12 ms·

YouTube is working with Universal Music Group to remaster iconic music videos

128 points by janvdberg 7y ago

kabwj 7y ago
That’s cool because some of the “classic” music videos had a terrible quality.
- umvi 7y ago
  Like "I'm Blue"[1] (that's some /r/vintagecgi right there) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BinWA0EenDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BinWA0EenDY
  - layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
    They said they took inspiration from Metal Gear Solid for the clip: https://youtu.be/epnsRRPtoeU https://youtu.be/epnsRRPtoeU
- paranoidrobot 7y ago
  They did/do. Perhaps it's just the fallibility of my own memory, but looking at the No Doubt and Beastie Boys videos linked I don't recall them looking terribly different to what they do now. It'd be great to have a side by side comparison, or perhaps some information on which ones they're going to work on so I can grab them now and do it myself later.
  - LocalH 7y ago
    Speaking from an NTSC background: Often times, even professionals working with older, standard-definition video end up processing it incorrectly, or may be working with digitizations in which someone else already made an error. Interlacing is almost never handled by a "double framerate" method (in which a 30fps interlaced video, each frame consisting of two 60Hz fields, is transformed into a 60fps progressive video). As well, often times such video is even captured with every other field missing (more common in VHS captures than professionally-handled captures, but that's a slight digression). Also, SD video really does look best on an SD CRT display. Often times, the upscaling to HD, as well as the differing visual properties of typical HD displays, will cause the inherent flaws of the SD material to be more pronounced. You won't ever get a true comparison without seeing the video playing on a decent SDTV. And honestly, playing these videos on an SDTV would probably look amazing compared to what you would have seen on MTV in the 80s and 90s.
    - mxfh 7y ago
      If the rationale is 80s to 90s SD broadcast reference monitor quality parity on HDR/OLED displays for the masses, this is all I want. As it goes for new digital transfers from 16mm or 35mm sources, it's a case by case thing to me, if the production looks "cheaper" when, it was not intended to by consumed beyond SD quality, better don't go over 720p remasters or it might look weird.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    By coincidence I looked at the Sabotage video a year or two ago because parts were filmed locally. Quality was horrendous, looked like a scan off VHS tape with additional compression artifacts to add insult to injury. The new version can't compete with new content in 4k of course, but it is much better than the previous official copy.
OnlyRepliesToBS 7y ago
they're fucking with view counts
mkagenius 7y ago
> painstakingly remastering some of the most important works in the history of the format to the highest possible standards Seriously, couldn't we do it using deep learning?
- CharlesW 7y ago
  > Seriously, couldn't we do it using deep learning? Regardless of the techniques one might use to remaster it, you always want to start the remastering process with the best-possible source material.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  Do you know what mastering is?
cat199 7y ago
good play - now they will have title to some portion of the mechanical royalties and can promote youtube premium with their own exlusive content.
est31 7y ago
I hope this one is next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 Also, I hope that they adopt flac. Right now they seem to use lossy codecs.
- vectorEQ 7y ago
  they probably would refer to them as bandwidth saving codecs :D but you're right
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  Even though all music I have on my drives is in FLAC, I can't differ it almost always from Opus 160 kbps, which is what they're using now (but most of the stuff is reencoded from previous codecs).
  - est31 7y ago
    Yeah I guess that most people won't be able to notice any difference except for the additional traffic needed. FLAC is probably mostly useful for "masters" you keep and re-encode to the currently best lossy audio format (opus at the moment). This way you avoid generational artifacts.
    - chupasaurus 7y ago
      That's obvious. I assume YT got lossless records from labels for their Music offering.
- klodolph 7y ago
  They don’t necessarily use the same codec for YouTube’s master copy and the one that you get served. From what I understand, you can upload whatever codec you want to YouTube, and presumably it gets kept in its original format, so it can be transcoded however you like for serving. Anything else doesn’t make sense. Transcoding to FLAC would make sense if you uploaded PCM to begin with.
- teilo 7y ago
pathartl 7y ago
This is awesome, and really needs to be done. What I would really like, however, is to have a downloadable version available. The videos are not safe forever on YouTube, nor does YouTube even represent the best streaming quality on the internet. Having good quality music videos playable on my own media server is something what I've been wanting for at least 15 years.
- kradeelav 7y ago
  I'm sure it's not what they want, but there's a few extensions that have you covered there.
- paol 7y ago
  Half of what you want is easy: https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html The excessive compression YT applies, only they can fix. It especially annoys me they take a SD definition source to mean "well surely the uploader doesn't care about the quality of this video, so lets apply the lowest quality setting to it". If you have a high quality but low resolution video you have to upsample it before uploading to get around this. But of course most SD videos on there didn't do this.
  - est31 7y ago
    > Half of what you want is easy How can you download something in opus using youtube-dl? I mean downloading it in opus, not telling youtube-dl to download it in some other format and then convert it to opus. I've tried it on some of the videos and before reencoding, the audio was in vorbis which is a great format and at high bitrates not very distinguishable from opus, but still opus is better.
