In this detailed blog post, we’ll see how to backup YouTube channel and keep your channel safe during odd times.
Table of Contents
Why Should You BackUp YouTube Channel?
If YouTube terminates your account for getting a strike on a single video then you would end up losing all your videos on your channel.
Nowadays hacking is at its peak and a lot of YouTube channels having huge subscribers base are getting hacked by crypto guys either to promote cryptocurrency or they may demand a ransom.
As soon as they hacked, they wipe all your videos and put a crypto banner in channel art, and might upload cryptocurrency videos on your channel.
Even though you get your YouTube channel back with a password reset option but it’s gonna be a blank channel without any videos or sometimes the channel might not even exist at all when you visit the channel URL.
Even a young boy can easily hack your YouTube channel if it is not secured with two-factor authentication and complex password.
As a YouTuber, I know you were putting huge effort consistently over many years to grow your YouTube channel from zero views and zero subscribers to where you’re right now. If you spend very little time on your channel security and taking a regular backup would free up you from this worst nightmare.
To safeguard your YouTube channel, here are the few tips that you need to follow
- Keep complex password contain alphabets + numbers + special characters
- Think before you click any link from a sponsorship email
- Avoid logging to YouTube channel from multiple devices
- Keep at least two Gmail account (One to watch YouTube and the other one for your channel)
- Avoid installing unverified software downloaded from the internet.
- Add two-factor authentication to your channel
- Take a regular backup of your YouTube channel videos and metadata information.
Here’s is a video of Meghan Rienks having around 2+ Million subscribers explaining how she got her channel back after it was hacked.
Since she is having around 2+ million subscribers, she is having a dedicated YouTube account manager to help her out from this problem but it’s not always the case for those who are having less than a million subscribers and they should take care of themselves!
Let’s see how to backup YouTube channel videos and metadata information.
How To Backup YouTube Channel Videos Metadata CSV?
YouTube doesn’t have a feature to backup YouTube channel videos metadata info such as Title, description, tags to CSV. But you can do that with the help of TubeBuddy.
Even if you have back up videos you hardly save this metadata information such as Title, description, tags, etc., responsible for video rankings on the search results.
Just follow the below steps to take a backup of YouTube channel video metadata information.
On your Chrome browser, install this plugin and go to YouTube Studio and click on the Videos tab.
Step #2: Select Backup
Before the videos list, you can see plenty of TubeBuddy features. Under the Misc Tools, you can find a “BackUp” option. Click on the BackUp.
Step #3: Choose the BackUp Options
You’ll be prompted with a below pop up to confirm whether you want to take a complete backup of YouTube channel videos or backup remaining videos since the last successful backup.
If you’re taking a backup for the very first time, select the option “Backup my entire YouTube channel(every video)” option and click the “Start BackUp!” button as shown below
Step #4: Backup Starts
Once you click on the backup button, your backup process begins. It can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to complete the backup. But if you have more than 1000 videos, it can take up to a day.
Step #5: Wait for the Email Notification
You’ll get an email notification as soon as the channel backup is completed. You can just click on the download link and download the metadata information to your local computer.
Also, you can access your backup anytime online as well.
Just go to this account page and click on “BackUp and Export” option where you can see the complete history of backups.
Step #5: How Does the BackUp Look?
You can get the below information from the YouTube channel videos CSV backup.
- Video ID
- Channel ID
- Title
- Tags
- Description
- Privacy
- Date Published
- Category ID
- Category name
- Thumbnail URL
- Watch URL
- File Name
- Date of Back Up
- View Count
- Comment count
- Like Count
- Dislike count
- Length of video (in seconds)
Here’s the snippet of CSV
That’s it! You successfully taken the backup of your channel videos metadata!
Note: You need STAR access to avail this feature.
How To Backup YouTube channel Videos with Google TakeOut?
I know you have an option to download videos right from the YouTube studio. But the problem is YouTube compresses the original video and converts it to MP4 when you download from YouTube Studio.
Also, if you have more than 100 videos then downloading one by one will take a hell lot of time. Moreover, you cannot download more than 2 videos per hour using this trick.
Wondering how to download all videos from your YouTube channel?
Thanks to Google Takeout that helps to backup YouTube channel videos directly to Google Drive in a few minutes.
Here’s a step by step guide that you can follow to backup YouTube channel videos using Google takeout.
Step #1: Go To Google Takeout
Sign in to your YouTube channel Google account and go to Google takeout
Step #2 : Deselect All
On the top right, you have an option “Deselect all” check that one because you just want to back YouTube channel not other stuff like blogger, calendar, contact, etc.,
Step #3: Scroll Down To YouTube
On the Google Takeout, scroll down till you find YouTube and YouTube music and select the checkbox. Click on the” All YouTube data included” to filter only videos.
Step #4: Choose To Backup only YouTube channel Videos
You’ll get a pop up to select the list of YouTube data that you want to export. Select only videos and click OK. Finally, click Next Step.
Step #5 : Choose the Delivery Method
Select the delivery method where you want to store the youtube channel video backups.
You have an option to backup YouTube channel videos on the below websites
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- OneDrive
- Box
Select anyone. I recommend storing it on Google Drive.
Step #6: Select Export Frequency
How frequently you want to export your YouTube videos. You have two options
- One time export
- Take an automatic backup for every 2 months
Step #7: Select The File Type
You can save the backup in either of the two formats .zip or .tgz. Go with the zip as it is the most commonly used file format.
Step #8: Select The File Size
After you select the file format, you need to select the file size. You can select from 1GB to 50GB.
If your export file size is greater than the selected file size, it automatically split the export into multiple files.
Step #9: Export YouTube Videos
That’s it. You are almost done. Just click on the “Create export” to export the backup videos to Google drive. Now you can close the window. You’ll get an email notification once the backup is completed.
Step #10: Wait A Little For Email Confirmation
Once the export process is completed, you’ll get an email notification with a direct link to drive to download your videos.
Recommended Articles
Frequently Asked Questions
No! You can only take a backup of videos from your channel.
It depends on the video count and the size of the videos. If you have 1000+ videos, it might take a day to complete the channel backup.
Yes, you can download your youtube channel videos to the local computer using the option “Send download link via email” shown in Step #5. You have one week to download the files.
It just downloads the files you uploaded to YouTube. So, it’ll be the same format you uploaded to YouTube without any compression.
It depends upon how frequently you upload videos to your YouTube channel. If you upload videos every single day then take a backup once in a week.
That’s it for this post. I hope you learned how to backup YouTube channel. Firstly, keep the channel safe and take a regular backup of your videos just in case.
Please let me know if you have any questions.