pouët.net

I've been on a music adventure recently, and this is how I've noticed noticed this. I judge it to be relatively recent, perhaps at the start of 2021.

Please compare this (degraded) to this. (30s in, lead)

Or this (degraded) to this. (22s in and 440s in, respectively. lead.)

It can be heard as an organ-with-vibrato-like (frequency destroyer) of leads.

It's obviously important that a capture is accurate, more so than something temporary like a vlog. I'm sure the authors have received no notification that their content is being presented at degraded quality after upload, and I'm sure the vloggers will be catered to if they're big enough.

The change is very likely to affect video also, so if you've uploaded videos I would recommend to check them and file a complaint if you find faults.

I might be wrong but I regularly upload some of my own demoscene stuff to YouTube and didn't notice any audio degradation.

Do you have more examples? Those "degraded" videos you're linking are pretty old (also, both uploaded by the same person).

amazing discoveries!

Clearly this is evidence that YouTube is out to get the demoscene. How dare they apply compression on the content they're hosting for free?!

If you're concerned about Youtube video quality, upload your videos at 4K resolution and a decent audio bitrate for best results. Otherwise, set your expectations lower for anything uploaded more than 5 years ago. If you're looking for a site to store archival-quality video/audio, try archive.org... or pay for it.

Wait so if YouTube is degrading audio, then how are your correct references also on YouTube

I really think it's down to the actual capture techniques rather than YT itself. Of course YT plays a part in the compression, but not that much. The audio for the better quality one (7 years old compared with the 2021 version) Really doesn't help it's capped in 480p but again that could be a YT outside of HD thing.. maybe

Btw Photon, Your insight for "visual"quality on 1440p YT i will personally use in future.
Really insightful, but that audio i feel is down to the cap.

I capped those better quality ones you mentioned and i looked at other links back in the day that mine was at least as good if not better. No point otherwise. Anything i have released in 2021 Audio wise i'm happy with & from others i i follow.

Sorry, got the dates wrong, but still the same argument regardless

so you just noticed old ~480p encoded videos also have not that great of a sound birtrate.
slowclap.

I foresaw roughly this mixed response. Here's the thing most are missing, I think: Nobody would have uploaded videos that sounded like that.

I will also personally vouch for that emulation had no audio flaws like this at time of upload - first of all the emulator would not be run because it couldn't play a single song correctly.

I mostly shake my head at the responses. It's like a competition in how little we care. A sort of self-deprecation; flailing.

I won't address various attempts at pretending what I say is somehow incorrect, pretending that YT is free, or that it was low quality on upload.

The post really is for information and not super useful for discussion. Other than that the Demoscene decides what it wants to do with the information.

I see five options, there may be more.
1) Ignore it, old caps should misrepresent what they capped, and YT is reality.
2) Accept that Google decides for you. Niche interests should look and sound much worse than the most popular fashion vlog of the day, and the popular fashion vlog of the day should stay looking and sounding good because more people watch videos now than then.
3) Stay quiet but upload duplicate content in the hope Google doesn't in the future degrade it from much lower views than the first one because the first one has been up for a decade longer.
4) Capture again, diff to the download, and ask Google why your upload has been lowered in quality recently.
5) Capture again, declare that it's because the previous upload has been lowered in quality by Google to spread the word that it's happening, and hope that whatever you are sharing gets seen (again).

6) Photon gets a clue

> Nobody would have uploaded videos that sounded like that.

I agree. People are inherently clued-in, and always respectful about capturing other people's content and uploading it to YT.

YT does not degrade sound to the point of butchering it, as they have no interest doing so, since it shows their service in a negative light. Also the audio for videos is used for their music streaming service "YT Music", which competes with iTunes or Spotify.

These are simply shitty uploads and then re-uploads with a better sound quality.

Not everything is a conspiracy.

I never receive any notification when someone steals my content and uploads it to YouTube, yeah you're right.

"I won't address various attempts at pretending what I say is somehow incorrect" :D

YouTube covers general video as in TV broadcasts or movie streaming, but the Demoscene requires more rigid standards. There are those "video" links on prod pages, but while they may be original captures from real hardware and be the quality as intended by the capturer, they are more fiddly to run because of having to manually launch them and be different codecs for both audio and video, which may not be compatible.

So go for YouTube for ease of use but with transcoded videos and an inevitable drop in quality, or collect a whole bunch of high quality but differing standards of video files that have to be stored on SSD somewhere. Take your pick.

...or just run the demos on original hardware, and if not available on emulator.

I don't know Photon and I don't know if he's done anything to deserve this treatment, but to be honest I'm finding increasingly annoying the fact that I come to Pouet from time to time just to have to witness this type of group behavior, where someone is picked for cheap laughs so everyone can suck everyone else's dicks like good friends with such a nice thing in common, bullying a person over the Internet. It's not the first time, not the second and not the third.

I don't think Photon's right on this one, but he's right in caring for quality recordings of the demoscene heritage so that puts him higher in my scale of worthiness than you cheap bullies. There are a lot of ways of telling someone he may be wrong, we all get wrong from time to time. Haven't you though that you may be hurting someone with this stupid primate behavior?

You can be better than this. Or at least, I hope it so.

I think it's more concerning that Youtube turns realtime demos into pure animations

Nobody wants to watch animations :( we used to shout at the parties "ANIMAATIO" when it clearly was.

Oh, that's exactly what I do already with Amiga stuff on WinUAE.

Then again, I do fancy turning my attention to MS-DOS/Gus demos now with DOSBox, or whatever the most accurate such emulator is.

If someone states that "1 + 1 = 3" and then a group of people responds with "No, it's 2!", that is not "group thinking".

Again, not everything is a conspiracy.

There are many ways of telling things Salinga, I doubt very much you don't understand what I'm meaning, and to be honest, I was not really talking about you, although your close conspirancy comment struck me as unnecessary.

"Your response to my unwarranted accusation is such an unwarranted accusation! How dare you!"