    - gknoy 7y ago
      Download options _might_ work, but depends on what formats are available: --prefer-free-formats Prefer free video formats unless a specific one is requested If opus is provided, you could probably download it this way, but I think your best bet is the post-processing method (which of course isn't perfect): -x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe) --audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: "best", "aac", "flac", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", "vorbis", or "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without -x
DJHenk 7y ago
Nice. I am glad they did not make things too polished. For instance, in the Beastie Boys video there are these freeze frames with artifacts that seem easy to "fix", but probably would degrade the overall experience by being too perfect: https://youtu.be/z5rRZdiu1UE?t=86 https://youtu.be/z5rRZdiu1UE?t=86
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- LocalH 7y ago
  Those aren't really artifacts, at least I wouldn't call them that at this point. Maybe an artifact of the original editing process, if anything. That's just how it looked back then when a field was frozen. Being a scene in motion, using a full frame would have flickered like crazy between two different fields. So really, there's nothing to fix. Notice that the text keyed on top of the still is at full resolution.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  That one in particular has a 70s cop show vibe, so yes. But I'd like to see further quality on the rest. Fun fact, several scenes are filmed in Los Feliz, the church and rooftop of art-deco apartment building.
bsimpson 7y ago
I wonder if that means they had the originals for all these on film in a vault somewhere, or if they used digital voodoo to do a better job interpolating from video. I don't know the production history of the music video industry, but The Killers and Lady Gaga are from an era (early 2000s) that could have been shot digitally.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Even things that are shot digitally are often shot at a higher resolution than is used for distribution, and the music itself would have been recorded in a form much better than would be useful for TV distribution of the time.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ancientworldnow 7y ago
  I'm a colorist that works on a lot of music videos with more than a few VMA's under my belt. It's not uncommon for us to deliver 1080p compressed masters (at the labels request) despite having shot and finished in 4K or even 6K. Typically delivery specs to the label are 1080p ProRes 422HQ or DNxHD175 and an a 20mbps h.264 web "master." Unfortunately, youtube's compression kills things that are even uploaded with enormous master quality files. I recently did a video for a major artist that was shot primarily on 35mm film (some bits were 16mm and 3.2K Alexa) but the uploaded versions look terrible despite coming from high quality files. This is due in part to the subdued, low contrast color palette and heavy grain we went with - both of which are problematic for youtubes codecs which seem to be optimized for high contrast, rich color, grain less video. In this case, even though we have gorgeous masters now - the version on YouTube is a far cry from what we've screened in theaters, festivals, and on television. And this is after conference calls with Vevo and YouTube engineers who end up just apologizing and unable to do anything about it. Frustrating. Of course this true to some extent for every video we upload, but some are much worse than others. Vimeo does not really have this problem (or not nearly as much) for what it's worth.
- asdff 7y ago
  Let's hope they weren't kept in UMGs 'vault' (really a shelf in the back of a hot warehouse) that went up in smoke 10 years ago.
LocalH 7y ago
Now if they'd just allow support for 480p60
- anonymfus 7y ago
  And 576p25 and 576p50.
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    Why? Do any computer video output standards actively use PAL-like video?
    - mrob 7y ago
      There are very few good reasons to record 50fps video, but a lot of it already exists, and it would be nice to retain the ability to play it with correct frame timing. I occasionally switch my monitor to 50Hz for 50fps video.
- driverdan 7y ago
  Why?
- ihuman 7y ago
  You can kind of do that by upscaling the video to 1440p60 before uploading. Each pixel becomes exactly 3x3 pixels, unlike when going from 480p to 1080p where you have to deal with half-pixels.
teilo 7y ago
It would be really nice if they had a dedicated tag for this. It's not that easy to find these. #remastered pulls up tons of irrelevant crap.
- aquacat 7y ago
  Try #Remastered vevo
ChrisArchitect 7y ago
Nice, if they don't lose the tapes in a fire https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-m...
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
Fans have already taken to creating unofficial "remasters" if the original is in shoddy quality. See for example the highest quality available version of Stan Bush - The Touch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKpByV5764 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKpByV5764 Versus the "HD Restoration" using footage from the Blu-Ray rip of the Transformers Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A52--FKUQgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A52--FKUQgU Unfortunately, you lose the actual performer in the restoration.
- codetrotter 7y ago
  > Unfortunately, you lose the actual performer in the restoration. Well he’s still present, except relegated to the bottom right corner. But I see what you mean.
est31 7y ago
