Deleted and Private Videos - mattwright324/youtube-metadata GitHub Wiki

  • How can you tell if a video is deleted or private?
  • What all unavailable statuses are there and what do they mean?
  • How can you recover or research a private, deleted, or unavailable video?
  • How can find videos from a channel that got taken down?

This page aims to assist with many of these questions.

Researching

There is often a good chance to reveal what a private and deleted video was. This may also be helpful for videos that have been region blocked / copyright striked but are still public or unlisted.

This application provides pre-filled links and even queries Filmot for archived metadata: https://mattw.io/youtube-metadata/

Aside from googling and searching every data point, these links are a good start to researching unavailable videos. Replace {videoId} or {channelId} with the id you are looking for or just submit the video to this application which does it for you and provides additional search links.

There are also services which do much of the manual checking on several services for you such as

If Archive.org doesn't have the video archived there may at least be subtitles available from Filmot. Otherwise, if you really need to find something there are communities you could try reaching out to check if anyone had downloaded it:

Private

This status indicates that the video was made private.

  1. This video is private

Example: https://youtu.be/_oaaVJ2viZ8

Aside from manual privating, this also could have been done in mass by hiding the channel if all content on a channel appears to be missing.

Deleted

These statuses indicate that the video was deleted. It also seems that some of the video examples I provided below, the status can change. At the time I created this page, the video had that specific status displayed.

  1. This video has been removed by the uploader

Example: https://youtu.be/3wbZA8SMB0Q

The owner deleted the video themselves.

  1. This video has been removed for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines

Example: https://youtu.be/cGFX-azsj4I

This could be the fallback for policy violations before the specific policy violated was stored.

Learn more links to Community Guidelines

  1. This video has been removed for violating YouTube's policy on {POLICY}

Example: https://youtu.be/1ER67r8OCW8

The full list of policies can be found here. Learn more links to the specific answer link in this list relevant to the topic in the message.

  1. This video has been removed for violating YouTube's Terms of Service

Example: https://youtu.be/54Ihi0x8DiU

Terms of Service.

  1. This video is no longer available because the uploader has closed their YouTube account.

Example: https://youtu.be/GK0GwZKZiFQ

The channel owner has deleted their account.

  1. This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.

Example: https://youtu.be/3eUqkTztEJU

The channel could have been terminated due to community guidelines or copyright violations.

  1. This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by {ENTITY}

Example: https://youtu.be/3d0v4I7-TFk

Good ol' DMCA be it valid or not.

  1. This video isn't available anymore

Example: https://youtu.be/No3zciyIBQE

I believe this is the fallback for older deleted videos before the specific reasons in the other examples.

This also seems to appear for videoIds that do not exist yet or are even valid. Possibly this is the catch-all, if it doesn't have the detail to say one of the other messages this will return?

  1. This video was removed because it was too long

Example: https://youtu.be/gh33c7z6GJw

This means that the video was longer than 15 minutes before the channel owner enabled the setting that allows them to.

API

However, despite the detailed explanations above, you do not get much from the YouTube API. At most you'll only be able to get videoNotFound.

Resources

Other statuses

These are statuses other than deleted and private that you may encounter. Usually with these you can still view the comments, see the description, and interact but just not view the video itself. These can also be queried in the API.

  1. This video is popular! Due to limited creator history, we're limiting the number of viewers. Subscribe to this channel to help this creator reach a broader audience.

A livestream from a channel under 1000 subscribers.

  1. This video is unavailable on this device

Example: https://youtu.be/V2Afni3S-ok

A livestream that was too long (or too large in filesize) to be processed. In the example above, the livestream was 100 days long.

  1. The live stream recording is not available

Example: https://youtu.be/JlP-8JiKOS8

A similar case where the livestream was too long. In the example above, the livestream was 66 days long.

  1. This video contains content from {ENTITY}, who has blocked it from display on this website of application Watch on YouTube

Seen in Discord embed

The video cannot be played on the given website or application (third party) and must be watched on YouTube. Screenshot above seen from a Discord embed.

  1. This video contains content from {ENTITY}, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.

Example: https://youtu.be/DRhvxupGhwY (blocked worldwide)

The video has been region blocked worldwide (249 countries) and cannot be viewed anywhere.

