
YouTube is working with Universal Music Group to remaster iconic music videos - janvdberg
https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/youtube-music-and-universal-music-group.html
======
cletus
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.

~~~
ktross
This drives me crazy, especially on Spotify. I've been uploading some of my
collection to Google Play Music to get around this, but I'm probably switching
to Plex in the near future.

For an extreme example of this, check out Blind Guardian on Spotify and
compare some of the songs to the versions on YouTube. Some of them don't even
sound like the same song.

~~~
kuzimoto
If anyone is looking for a decent self streaming system, Ampache[1] is a great
option. Stream all of your music for free, and has the option for a Subsonic
backend making it compatible with lots of clients.

[1] [http://ampache.org/](http://ampache.org/)

------
illerbass
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
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
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
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-
copy...](https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/copyright/fair-use/#yt-copyright-
protection)

[https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-
factors/](https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/)

~~~
tehwebguy
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.

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

------
DJHenk
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)

~~~
LocalH
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.

------
pathartl
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.

~~~
paol
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
> 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.

~~~
ihuman
Youtube-dl allows you to list all the formats you can download, and then
choose exactly which audio and video formats to download and merge.

[https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
dl/blob/master/README.md...](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
dl/blob/master/README.md#format-selection)

~~~
est31
Interesting, for some reason it thinks that vorbis @128k has better quality
than opus @160k. Youtube online player has the 160k version. Thanks!

------
AdmiralAsshat
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
> 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
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.

~~~
chupasaurus
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
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
That's obvious. I assume YT got lossless records from labels for their Music
offering.

------
sreyaNotfilc
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
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).

------
teilo
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
Try #Remastered vevo

------
spathi_fwiffo
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.

------
dmitriid
\- "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"

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

~~~
paranoidrobot
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
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
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.

------
bsimpson
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.

~~~
ancientworldnow
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.

------
8bitsrule
"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.

------
bni
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

------
est31
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.youtu...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190402133747/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_RKO5ozLVo)

[3]:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110930072812oe_/http://o-o.pre...](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)

[4]: [https://imgur.com/a/rsmb49r](https://imgur.com/a/rsmb49r)

~~~
4ntonius8lock
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
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.

------
ghostbrainalpha
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.

------
egorfine
Before and after comparison:
[https://imgur.com/gallery/laY8pYJ](https://imgur.com/gallery/laY8pYJ)

------
cat199
good play - now they will have title to some portion of the mechanical
royalties and can promote youtube premium with their own exlusive content.

------
LocalH
Now if they'd just allow support for 480p60

~~~
anonymfus
And 576p25 and 576p50.

~~~
mrguyorama
Why? Do any computer video output standards actively use PAL-like video?

~~~
mrob
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.

------
cwkoss
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
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
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
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-e...](https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-record-industry-
expects-a-windfall-where-will-the-money-go/)

For the artists themselves, live touring looks to be their most reliable way
to make money.

~~~
cwkoss
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.

------
lwansbrough
I'd like to see this classic remastered
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ)

------
mkagenius
> 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
> _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.