So I've wondered what this remastering actually means and wanted to get a before-after comparison. Luckily, archive.org is also saving youtube videos, although not all of them and not every time. But I could find an old version of a now remastered video [1] here [2] with the raw video URL here [3]. I've downloaded the original via youtube-dl -k and got the vorbis/webm version before it got transcoded. Both are encoded as 128 kbit 44100 Hz 32 bit sampled vorbis audio with the encoder string both set to "Google", verifying that there was no transcoding in either after the download from YouTube. The first difference you can notice is that the old version sounds kinda metallic, while the new one actually contains details. The second difference, opening it in audacity, is that there is a slight time offset between the two versions of about 500 ms, the remastered version being "later". This of course has implications to old links that point to parts of the music video at specific offsets and in other music videos the offset could be larger. After I've manually synced the file, and normalized both waveforms, I've made some screenshots of the waveform and fft at around 7 or 8 seconds covering the 5-6 second long part where he sings "I could lie to myself but it's true" [4]. The stereo channels of the new version are above while the old version's channels are below. You can notice that they have reversed some effects of the loudness war here: the old sample has far more dnymic compression than the new one. In the FFT plot you can see much more detail, especially in frequencies above 2kHz. Except for the offsets, they've done a great job! [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_RKO5ozLVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_RKO5ozLVo [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190402133747/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_RKO5ozLVo https://web.archive.org/web/20190402133747/https://www.youtu... [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20110930072812oe_/http://o-o.preferred.sjc07s15.v20.lscache1.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Cratebypass%2Ccp&fexp=901803%2C913525&itag=44&ip=207.0.0.0&signature=CBBAC9C850DC4EAD6F1C6D6F8A09BC3693A67007.99BB0F2CDFEBA9561D07E258A818397097841672&sver=3&ratebypass=yes&expire=1317391200&key=yt1&ipbits=8&cp=U0hQTFNUT19FSkNOMF9LTlNDOk44cC1rNUg5MEZj&id=77f44a3b9a332d5a https://web.archive.org/web/20110930072812oe_/http://o-o.pre... [4]: https://imgur.com/a/rsmb49r https://imgur.com/a/rsmb49r
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  Thanks, I was looking for someone who broke down the actual difference. So much emotion in most of the comments. Love it, hate it... but not much info.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
Checked out White Wedding and it sounded fantastic and looked better than I've ever seen it. Previously I never noticed the attendees at the wedding before, they were just fuzzy blobs. Now I can see they are real, cool 80s folks, haha. Looks like the video was filmed originally. Wonder if any more quality could be squeezed out of it, the 1920 res vesion does have additional details but not a ton. This is much better than the average old video on yt, however.
spathi_fwiffo 7y ago
Clicked through to the Beastie Boys Sabotage. I like how the new version is attached to the original database entry for the video: it still has a 2009 upload date, 65M views, and user comments, etc.
illerbass 7y ago
How about partnering with UMG to stop removing educational videos where UMG copy written material is clearly credited and praised, and where the content creator isn't even looking to profit from sowing UMG material, only to educate...
- ebg13 7y ago
  Copyright doesn't mean CC-BY. Attribution doesn't magically give you a redistribution license (copyrighted, btw, not copywritten). If UMG wanted to grant you a license, they would. But they don't. Yada yada, yes copyright should have sane term limits, and yes maybe copyright is a weird idea to begin with, but that's not the issue here.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    Youtube does not have a system for "fair use". If you use a few seconds of someone else's content - even for the specific purposes exempted in the copyright act like education and criticism - Youtube will still let the owner of those few seconds claim the total amount of ad revenue for the whole clip. Fair use is essential to allowing open debate in our country, and Youtube is negligent in creating a system which does not allow for legally exempted fair uses.
    - themacguffinman 7y ago
      There is no such thing as a "system for fair use", it's somewhat ambiguous and legally the matter is decided in courts. YouTube doesn't have the authority to systematically make decisions on this, although does have a program for creators that deal more frequently with fair use: https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/copyright/fair-use/#yt-copyright-protection https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/copyright/fair-use/#yt-copy... https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
      - tehwebguy 7y ago
        All bad actors (especially UMG) should be relegated to either filing DMCA removal requests which do not have an option to monetize. If they want to collect any revenues YouTube should force them to sue individual creators in the courts. Unfortunately YouTube is rewarding the bad behavior of one of their biggest clients instead.
bni 7y ago
Would love to see a remastered version of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjI2J2SQ528 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjI2J2SQ528 Björk - All is Full of Love Made in 1999 :-O
cletus 7y ago
If there's something that could drive me back to CDs or maintaining a collection of MP3s it's this. The word "remastered" on Spotify or Youtube now fills me with dread. Stop. Please for the love of all that's good in the world, just STOP. "Remastered" would be fine if it was just cleaning up the sound and improve the quality but it's not. So many are worse versions of the originals because someone decided to "improve" the original by adding stuff just for the sake (it seems) of "making their mark". Outside of music it just reminds me of the terrible changes to the original Star Wars trilogy (can we get the originals, Disney, PLEASE?). If you really feel like you need a different version, do it. Just don't hide, destroy, delete and otherwise eliminate the original.
- izzydata 7y ago
  I assume they are mostly referring to the video and not the audio. Some old music videos only have a 480p option. If you could find the source material and re-render it in 1080p or better and then add those resolution options without even swapping out the pre-existing resolutions I think that would be great.
  - tomdell 7y ago
