Overview
While we continuously investigate and implement improvements, some websites are not created in a way that is "archive-friendly" and can be difficult to collect or replay in their entirety. These difficulties affect all web crawlers, not just Archive-It's. When selecting seed URLs and reviewing your archived content, please keep these limitations in mind. For more information on what makes sites archive-friendly, see the Library of Congress's Creating Preservable Websites.
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About
Special scoping rules are needed to facilitate archiving common streaming video services like YouTube and Vimeo, but others may require custom solutions or further technical development. Some streaming and downloadable media that require user input to play (e.g. opening a pop out player) are difficult to replay in Wayback. If you plan to archive sites that include a large volume of downloadable media, we recommend checking the sites in Wayback to make sure the media was captured to your satisfaction.
Troubleshooting
- Check our Scoping Recommendations for Specific Sites section and follow any existing guidelines for the target A/V platform.
- Crawl pages with streaming and downloadable media using Brozzler.
- Check the sites in Wayback to see if the media replays either in-page or via the media player linked through the banner.
- If they don’t replay in Wayback, review the File Types report for your media files. Click on the hyperlinks for the applicable MIME type listed (video and/or audio) to see a detailed listing of each collected URL of that file. This is the most effective way to make sure media files were archived.
| Note: Wayback replay of media content through the banner will not be possible for sites that are not compliant with our A/V collection utility, youtube-dl. For more information on how Archive-It integrates with youtube-dl, please read this blog post in our Help Center. |
Outcome
Some streaming and downloadable media may require some additional scoping rules to be collected and some media might not replay in Wayback. If you need help determining if specific media files were collected, please feel free to submit a support ticket.
Related content
Scoping Recommendations for Specific Sites
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