Tools for YouTube Open Source Intelligence Investigations
As one of the world's largest video-sharing platforms, YouTube has a vast amount of
user-generated content covering a wide range of topics and activities. The vast
repository of information on YouTube has become an indispensable resource for Open
Source Intelligence (OSINT) investigations. From tracking social movements and
protests to monitoring public sentiment and analyzing propaganda, YouTube provides a
wealth of information to help understand the dynamics of different situations.
Open source intelligence practitioners utilize a range of tools and
techniques to extract and analyze data from YouTube. These include video metadata
extraction, advanced search operators, geolocation analysis, and sentiment analysis.
By combining these methods with other open source intelligence sources,
investigators can gain a comprehensive understanding of events, individuals, and
organizations. In this article, we'll cover four open source intelligence
investigation tools that are specifically designed to analyze and extract valuable
information from the vast amount of content on YouTube.
1. Geolocation Tool - Geofind
https://mattw.io/youtube-geofind/location
This website supports searching YouTube videos by geolocation.
Users can enter the location, keywords to specify the search scope, the
search results will be displayed in the form of a map, click on the video title to
view detailed information. It is suitable for users who need to find YouTube videos
in specific locations or need to know the geographical distribution of videos.
2. Search Tool - Aware Online
https://www.aware-online.com/en/osint-tools/youtube-search-tool/
The site provides a variety of ways to search for YouTube videos, and users
can specify search criteria, such as keywords, video type, channel, etc.
3. Metadata Extraction Tool - MW Matadata
https://mattw.io/youtube-metadata/
This website is designed to help users obtain YouTube video metadata
information.
Users just need to copy the YouTube video address to this website to get the
metadata related to the video, including tags, channels, publish date, number of
views, geographic location, etc. It is convenient for users to quickly obtain and
analyze the key information of YouTube content.
4. Slow Play Tool - Watch Frame by Frame
http://www.watchframebyframe.com/
This website supports playing or slow playing YouTube videos frame by frame.
When playing, you can choose to adjust the frame rate and speed at the bottom left
corner of the video.
This is very helpful in capturing fine details or other important
information in the video.