    That's 100% what this is. The company is going back to the video masters and remastering at higher quality levels than was done back in the day. The old master videos are of high quality but were only mastered to a certain quality level for release back in the day because of the state of consumer technology (size and quality of TV screens essentially). This is just going back to the original video masters and remastering for the current state of the art in consumer technology.
    - Wistar 7y ago
      The edited masters were all 4:3 SD, at least until the early 2000s when HD became prevalent, and were all mastered to the highest levels of quality available at the time. To truly re-master to higher quality would involve telecine/scanning of the film, if shot on film, and completely re-editing and this is unlikely at best. Perhaps they are re-sampling, upscaling, enhancing color and filtering to get rid of NTSC color artefacts, etc., contained in the original edited masters but they are almost certainly not re-mastering using the original sources or even submasters (such as might be done when re-mastering audio from the original multitrack master). Here is the remastered Petty Free Fallin' and although it is presented at 1080 it is still 4:3 aspect and is clearly not at HD resolution; it looks very soft by today's standards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lWJXDG2i0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lWJXDG2i0A
lwansbrough 7y ago
I'd like to see this classic remastered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
Is there anywhere I can find a side by side comparison for a remastered video with the original? I'm having trouble identifying the differences.
cwkoss 7y ago
Universal Music Group is one of the most regressive and antisocial media organizations in our country. Please only consume their content with adblock or via piracy - any funds you give them will fuel their lobbyists work to make our nation's IP laws even more draconian.
- tomdell 7y ago
  There are more convenient and ethical ways to consume music than theft. Don't lie to yourself about what you're doing by pretending you're on some moral high ground for stealing music. Funds going to Universal filter through to musicians and artists as royalties and fund artist advances, recording and mastering costs, thousands of employee and contractor salaries, and so much more than just lobbyists.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    Music piracy is not theft. It deprives the owner of nothing. Please don't parrot music lobbyist propaganda here. I would download a car. Supply has exploded exponentially. Music is never going to be as profitable as it was previously (and it wasn't very profitable previously). Their lack of a modern business model is not a valid reason to rent-seek the poor if they want to participate in culture.
    - volkl48 7y ago
      Music looks poised to be as profitable as it was previously, possibly more so for the labels. Whether or not artists see that money is a different question. The music industry is doing pretty decently. Streaming revenues are significant and industry revenue has been growing for years. https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-record-industry-expects-a-windfall-where-will-the-money-go/ https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-record-industry-e... For the artists themselves, live touring looks to be their most reliable way to make money.
      - cwkoss 7y ago
        Interesting link, thanks for sharing. I'm more inclined to think that streaming revenue will plateau around ~$10-13B. It makes sense that demand for streaming is a bit more than demand for CDs, because it allows cheaper monetization of the long tail and recurring revenue. However, I'd be surprised if the industry ever pushes over that $21.5B inflation-adjusted peak again though. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/ Rent-seeking music labels have done a good job determining the maximum amount that consumers are willing to pay for music. Now we as consumers should make an effort to ensure the maximum percentage of revenue reaches artist. UMG siphoning 85% of revenue is abhorrent.
dmitriid 7y ago
- "some of the most important works in the history" - "exclusively on YouTube" - Tom Petty’s music video for “Free Fallin’” released 30 years ago Yup. Unless you have a license from Universal, you won't be able to host/download/reproduce/show the original version for another 68 years. You won't be able to do the same with the remastered version for possibly much longer time. Welcome to "most important works in history carefully protected by corporate shills"
sreyaNotfilc 7y ago
I wonder if AI is capable to be used to do a restoration of things like music videos, concerts, and old broadcasts. I remember seeing a video about how AI is used in video games to render photo realistic backgrounds. It may be this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9OofzEMBAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9OofzEMBAk I think that one day this will totally be possible. Can you imagine, with the help of future technology and algorithms, watching film from the 1940s (Gone with the Wind) that looks just as sharp and real as a modern day movie in 4k? Or even, seeing a concert (Michael Jackson) from the 80s that looks so clear that you can really feel what its like to be there?
- coryrc 7y ago
  I can imagine it because I lived it. Film is equivalent to 5k uncompressed. The shit we get today is awful in comparison (most egregious recent example being the dark scenes in the last Winterfall battle).
8bitsrule 7y ago
"Re-mastering" is tricky shit. There was once a 45rpm single that was not terribly well recorded or mixed ... but in which the teenaged lead singer's vocal very much captured the vulnerability of the character. This version became a US#1 hit. I can't prove it, but in the decades that followed, this vocal was replaced. The vocalist and backing may have been the same (??) but the vulnerability was gone. The original version became unavailable in any format (except originals). Same music?? hardly. Many 'B' sides became hits -solely- because of the qualities of the performance. (Example: 'Louie Louie'.) So, it all hangs on who does the re-mastering ... and whether the mastertape survived.
egorfine 7y ago
Before and after comparison: https://imgur.com/gallery/laY8pYJ https://imgur.com/gallery/laY8pYJ

