tubesync/README.md

# TubeSync

**This is a preview release of TubeSync, it may contain bugs but should be usable**

TubeSync is a PVR (personal video recorder) for YouTube. Or, like Sonarr but for
YouTube (with a built-in download client). It is designed to synchronize channels and
playlists from YouTube to local directories and update your media server once media is
downloaded.

If you want to watch YouTube videos in particular quality or settings from your local
media server, then TubeSync is for you. Internally, TubeSync is a web interface wrapper
on `youtube-dl` and `ffmpeg` with a task scheduler.

There are several other web interfaces to YouTube and `youtube-dl` all with varying
features and implemenations. TubeSync's largest difference is full PVR experience of
updating media servers and better selection of media formats. Additionally, to be as
hands-free as possible, TubeSync has gradual retrying of failures with back-off timers
so media which fails to download will be retried for an extended period making it,
hopefully, quite reliable.

# Screenshots

### Dashboard

![TubeSync Dashboard](https://github.com/meeb/tubesync/blob/main/docs/dashboard.png?raw=true)

### Sources overview

![TubeSync sources overview](https://github.com/meeb/tubesync/blob/main/docs/sources.png?raw=true)

### Source details

![TubeSync source details](https://github.com/meeb/tubesync/blob/main/docs/source.png?raw=true)

### Media overview

![TubeSync media overview](https://github.com/meeb/tubesync/blob/main/docs/media.png?raw=true)

### Media details

![TubeSync media-details](https://github.com/meeb/tubesync/blob/main/docs/media-item.png?raw=true)


# Requirements

For the easiest installation, you will need an environment to run containers such as
Docker or Podman. You will also need as much space as you want to allocate to
downloaded media and thumbnails. If you download a lot of media at high resolutions
this can be very large.


# What to expect

Once running, TubeSync will download media to a specified directory. Inside this
directory will be a `video` and `audio` subdirectories. All media which only has an
audio stream (such as music) will download to the `audio` directory. All media with a
video stream will be downloaded to the `video` directory. All administration of
TubeSync is performed via a web interface. You can optionally add a media server,
currently just Plex, to complete the PVR experience.


# Installation

TubeSync is designed to be run in a container, such as via Docker or Podman. It also
works in a Docker Compose stack. Only `amd64` is initially supported.

Example (with Docker on *nix):

First find your the user ID and group ID you want to run TubeSync as, if you're not
sure what this is it's probably your current user ID and group ID:

```bash
$ id
# Example output, in this example, user ID = 1000, group ID = 1000
# id uid=1000(username) gid=1000(username) groups=1000(username),129(docker)
```

You can find your local timezone name here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones

If unset, `TZ` defaults to `UTC`.

Next, create the directories you're going to use for config data and downloads:

```bash
$ mkdir /some/directory/tubesync-config
$ mkdir /some/directory/tubesync-downloads
```

Finally, download and run the container:

```bash
# Pull a versioned image
$ docker pull ghcr.io/meeb/tubesync:v0.3
# Start the container using your user ID and group ID
$ docker run \
  -d \
  --name tubesync \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=Europe/London \
  -v /some/directory/tubesync-config:/config \
  -v /some/directory/tubesync-downloads:/downloads \
  -p 4848:4848 \
  ghcr.io/meeb/tubesync:v0.3
```

Once running, open `http://localhost:4848` in your browser and you should see the
TubeSync dashboard. If you do, you can proceed to adding some sources (YouTube channels
and playlists). If not, check `docker logs tubesync` to see what errors might be
occuring, typical ones are file permission issues.

Alternatively, for Docker Compose, you can use something like:

```yaml
  tubesync:
    image: ghcr.io/meeb/tubesync:v0.3
    container_name: tubesync
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 4848:4848
    volumes:
      - /some/directory/tubesync-config:/config
      - /some/directory/tubesync-downloads:/downloads
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/London
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
```

# Updating

To update, you can just pull a new version of the container image as they are released.

```bash
$ docker pull pull ghcr.io/meeb/tubesync:v[number]
```

Back-end updates such as database migrations should be automatic.


# Moving, backing up, etc.

TubeSync, when running in its default container, stores thumbnails, cache and its
SQLite database into the `/config` directory and wherever you've mapped that to on your
file system. Just copying or moving this directory and making sure the permissions are
correct is sufficient to move, back up or migrate your TubeSync install.


# Using TubeSync

### 1. Add some sources

Pick your favourite YouTube channels or playlists, pop over to the "sources" tab, click
whichever add button suits you, enter the URL and validate it. This process extracts
the key information from the URL and makes sure it's a valid URL. This is the channel
name for YouTube channels and the playlist ID for YouTube playlists.

You will then be presented with the initial add a source form where you can select
all the features you want, such as how often you want to index your source and the
quality of the media you want to download. Once happy, click "add source".


### 2. Wait

That's about it. All other actions are automatic and performed on timers by scheduled
tasks. You can see what your TubeSync instance is doing on the "tasks" tab.

As media is indexed and downloaded it will appear in the "media" tab.


### 3. Media Server updating

Currently TubeSync supports Plex as a media server. You can add your local Plex server
under the "media servers" tab.


