YouTube Live Stream Archive Backup

A YouTube Live stream archive is the replay library your channel accumulates after each broadcast ends — not the broadcast itself. YouTube archives a completed live stream as a VOD automatically, but streams that run much past 12 hours may never be archived at all, and every replay that does survive stays tied to the health of one channel. files.link is the VOD backup layer for that library: you export the recording you own, upload it once, and get a permanent URL with global CDN replay.

It is not a live ingest endpoint, a transcoder, or a YouTube downloader — the file starts on your machine, and files.link gives that authorized stream archive a durable home.

Getting the file is your step, and YouTube gives channel owners two sanctioned routes: download your own upload or archived live replay from YouTube Studio, or export your channel's videos with Google Takeout. Both hand you a video file you already own. files.link never pulls, records, or rips anything from YouTube on your behalf — it stores authorized recordings you supply.

That distinction is the whole scope of this page: live replay storage for your own broadcasts, your organization's events, and talks or clips you hold the rights to.

The upload path is a scriptable three-call REST flow: POST /v1/files/{folderId} returns a presigned url and an id, you PUT the video bytes straight to storage, then POST /v1/files/confirm-upload with {ids:[...]}. Auth is your raw API key, so a post-stream hook can push every new YouTube Live replay into your VOD backup the moment your export finishes encoding.

Name files by date and title, keep this month's busy replays on the standard tier for instant playback, and move rarely-watched back catalog to the cold storage tier (note its minimum retention). Size the bill before you start with the cost calculator.

Why keep a second copy off-platform? A channel is a single point of failure: a copyright claim, a strike, an accidental deletion, or a stream that ran past the archive window can take the replay with it. Per-minute video products (Mux-style) meter every minute stored and every minute delivered, which punishes a deep long-tail library — exactly what a livestream archive becomes over time. files.link bills prepaid credits against storage and bandwidth with no per-minute meter, and replays stream from a nearby CDN edge.

Members-only and paid replays stay private behind short-lived signed URLs your backend mints per viewer. For the broadcast-retention angle see the parent live stream archive page; VOD archive storage covers the general at-rest framing; stream archive hosting frames the same job as hosting completed broadcasts; Twitch VOD archive storage covers the Twitch-side export instead of the YouTube one; and live stream replay storage focuses on replay links for webinars, events, and course videos.

A word on scope and honesty. files.link is neutral storage infrastructure: only store content you own or have explicit rights to archive, and honor takedown requests for anything you do not. It is not a YouTube downloader, it does not scrape or record third-party streams, and it offers nothing that bypasses YouTube, Twitch, or TikTok platform rules or access controls.

It has no connection to the old StreamArchive or CastCache scrapers that grabbed other broadcasters' deleted VODs without consent. You export the finished replay yourself; files.link gives that authorized YouTube Live stream archive a permanent, CDN-backed home.