128 points by janvdberg 7y ago

kabwj 7y ago

That’s cool because some of the “classic” music videos had a terrible quality.

umvi 7y ago
Like "I'm Blue"[1] (that's some /r/vintagecgi right there) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BinWA0EenDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BinWA0EenDY
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  They said they took inspiration from Metal Gear Solid for the clip: https://youtu.be/epnsRRPtoeU https://youtu.be/epnsRRPtoeU
paranoidrobot 7y ago
They did/do. Perhaps it's just the fallibility of my own memory, but looking at the No Doubt and Beastie Boys videos linked I don't recall them looking terribly different to what they do now. It'd be great to have a side by side comparison, or perhaps some information on which ones they're going to work on so I can grab them now and do it myself later.
- LocalH 7y ago
  Speaking from an NTSC background: Often times, even professionals working with older, standard-definition video end up processing it incorrectly, or may be working with digitizations in which someone else already made an error. Interlacing is almost never handled by a "double framerate" method (in which a 30fps interlaced video, each frame consisting of two 60Hz fields, is transformed into a 60fps progressive video). As well, often times such video is even captured with every other field missing (more common in VHS captures than professionally-handled captures, but that's a slight digression). Also, SD video really does look best on an SD CRT display. Often times, the upscaling to HD, as well as the differing visual properties of typical HD displays, will cause the inherent flaws of the SD material to be more pronounced. You won't ever get a true comparison without seeing the video playing on a decent SDTV. And honestly, playing these videos on an SDTV would probably look amazing compared to what you would have seen on MTV in the 80s and 90s.
  - mxfh 7y ago
    If the rationale is 80s to 90s SD broadcast reference monitor quality parity on HDR/OLED displays for the masses, this is all I want. As it goes for new digital transfers from 16mm or 35mm sources, it's a case by case thing to me, if the production looks "cheaper" when, it was not intended to by consumed beyond SD quality, better don't go over 720p remasters or it might look weird.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  By coincidence I looked at the Sabotage video a year or two ago because parts were filmed locally. Quality was horrendous, looked like a scan off VHS tape with additional compression artifacts to add insult to injury. The new version can't compete with new content in 4k of course, but it is much better than the previous official copy.

OnlyRepliesToBS 7y ago

they're fucking with view counts

mkagenius 7y ago

> painstakingly remastering some of the most important works in the history of the format to the highest possible standards Seriously, couldn't we do it using deep learning?

CharlesW 7y ago
> Seriously, couldn't we do it using deep learning? Regardless of the techniques one might use to remaster it, you always want to start the remastering process with the best-possible source material.
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
Do you know what mastering is?

cat199 7y ago

good play - now they will have title to some portion of the mechanical royalties and can promote youtube premium with their own exlusive content.

est31 7y ago

I hope this one is next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 Also, I hope that they adopt flac. Right now they seem to use lossy codecs.

vectorEQ 7y ago
they probably would refer to them as bandwidth saving codecs :D but you're right
chupasaurus 7y ago
Even though all music I have on my drives is in FLAC, I can't differ it almost always from Opus 160 kbps, which is what they're using now (but most of the stuff is reencoded from previous codecs).
- est31 7y ago
  Yeah I guess that most people won't be able to notice any difference except for the additional traffic needed. FLAC is probably mostly useful for "masters" you keep and re-encode to the currently best lossy audio format (opus at the moment). This way you avoid generational artifacts.
  - chupasaurus 7y ago
    That's obvious. I assume YT got lossless records from labels for their Music offering.
klodolph 7y ago
They don’t necessarily use the same codec for YouTube’s master copy and the one that you get served. From what I understand, you can upload whatever codec you want to YouTube, and presumably it gets kept in its original format, so it can be transcoded however you like for serving. Anything else doesn’t make sense. Transcoding to FLAC would make sense if you uploaded PCM to begin with.
teilo 7y ago

pathartl 7y ago

This is awesome, and really needs to be done. What I would really like, however, is to have a downloadable version available. The videos are not safe forever on YouTube, nor does YouTube even represent the best streaming quality on the internet. Having good quality music videos playable on my own media server is something what I've been wanting for at least 15 years.

kradeelav 7y ago
I'm sure it's not what they want, but there's a few extensions that have you covered there.
paol 7y ago
Half of what you want is easy: https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html The excessive compression YT applies, only they can fix. It especially annoys me they take a SD definition source to mean "well surely the uploader doesn't care about the quality of this video, so lets apply the lowest quality setting to it". If you have a high quality but low resolution video you have to upsample it before uploading to get around this. But of course most SD videos on there didn't do this.
- est31 7y ago
  > Half of what you want is easy How can you download something in opus using youtube-dl? I mean downloading it in opus, not telling youtube-dl to download it in some other format and then convert it to opus. I've tried it on some of the videos and before reencoding, the audio was in vorbis which is a great format and at high bitrates not very distinguishable from opus, but still opus is better.
  - gknoy 7y ago
    Download options _might_ work, but depends on what formats are available: --prefer-free-formats Prefer free video formats unless a specific one is requested If opus is provided, you could probably download it this way, but I think your best bet is the post-processing method (which of course isn't perfect): -x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe) --audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: "best", "aac", "flac", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", "vorbis", or "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without -x

