need to be able to differentiate later on, like we'll say, we need video 123 from "xentac3"
Announcement: Uploaded video content no longer available
On April 29, 2011 videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the Video Status page, so you can download videos that you want to save. If you don’t want to download your videos, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)
How do I download videos that I've uploaded?
On the Video Status page, click Download Video located on the right side of each of your videos in the "Actions" column.Once a video has been downloaded, an "Already Downloaded" message will appear. If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all. This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.
I've downloaded my videos. Now what do I do with these FLV files?
FLV files are videos that have been encoded in the Flash Video Format. You can upload your videos in FLV format to other video hosting sites like YouTube or Picassa Web Albums. If you would like to playback your videos on your computer and they don’t seem to be working, you might need to install an FLV player. In order to find an FLV player to install, try doing a Google search for [ FLV player ].
External links
- Google Video [IA] [WebCite]
- Announcement email [IA] [WebCite]
- Announcement on Google Video Help [IA] [WebCite]
