My YouTube Year in Review

Yesterday I received an email from YouTube with my 2025 year in review. It contained many statistics such as the fact that I started my channel on January 4, 2007, which means I’ve been a YouTube creator for 6,912 days. They also provided me with my top video of the year:

I knew intuitively that most of my subscribers would be from the United States, but little did I know that I have subscribers elsewhere:

And finally, I was given some statistics on the age groups and days of the week when my audience views my videos:

If you want to see the videos on my YouTube channel, search for @DigitalDaddyLA or just visit https://www.youtube.com/@DigitalDaddyLA/videos.

Deprecation of 4K Video Downloader

I watch a lot of videos on YouTube, and I often prefer to download them so that I can watch them using my favorite media player, VLC. I’ve previously written about how you can use 4K Video Downloader to download and convert YouTube videos.

Much to my dismay, 4K Video Downloader has reached end of life, as support has been discontinued as of February 1, 2025. The developers encourage 4K Video Downloader users to transition to 4K Video Downloader Plus which is a similar application by the same developer. The downside for me is that my license for 4K Video Downloader will not work on 4K Video Downloader Plus. Fortunately the free version appears to be full-featured, albeit with a daily download limit.

Sometimes developers release new versions of software that require new licenses, and they may do it so often that the licensure model starts to look more like a subscription model (cough cough, Parallels, cough). This is not one of those scenarios, but given that 4K Video Downloader Plus is pretty much the same application as 4K Video Downloader (plus a browser that I don’t plan to use), it doesn’t add any value for me. That being said, I can understand how the developer needs to invest resources to ensure compatibility with YouTube and other video repositories. For now, I’ll migrate to the free version of 4K Video Downloader Plus, and perhaps I will share more in-depth thoughts later on.

YouTube Copyrighted Content

I have a YouTube channel that I use to share my home movies. I do not monetize the channel and therefore am permitted to use certain copyrighted songs in my soundtracks, as long as the owners of those songs allow them to be used in that manner. Some song owners, however, do not allow their songs to be used at all, even if the channel does not monetize its content.

Recently I received a notification from YouTube that a video on my channel which I posted 9 years ago has now been blocked in 4 territories:

Upon viewing details in YouTube Studio, the song is “All Around The World (La La La)” by A Touch of Class (or “ATC”) and has been blocked in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. It does not provide any additional information beyond what is pictured below.

My guess is that it somehow boils down to money, but I am unable to speculate about the laws or policies that led to this music being blocked in those countries. On the bright side, the video is still available in the United States where my main audience resides.

Video Conversion Hack

Let’s say that you need to convert a video from one format to another (e.g., for playback compatibility) or scale down the resolution to reduce the file size. There are video converters that you can buy for both Mac and Windows platforms to get the job done. You could also load the video into a video editor (e.g., iMovie or Final Cut Pro for Mac; various options on Windows) and then export with the desired format and resolution.

However, did you know that there is an unconventional option that also works pretty well and is completely free? All you have to do is upload the video to YouTube (free) and download it with 4K Video Downloader (also free). Let’s discuss these 2 steps in more detail.

Step 1: Upload the video to YouTube. Every video that is uploaded to YouTube is automatically processed upon completion of the upload. During processing, YouTube compresses the video and creates multiple versions of the video in different resolutions (e.g., 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, and 4K). This is because depending on the device and bandwidth, YouTube selects the best possible resolution to provide the viewer with an uninterrupted video stream. The YouTube System Requirements help page provides recommended sustained internet speeds for each video resolution. In my experience, the processing occurs rather quickly, with 360p and 480p versions most readily available, and higher resolutions taking several minutes or even hours, depending on the length of the video. Some users have reported extended delays, but generally the process is fairly quick. YouTube will not create a video in a resolution that is higher than the original video, but it will create a compressed version of the video at the same resolution. For example, if you upload a 1080p video that is 100 MB, after YouTube compression, the processed 1080p file might be only 50 MB—this obviously cuts down on bandwidth requirements. So essentially YouTube is doing the video compression and conversion for you with every upload.

Step 2: Download the video from YouTube. Now that there are multiple versions of your video on YouTube servers, all you need to do is download the one you want. I’ve previously discussed some of the benefits of 4K Video Downloader which is my go-to choice for downloading YouTube videos, so I’ll discuss this in a little more detail (but note that there may be other applications that work equally well). Simply paste the YouTube video link into 4K Video Downloader. If you have Smart Mode enabled, the app will download the video in the format and quality that you specify. If you disable Smart Mode, you’ll be presented with choices such as these:

Note that there are versions for different resolutions as well as video formats. And if your video was created in a high frame rates (e.g., 60 fps), you may see options for lower frame rates as well. Simply pick the video that you want, and in a few moments you’ll have your converted video. Viola!

Note that YouTube does provide recommended upload encoding settings which include an MP4 container, AAC audio codec, H.264 video codec, a common frame rate (e.g., 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, or 60 fps), a 16:9 aspect ratio, and various recommended bitrates. However, it is capable of handling a wide spectrum of other encodings beyond these recommendations. For example, I just converted a video using the approach described above, and here are the before-and-after encodings as displayed in VLC media player:

Original video, .mov container, 1.63 GB

Processed YouTube video, .mp4 container, 33.6 MB

As you can see, YouTube converted Apple ProRes 422 Standard to H.264 and preserved the 1280x720 resolution and 30 fps frame rate. I have not seen an official exhaustive list of all encodings that YouTube is capable of handling, but my guess is that their capabilities are broad since they’d want to lower the barrier to entry as much as possible. If you can accept the fact that processed YouTube videos are going to be converted to H.264, perhaps this hack will work well enough for you.