DJHenk 7y ago

Nice. I am glad they did not make things too polished. For instance, in the Beastie Boys video there are these freeze frames with artifacts that seem easy to "fix", but probably would degrade the overall experience by being too perfect: https://youtu.be/z5rRZdiu1UE?t=86 https://youtu.be/z5rRZdiu1UE?t=86

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LocalH 7y ago
Those aren't really artifacts, at least I wouldn't call them that at this point. Maybe an artifact of the original editing process, if anything. That's just how it looked back then when a field was frozen. Being a scene in motion, using a full frame would have flickered like crazy between two different fields. So really, there's nothing to fix. Notice that the text keyed on top of the still is at full resolution.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
That one in particular has a 70s cop show vibe, so yes. But I'd like to see further quality on the rest. Fun fact, several scenes are filmed in Los Feliz, the church and rooftop of art-deco apartment building.

bsimpson 7y ago

I wonder if that means they had the originals for all these on film in a vault somewhere, or if they used digital voodoo to do a better job interpolating from video. I don't know the production history of the music video industry, but The Killers and Lady Gaga are from an era (early 2000s) that could have been shot digitally.

dragonwriter 7y ago
Even things that are shot digitally are often shot at a higher resolution than is used for distribution, and the music itself would have been recorded in a form much better than would be useful for TV distribution of the time.
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ancientworldnow 7y ago
I'm a colorist that works on a lot of music videos with more than a few VMA's under my belt. It's not uncommon for us to deliver 1080p compressed masters (at the labels request) despite having shot and finished in 4K or even 6K. Typically delivery specs to the label are 1080p ProRes 422HQ or DNxHD175 and an a 20mbps h.264 web "master." Unfortunately, youtube's compression kills things that are even uploaded with enormous master quality files. I recently did a video for a major artist that was shot primarily on 35mm film (some bits were 16mm and 3.2K Alexa) but the uploaded versions look terrible despite coming from high quality files. This is due in part to the subdued, low contrast color palette and heavy grain we went with - both of which are problematic for youtubes codecs which seem to be optimized for high contrast, rich color, grain less video. In this case, even though we have gorgeous masters now - the version on YouTube is a far cry from what we've screened in theaters, festivals, and on television. And this is after conference calls with Vevo and YouTube engineers who end up just apologizing and unable to do anything about it. Frustrating. Of course this true to some extent for every video we upload, but some are much worse than others. Vimeo does not really have this problem (or not nearly as much) for what it's worth.
asdff 7y ago
Let's hope they weren't kept in UMGs 'vault' (really a shelf in the back of a hot warehouse) that went up in smoke 10 years ago.

LocalH 7y ago

Now if they'd just allow support for 480p60

anonymfus 7y ago
And 576p25 and 576p50.
- mrguyorama 7y ago
  Why? Do any computer video output standards actively use PAL-like video?
  - mrob 7y ago
    There are very few good reasons to record 50fps video, but a lot of it already exists, and it would be nice to retain the ability to play it with correct frame timing. I occasionally switch my monitor to 50Hz for 50fps video.
driverdan 7y ago
Why?
ihuman 7y ago
You can kind of do that by upscaling the video to 1440p60 before uploading. Each pixel becomes exactly 3x3 pixels, unlike when going from 480p to 1080p where you have to deal with half-pixels.

teilo 7y ago

It would be really nice if they had a dedicated tag for this. It's not that easy to find these. #remastered pulls up tons of irrelevant crap.

aquacat 7y ago
Try #Remastered vevo

ChrisArchitect 7y ago

Nice, if they don't lose the tapes in a fire https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-m...

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

Fans have already taken to creating unofficial "remasters" if the original is in shoddy quality. See for example the highest quality available version of Stan Bush - The Touch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKpByV5764 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKpByV5764 Versus the "HD Restoration" using footage from the Blu-Ray rip of the Transformers Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A52--FKUQgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A52--FKUQgU Unfortunately, you lose the actual performer in the restoration.

codetrotter 7y ago
> Unfortunately, you lose the actual performer in the restoration. Well he’s still present, except relegated to the bottom right corner. But I see what you mean.

