It's a two step process. The first step happens within YouTube's guidelines and do not involve the DMCA. It then can escalate to an actual DMCA notice / counter

It's a two step process. The first step happens within YouTube's guidelines and do not involve the DMCA. It then can escalate to an actual DMCA notice / counter. Critically though, going to DMCA is really bad for the uploader because Youtube does not remove the 'strike' against your account when it gets escalated. So content uploaders almost never go here.