  1. This video contains content from {ENTITY}, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

Example: https://youtu.be/cwyEdMo9r6E (blocked in US and CA)

The video has been region blocked in some of the world and can be viewed with a VPN in the allowed countries.

  1. This video is not available in your country.

Example: https://youtu.be/NcVGusovzEo (blocked by YouTube)

This seems to be a different region blocked case where it is by YouTube directly as no entity is mentioned. In the example above, this is due to the Ukraine Russia conflict and was from the Russian channel RT.

  1. Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner

When the video owner disabled the Allow embedding option on the video. Screenshot above seen from a discord embed.

Learn More

  1. The uploader has not made this video available in your country

Example: https://youtu.be/sJL6WA-aGkQ (JP only)

The channel themselves can restrict the video in some circumstances.

  1. Members-only content This video is available to this channel's members on level: {LEVEL} (or any higher level). Join this channel to get access to members-only content and other exclusive perks.

Example: https://youtu.be/LZwS6hZmqL8

Must join the particular level associated with the channel by purchasing the monthly amount through the join button.

Screenshot example of the join window for this particular channel here.

  1. The following content may contain suicide or self harm topics. Viewer discretion is advised.

Example: https://youtu.be/v6yg4ImnYwA, https://youtu.be/wU9Daiu5XoM

Learn more. Note, this message appears to be separate from any age restrictions.

  1. This video is not available

Example: https://youtu.be/0J3ClVWMCR4, https://youtu.be/IlZ1ZYods2w

In the example above, the video was blocked worldwide but did not have the usual message for that scenario shown in this wiki. Unclear if this message is a fallback if the entity name is missing for the worldwide block or some other reason.

  1. Sign in to confirm your age This video may be inappropriate for some users.

Example: https://youtu.be/6Eazjg3BTPc

If you are not signed in and the video is age restricted.

  1. Sorry, this content is age restricted.

If you are signed in and the account age is not old enough for the age restriction.

Playlist

You can also determine the status of a video that are in playlists. However, it had to be added to the playlist before it was made unavailable unless it was the video owner. Creators can put their own private videos into their own created playlists.

Playlist private Playlist deleted

API

Fortunately you can determine if a video was private vs deleted by the title and lack of videoOwnerChannelId from playlistItems.list given it was already in a playlist. You cannot add a currently unavailable video to an existing playlist. Note that the channelTitle will also change to the creator of the playlist that added it instead of the original video author.

{
  "kind": "youtube#playlistItem",
  "etag": "kSsB1vup18LEJi4vHGXO9_IbH3g",
  "id": "UEwwZFYySGVmT25LNDFTNG0zcUpCRVVWT0FtNFVteG5nWi4zMDg5MkQ5MEVDMEM1NTg2",
  "snippet": {
    "publishedAt": "2020-10-16T14:13:40Z",
    "channelId": "UCxbp_aQSTqaIXCATD0-3nDQ",
    "title": "Private video",
    "description": "This video is private.",
    "thumbnails": {},
    "channelTitle": "Cop Oswald",
    "playlistId": "PL0dV2HefOnK41S4m3qJBEUVOAm4UmxngZ",
    "position": 10,
    "resourceId": {
      "kind": "youtube#video",
      "videoId": "_oaaVJ2viZ8"
    }
  }
}

{
  "kind": "youtube#playlistItem",
  "etag": "y2814aFI4CRQSGOoLMPpmsnTkz8",
  "id": "UEwwZFYySGVmT25LNDFTNG0zcUpCRVVWT0FtNFVteG5nWi4yQUE2Q0JEMTk4NTM3RTZC",
  "snippet": {
    "publishedAt": "2020-10-27T13:23:01Z",
    "channelId": "UCxbp_aQSTqaIXCATD0-3nDQ",
    "title": "Deleted video",
    "description": "This video is unavailable.",
    "thumbnails": {},
    "channelTitle": "Cop Oswald",
    "playlistId": "PL0dV2HefOnK41S4m3qJBEUVOAm4UmxngZ",
    "position": 19,
    "resourceId": {
      "kind": "youtube#video",
      "videoId": "71BtxJV0zqw"
    }
  }
}