est31 7y ago

So I've wondered what this remastering actually means and wanted to get a before-after comparison. Luckily, archive.org is also saving youtube videos, although not all of them and not every time. But I could find an old version of a now remastered video [1] here [2] with the raw video URL here [3]. I've downloaded the original via youtube-dl -k and got the vorbis/webm version before it got transcoded. Both are encoded as 128 kbit 44100 Hz 32 bit sampled vorbis audio with the encoder string both set to "Google", verifying that there was no transcoding in either after the download from YouTube. The first difference you can notice is that the old version sounds kinda metallic, while the new one actually contains details. The second difference, opening it in audacity, is that there is a slight time offset between the two versions of about 500 ms, the remastered version being "later". This of course has implications to old links that point to parts of the music video at specific offsets and in other music videos the offset could be larger. After I've manually synced the file, and normalized both waveforms, I've made some screenshots of the waveform and fft at around 7 or 8 seconds covering the 5-6 second long part where he sings "I could lie to myself but it's true" [4]. The stereo channels of the new version are above while the old version's channels are below. You can notice that they have reversed some effects of the loudness war here: the old sample has far more dnymic compression than the new one. In the FFT plot you can see much more detail, especially in frequencies above 2kHz. Except for the offsets, they've done a great job! [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_RKO5ozLVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_RKO5ozLVo [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190402133747/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_RKO5ozLVo https://web.archive.org/web/20190402133747/https://www.youtu... [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20110930072812oe_/http://o-o.preferred.sjc07s15.v20.lscache1.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Cratebypass%2Ccp&fexp=901803%2C913525&itag=44&ip=207.0.0.0&signature=CBBAC9C850DC4EAD6F1C6D6F8A09BC3693A67007.99BB0F2CDFEBA9561D07E258A818397097841672&sver=3&ratebypass=yes&expire=1317391200&key=yt1&ipbits=8&cp=U0hQTFNUT19FSkNOMF9LTlNDOk44cC1rNUg5MEZj&id=77f44a3b9a332d5a https://web.archive.org/web/20110930072812oe_/http://o-o.pre... [4]: https://imgur.com/a/rsmb49r https://imgur.com/a/rsmb49r

4ntonius8lock 7y ago
Thanks, I was looking for someone who broke down the actual difference. So much emotion in most of the comments. Love it, hate it... but not much info.

mixmastamyk 7y ago

Checked out White Wedding and it sounded fantastic and looked better than I've ever seen it. Previously I never noticed the attendees at the wedding before, they were just fuzzy blobs. Now I can see they are real, cool 80s folks, haha. Looks like the video was filmed originally. Wonder if any more quality could be squeezed out of it, the 1920 res vesion does have additional details but not a ton. This is much better than the average old video on yt, however.

spathi_fwiffo 7y ago

Clicked through to the Beastie Boys Sabotage. I like how the new version is attached to the original database entry for the video: it still has a 2009 upload date, 65M views, and user comments, etc.

illerbass 7y ago

How about partnering with UMG to stop removing educational videos where UMG copy written material is clearly credited and praised, and where the content creator isn't even looking to profit from sowing UMG material, only to educate...

ebg13 7y ago
Copyright doesn't mean CC-BY. Attribution doesn't magically give you a redistribution license (copyrighted, btw, not copywritten). If UMG wanted to grant you a license, they would. But they don't. Yada yada, yes copyright should have sane term limits, and yes maybe copyright is a weird idea to begin with, but that's not the issue here.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Youtube does not have a system for "fair use". If you use a few seconds of someone else's content - even for the specific purposes exempted in the copyright act like education and criticism - Youtube will still let the owner of those few seconds claim the total amount of ad revenue for the whole clip. Fair use is essential to allowing open debate in our country, and Youtube is negligent in creating a system which does not allow for legally exempted fair uses.
  - themacguffinman 7y ago
    There is no such thing as a "system for fair use", it's somewhat ambiguous and legally the matter is decided in courts. YouTube doesn't have the authority to systematically make decisions on this, although does have a program for creators that deal more frequently with fair use: https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/copyright/fair-use/#yt-copyright-protection https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/copyright/fair-use/#yt-copy... https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
    - tehwebguy 7y ago
      All bad actors (especially UMG) should be relegated to either filing DMCA removal requests which do not have an option to monetize. If they want to collect any revenues YouTube should force them to sue individual creators in the courts. Unfortunately YouTube is rewarding the bad behavior of one of their biggest clients instead.

bni 7y ago

Would love to see a remastered version of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjI2J2SQ528 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjI2J2SQ528 Björk - All is Full of Love Made in 1999 :-O

cletus 7y ago

If there's something that could drive me back to CDs or maintaining a collection of MP3s it's this. The word "remastered" on Spotify or Youtube now fills me with dread. Stop. Please for the love of all that's good in the world, just STOP. "Remastered" would be fine if it was just cleaning up the sound and improve the quality but it's not. So many are worse versions of the originals because someone decided to "improve" the original by adding stuff just for the sake (it seems) of "making their mark". Outside of music it just reminds me of the terrible changes to the original Star Wars trilogy (can we get the originals, Disney, PLEASE?). If you really feel like you need a different version, do it. Just don't hide, destroy, delete and otherwise eliminate the original.

