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vidium — setup guide

1. System setup

Clone the repo and run the setup script from the project directory:

git clone <repo> ~/vidium
cd ~/vidium
sudo bash setup.sh

The script:

  • Installs Node.js 24, nginx, certbot, yt-dlp
  • Creates data/ and media/ directories with correct ownership
  • Sets up nginx config with static file serving and media proxy
  • Creates systemd services (vidium-server, vidium-worker) running as your user
  • Generates .env template with paths matching the project location

2. Configure .env

nano .env

Key settings to change:

Variable Description
INVITE_CODE Secret code for user registration (change from changeme)
DOMAIN Your domain or localhost for local testing
DEFAULT_LANG en or ru
YTDLP_PROXY Optional SOCKS/HTTP proxy for yt-dlp
YTDLP_COOKIES Optional path to cookies file for age-restricted content

3. Start services

sudo systemctl enable --now vidium-server vidium-worker

Check status:

sudo systemctl status vidium-server vidium-worker

View logs:

sudo journalctl -u vidium-server -f   # server
sudo journalctl -u vidium-worker -f   # worker (crawling, downloads)

4. Register and log in

Open http://localhost in your browser. You'll be redirected to /login.

  1. Click the register link
  2. Enter the invite code from .env
  3. Pick a login and password

5. Add channels

From the UI

On the feed page, click "Add channel", paste a YouTube channel URL (https://www.youtube.com/@name), optionally add comma-separated tags, and submit. The worker starts crawling immediately.

From the CLI (bulk import)

Create a channels file — one channel per line, tab-separated fields:

# channels.txt
https://www.youtube.com/@lexfridman	Lex Fridman	podcast,interview
https://www.youtube.com/@ThePrimeTimeagen/streams	ThePrimeTime	streams,dev

Format: url<TAB>display name<TAB>tag1,tag2. Display name and tags are optional.

Run:

node --env-file=.env scripts/import-channels.ts

Watch progress:

sudo journalctl -u vidium-worker -f

After crawling finishes (1-3 minutes per channel), refresh the page — video cards with thumbnails will appear.

6. Using vidium

  • Feed — shows all videos sorted by date, filterable by tags
  • Download — click "Download video" or "Download audio" on any card; the worker downloads in the background
  • Watch/Listen — once downloaded, buttons change to "Watch" / "Listen" for streaming through the browser
  • Auto-update — RSS polling runs every 30 minutes to pick up new uploads

7. HTTPS (production)

Point DNS to your server, then:

sudo certbot --nginx -d your-domain.com

Update DOMAIN in .env and restart:

sudo systemctl restart vidium-server

Troubleshooting

Services won't start — check logs: sudo journalctl -u vidium-server -n 50

Crawling fails — YouTube may block requests. Set YTDLP_PROXY in .env or update yt-dlp: sudo yt-dlp -U

Downloads fail — check disk space. vidium auto-cleans old media when disk usage exceeds DISK_HIGH_WATERMARK.

Permission errors — ensure data/ and media/ are owned by your user: sudo chown -R $(whoami) data media