Downloading YouTube Videos

I am often asked if it is possible to download videos from YouTube. The answer is yes, and there are several methods.

The first method is through web sites that provide this functionality. There are many free sites to choose from, and typically they simply involve you pasting the URL of the YouTube video into the site and then selecting the resolution of the video that you'd like to retrieve. The video is then downloaded to the default download directory that is specified in your web browser. Although I've used a couple of these kinds of sites, anecdotally I have heard rumors that some web sites that provide such services could be malicious, so generally I avoid them.

The second method is by installing one of several plugins or extensions to your browser. Some plugins work only for specific browsers, so again I defer to you to search for the proper solution. In my limited experience, some Safari and Firefox plugins did not work reliably, so I quickly abandoned this method.

The third method is to install one of several dedicated applications, and that is the focal point of this blog post. While I'm sure there are many high-quality applications that are inexpensive or free, I personally recommend 4K Video Downloader. This is what the Mac OS version looks like (there is a Windows version too):

Simply copy the URL from YouTube and paste it into the 4K Video Downloader app by pressing Command-V or pressing the "Paste Link" button. Depending on your settings, you may have to select a video resolution if you did not specify one by default.

I've used the Mac OS version of 4K Video Downloader for years, and I like it because...

• Frequent Updates. Sometimes YouTube undergoes changes that impact the ability for all 3 methods to download videos. Generally the developers are very quick to update the app to resolve download issues.
• Playlist Compatibility. YouTube videos can be grouped into playlists. Entering playlist URLs enable you to download the entire playlist. Entering the URL of a video within a playlist gives you the option to download that one video or the entire playlist. Pretty slick.
• Multiple Formats. In addition to YouTube this application also supports downloads from Facebook, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Flickr, and others.
• Trustworthy. I have not heard any issues about the application tracking usage or being used for any malicious reasons.
• Freeware. Yes, the price is right. There are some ads, but they are unobtrusive. There is an activation option to remove ads, but the app is full-featured even without activation.
• It Just Works. Enough said.

Hope this helps. Happy downloading!

Lee Family 2016 Year In Review

Here is our Lee Family 2016 Year In Review. It is our 11th edition, and prior editions can be viewed here. For home movies, visit Victor's YouTube channel.

Video Hosting - Dropbox, Vimeo, and YouTube

As I discussed in a previous post (My Digital Content Workflow), I often make short home movies. Typically I share them with my immediate friends and family by posting them to Dropbox and sending the download links via email. Recently I decided to explore other options for video hosting because (1) I am running out of storage space on Dropbox and (2) when playing videos from Dropbox through a web browser, there is a noticeable degradation in quality even with sufficiently fast internet connection speeds (53.8 Mbps download according to Speedtest.net). This led me to explore 2 other juggernauts in the video hosting business: Vimeo and YouTube.

Cost. A Basic Vimeo account is free, although users are limited to 500 MB per week of storage space, 1 HD video upload per week, and a daily limit of 10 video uploads. Vimeo Plus and Vimeo Pro accounts increases those limits. On the other hand, all YouTube accounts are free, with the only constraint being a 15-minute time limit on videos, and that limit can be removed if users undergo a simple account verification process (e.g., sending an authentication code to your phone via voice or text). YouTube 1, Vimeo 0.

Quality. On playback, both Vimeo and YouTube appear to deliver crisp and clean video quality as I would have expected for the resolutions in which the videos were played. While Vimeo allows you to view the video at the standard size or full screen, YouTube has those options plus a midsized "Theater mode" resolution. However, YouTube may from time to time embed advertisements into your videos--I have not yet seen this happen to any of my videos, but they clearly state in their policies that it is a possibility. I'd say playback quality is not significantly different between Vimeo and YouTube, so the score remains YouTube 1, Vimeo 0.

Quirks. As previously mentioned, the Vimeo Basic account imposes a curious limit of 1 HD video upload per week. While there may be times when I'd want to upload more than 1 HD video in a given week, I couldn't justify upgrading to the Plus or Pro versions just to increase that limit. YouTube, on the other hand, appears to employ an interesting song recognition algorithm to identify possible music copyright violations, and this has generated some false positive copyright violations. For example, 2 videos that I uploaded were automatically tagged as having possible copyright violations. One video was from a year end preschool recital where the children were singing "Up, Up, Up" by Susan Reed, and the other video was from a dance recital where the kids were performing to "Let It Go" by Idina Menzel from the Disney movie Frozen (I know, what a novel idea). Actually I was quite impressed that YouTube correctly identified these songs in my home movies given that there was background noise in each video. But then again, I think Shazam performs equally well in the presence of background noise so maybe I shouldn't have been so impressed.

Verdict. For the time being, I have chosen to upload my home movies to YouTube because the price is right and I am not currently constrained by any upload limits as far as I can tell. I am curious to find out what will happen to the videos that have been tagged for possible copyright violations. Will Susan Reed or Disney come after me and make me take down my videos? Time will tell.