izzydata 7y ago
I assume they are mostly referring to the video and not the audio. Some old music videos only have a 480p option. If you could find the source material and re-render it in 1080p or better and then add those resolution options without even swapping out the pre-existing resolutions I think that would be great.
- tomdell 7y ago
  That's 100% what this is. The company is going back to the video masters and remastering at higher quality levels than was done back in the day. The old master videos are of high quality but were only mastered to a certain quality level for release back in the day because of the state of consumer technology (size and quality of TV screens essentially). This is just going back to the original video masters and remastering for the current state of the art in consumer technology.
  - Wistar 7y ago
    The edited masters were all 4:3 SD, at least until the early 2000s when HD became prevalent, and were all mastered to the highest levels of quality available at the time. To truly re-master to higher quality would involve telecine/scanning of the film, if shot on film, and completely re-editing and this is unlikely at best. Perhaps they are re-sampling, upscaling, enhancing color and filtering to get rid of NTSC color artefacts, etc., contained in the original edited masters but they are almost certainly not re-mastering using the original sources or even submasters (such as might be done when re-mastering audio from the original multitrack master). Here is the remastered Petty Free Fallin' and although it is presented at 1080 it is still 4:3 aspect and is clearly not at HD resolution; it looks very soft by today's standards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lWJXDG2i0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lWJXDG2i0A

lwansbrough 7y ago

I'd like to see this classic remastered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

ghostbrainalpha 7y ago

Is there anywhere I can find a side by side comparison for a remastered video with the original? I'm having trouble identifying the differences.

cwkoss 7y ago

Universal Music Group is one of the most regressive and antisocial media organizations in our country. Please only consume their content with adblock or via piracy - any funds you give them will fuel their lobbyists work to make our nation's IP laws even more draconian.

tomdell 7y ago
There are more convenient and ethical ways to consume music than theft. Don't lie to yourself about what you're doing by pretending you're on some moral high ground for stealing music. Funds going to Universal filter through to musicians and artists as royalties and fund artist advances, recording and mastering costs, thousands of employee and contractor salaries, and so much more than just lobbyists.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Music piracy is not theft. It deprives the owner of nothing. Please don't parrot music lobbyist propaganda here. I would download a car. Supply has exploded exponentially. Music is never going to be as profitable as it was previously (and it wasn't very profitable previously). Their lack of a modern business model is not a valid reason to rent-seek the poor if they want to participate in culture.
  - volkl48 7y ago
    Music looks poised to be as profitable as it was previously, possibly more so for the labels. Whether or not artists see that money is a different question. The music industry is doing pretty decently. Streaming revenues are significant and industry revenue has been growing for years. https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-record-industry-expects-a-windfall-where-will-the-money-go/ https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-record-industry-e... For the artists themselves, live touring looks to be their most reliable way to make money.
    - cwkoss 7y ago
      Interesting link, thanks for sharing. I'm more inclined to think that streaming revenue will plateau around ~$10-13B. It makes sense that demand for streaming is a bit more than demand for CDs, because it allows cheaper monetization of the long tail and recurring revenue. However, I'd be surprised if the industry ever pushes over that $21.5B inflation-adjusted peak again though. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/ Rent-seeking music labels have done a good job determining the maximum amount that consumers are willing to pay for music. Now we as consumers should make an effort to ensure the maximum percentage of revenue reaches artist. UMG siphoning 85% of revenue is abhorrent.

dmitriid 7y ago

- "some of the most important works in the history" - "exclusively on YouTube" - Tom Petty’s music video for “Free Fallin’” released 30 years ago Yup. Unless you have a license from Universal, you won't be able to host/download/reproduce/show the original version for another 68 years. You won't be able to do the same with the remastered version for possibly much longer time. Welcome to "most important works in history carefully protected by corporate shills"

sreyaNotfilc 7y ago

I wonder if AI is capable to be used to do a restoration of things like music videos, concerts, and old broadcasts. I remember seeing a video about how AI is used in video games to render photo realistic backgrounds. It may be this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9OofzEMBAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9OofzEMBAk I think that one day this will totally be possible. Can you imagine, with the help of future technology and algorithms, watching film from the 1940s (Gone with the Wind) that looks just as sharp and real as a modern day movie in 4k? Or even, seeing a concert (Michael Jackson) from the 80s that looks so clear that you can really feel what its like to be there?

coryrc 7y ago
I can imagine it because I lived it. Film is equivalent to 5k uncompressed. The shit we get today is awful in comparison (most egregious recent example being the dark scenes in the last Winterfall battle).

8bitsrule 7y ago

"Re-mastering" is tricky shit. There was once a 45rpm single that was not terribly well recorded or mixed ... but in which the teenaged lead singer's vocal very much captured the vulnerability of the character. This version became a US#1 hit. I can't prove it, but in the decades that followed, this vocal was replaced. The vocalist and backing may have been the same (??) but the vulnerability was gone. The original version became unavailable in any format (except originals). Same music?? hardly. Many 'B' sides became hits -solely- because of the qualities of the performance. (Example: 'Louie Louie'.) So, it all hangs on who does the re-mastering ... and whether the mastertape survived.

egorfine 7y ago

Before and after comparison: https://imgur.com/gallery/laY8pYJ https://imgur.com/gallery/laY8pYJ