pouët.net

It really was not. Most* sceners were even alive back then, and as you say, that kind of short-term preservation is quite simple, just transfer the data to a new format. Things get much more interesting long-term. It doesn't matter how simple it is to transfer data to a new format if it isn't done. How much of this will be around in 500 years? 10000 years? I suspect future archeologists will tear their hair out over the current civilisations' "trivially preservable" digital legacy.

some musings about archival and longevity of data:

for what it's worth, back when PAL DV was still a thing I stored archival copies of my video stuff as uncompressed image sequences in a simple to parse file format (something that's easy to reverse engineer by looking at a hex editor). atm not an option with 4k. chances are good that primitive file formats can be easily loaded in the future, even primitive fm coding schemes like the ones used on old floppies and data tapes are accessible via "staring them down" and having a bit of understanding about math. as long as data is being kept alive somewhere it's fine (meaning: it's on live storage media somewhere, thank you scene.org!). also, as has already been said here: emulators are becoming more important. same goes for documentation imho. RFCs are plain text for a reason too. you get the idea.

I think it was Vernor Vinge who came up with the idea of "software archeologists" in his science fiction, I actually see this coming, it's probably already a thing once you think about archaic military mainframes and stuff like this. it's probably a good time to learn cobol and fortran :D

musings on the threads actual topic:
first, youtube is no longer compatible with cc-nc licenses, because youtube now claims the right to monetize everything. demo captures and a lot of other content is in dire need of an alternative. it saddens me that capped.tv and demoscene.tv are no longer a thing, but well... someone has to pay for it and it's becoming more problematic to host such services given new regulations regarding so called "user generated content" and copyright legislation.

youtube obviously "degrades" data, like all lossy codecs do. no surprise at all. sucky rips don't help.

in a perfect world I'd love to see someone step in and build an alternative to youtube for demoscene productions, whith particular attention to codec demands for scene prods with their weird framerates, resolutions, and so on.

just my two cents.

This is actually a good point and something to think about.
Should we start monetizing every demo capture somehow because, if we don't, others will?

For the love of god, NO.

... in the context of financing their infrastructure to provide stable high bitrate streams worldwide, that is acceptable IMHO. That they have not done this earlier is surprising actually.

if I put something under cc-nc license, I explicitly do not want it to be commercially used. plain and simple. regardless of whether I think youtubes monetizing of it is acceptable (it depends): if anyone other than myself uploads my content to youtube (and thus grants youtube a commercial license to it), I have to be asked first, because without my permission that's not allowed.

my point being: it doesn't matter whether you, as the uploader, find it acceptable, you need to get permission from the rights holder before you upload a capture of a demo to youtube. not only is this impractical, the implications really worry me, and the fact that the ideal of "let's go with super friendly licensing stuff to get our stuff out there" is stomped upon by the likes of youtube makes me sad.

by the way, unless you got 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours on your channel, you can't monetize anything.

food for thought: with the typical view counts that demoscene productions have on yt, I don't think youtube is losing much money when not monetizing. a fair way of dealing with nc content would be to simply ristrict views beyond a traffic threshold (afaik vimeo has sth like this?), or only start running ads once a certain threshold is reached. anything but this "noone reads the TOS anyway btw by not replying to this mail you'll now granting yt commercial rights to all the stuff ktnxbye". bleh.

Is it though, really? Or is that just a made-up excuse to keep the cottage industry running?

The people who make demos are usually easily accessible in several ways of communication, but they've received a lot more frustration than benefit from bad captures and then the owners of those channels doubling down on bad captures.

@Gargaj it's impractical in the sense that it would be fine if there'd be a "no ads here" checkbox, which no longer exists. bad captures are another can of worms.

Bad captures of Amiga demos is why I switched to emulation for all the high-end 68030/040 stuff in the first place.

Too many examples to list, but a lot of the YouTube videos for these Amiga demos look like they were transferred from VHS tape!

Another reason was the age-old Amiga problem of totally discrete stereo sides, sounds awful. I find using 50% stereo separation on WinUAE for everything is what the Amiga audio should've been in the first place.

I think this thread is a non-issue. But, hey, go on, that's what Pouet is all about ;-)

I post as soon as I detect, because I know it will seem strange to the majority.

Since a while, we can see that Google is degrading Youtube user uploads after the fact, and this includes same-resolution bitrate. E.g. "1080p" and "1080p Premium Bitrate" if you are on a proper computer and not a "device" (here you are still cradled in the bosom of the corporations).

My first post was just a clear, offended response: I *know* what this music sounds like. Google has converted it to something that sounds this bad.

The degradation has already happened, and it's because you have trusted Google and uploaded to Youtube. You were betrayed.

No such quality option will appear for 480p and below, which looks and sounds excellent on your monitor for Amiga, PC, and all platforms. For those who are very young and don't understand that even 240p is excellent, unwatchable potato will turn into "what is this". I nag to run the demo, but the majority in the Demoscene doesn't, so what is there to say but to stop uploading to corporations?

Is it clear yet that they will buy anything popular for the "accounts", and then spam it full of ads and degrade it until you pay money to get back to 1/3 of normal? While of course paying zero taxes and contributing nothing to human society. What are corporations, other than a virus, something that is in the way of progress? In gaming terms, they are putting artificial locks for you to unlock to pay2notsuck.

And even if you're a customer, you can't complain. Just see how responsive corporation forums are, if you can find them at all. Do not trust a company that you can't call on the phone in your country.

Corporations appear as little kids, inventing their own little protocols and attaching viruses to links to build walls and limit the Web.

As you can tell I do care about all that, but this thread was mostly started because the sound was clearly wrong, and that would affect the Demoscene, as it has. Don't complain to me, the next time you see a spinner on a sub voice call carrier bitrate degraded video.

So, step out.

If you think most Demosceners don't run demos, then stream them yourself as an alternative. A streaming video is just a link today. You can put it on your own website, support Archive.org, or suggest any site. Stream on Twitch or Discord. Upload to Vimeo, or use open streaming platforms.

Don't pay corporations to own you. That's the definition of a slave.

Jesus Christ.