# Logging and debugging

TubeSync outputs useful logs, errors and debugging information to the console. You can
view these with:

```bash
$ docker logs --follow tubesync
```


# Warnings

### 1. Index frequency

It's a good idea to add sources with as low an index frequency as possible. This is the
duration between indexes of the source. An index is when TubeSync checks to see
what videos available on a channel or playlist to find new media. Try and keep this as
long as possible, 24 hours if possible.


### 2. Indexing massive channels

If you add a massive (several thousand videos) channel to TubeSync and choose "index
every hour" or similar short interval it's entirely possible your TubeSync install may
spend its entire time just indexing the massive channel over and over again without
downloading any media. Check your tasks for the status of your TubeSync install.


# FAQ

### Can I use TubeSync to download single videos?

No, TubeSync is designed to repeatedly scan and download new media from channels or
playlists. If you want to download single videos the best suggestion would be to create
your own playlist, add the playlist to TubeSync and then add single videos to your
playlist as you browse about YouTube. Your "favourites" playlist of videos will download
automatically.

### Does TubeSync support any other video platforms?

At the moment, no. This is a first release. The library TubeSync uses that does most
of the downloading work, `youtube-dl`, supports many hundreds of video sources so it's
likely more will be added to TubeSync if there is demand for it.

### Is there a progress bar?

No, in fact, there is no JavaScript at all in the web interface at the moment. TubeSync
is designed to be more set-and-forget than something you watch download. You can see
what active tasks are being run in the "tasks" tab and if you want to see exactly what
your install is doing check the container logs.

### Are there alerts when a download is complete?

No, this feature is best served by existing services such as the execelent
[tautulli](https://tautulli.com/) which can monitor your Plex server and send alerts
that way.

### There's errors in my "tasks" tab!

You only really need to worry about these if there is a permanent failure. Some errors
are temproary and will be retried for you automatically, such as a download got
interrupted and will be tried again later. Sources with permanet errors (such as no
media available because you got a channel name wrong) will be shown as errors on the
"sources" tab.

### What is TubeSync written in?

Python3 using Django, embedding youtube-dl. It's pretty much glue between other much
larger libraries.

Notable libraries and software used:

 * [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/)
 * [youtube-dl](https://yt-dl.org/)
 * [ffmpeg](https://ffmpeg.org/)
 * [Django Background Tasks](https://github.com/arteria/django-background-tasks/)
 * [django-sass](https://github.com/coderedcorp/django-sass/)
 * The container bundles with `s6-init` and `nginx`

See the [Pipefile](https://github.com/meeb/tubesync/blob/main/Pipfile) for a full list.

### Can I get access to the full Django admin?

Yes, although pretty much all operations are available through the front end interface
and you can probably break things by playing in the admin. If you still want to access
it you can run:

```bash
$ docker exec -ti tubesync python3 /app/manage.py createsuperuser
```

And follow the instructions to create an initial Django superuser, once created, you
can log in at http://localhost:4848/admin

### Are there user accounts or multi-user support?

No not at the moment. This could be added later if there is demand for it.

### Does TubeSync support HTTPS?

No, you should deploy it behind an HTTPS-capable proxy if you want this (nginx, caddy,
etc.). Configuration of this is beyond the scope of this README.

### What architectures does the container support?

Just `amd64` for the moment. Others may be made available if there is demand.


# Advanced configuration

There are a number of other environment variables you can set. These are, mostly,
**NOT** required to be set in the default container installation, they are mostly
useful if you are manually installing TubeSync in some other environment. These are:

| Name              | What                                  | Example                            |
| ----------------- | ------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- |
| DJANGO_SECRET_KEY | Django secret key                     | YJySXnQLB7UVZw2dXKDWxI5lEZaImK6l   |
| TUBESYNC_DEBUG    | Enable debugging                      | True                               |
| TUBESYNC_HOSTS    | Django's ALLOWED_HOSTS                | tubesync.example.com,otherhost.com |
| GUNICORN_WORKERS  | Number of gunicorn workers to spawn   | 3                                  |
| LISTEN_HOST       | IP address for gunicorn to listen on  | 127.0.0.1                          |
| LISTEN_PORT       | Port number for gunicorn to listen on | 8080                               |


# Manual, non-containerised, installation

As a relatively normal Django app you can run TubeSync without the container. Beyond
the following rough guide you are on your own and should be knowledgeable about
installing and running WSGI-based Python web applications before attempting this.

1. Clone or download this repo
2. Make sure you're running a modern version of Python (>=3.6) and have Pipenv
   installed
3. Set up the environment with `pipenv install`
4. Copy `tubesync/tubesync/local_settings.py.example` to
   `tubesync/tubesync/local_settings.py` and edit it as appropriate
5. Run migrations with `./manage.py migrate`
6. Collect static files with `./manage.py collectstatic`
6. Set up your prefered WSGI server, such as `gunicorn` poiting it to the application
   in `tubesync/tubesync/wsgi.py`
7. Set up your proxy server such as `nginx` and forward it to the WSGI server
8. Check the web interface is working
9. Run `./manage.py process_tasks` as the background task worker to index and download
   media. This is a non-detaching process that will write logs to the console. For long
   term running you could use a terminal multiplexer such as `tmux`, or create
   `systemd` unit to run it.


# Tests

There is a moderately comprehensive test suite focussing on the custom media format
matching logic and that the front-end interface works. You can run it via Django:

```bash
$ ./manage.py test --verbosity=2
```


# Contributing

All properly formatted and sensible pull requests, issues and comments are welcome.