YouTube and UMG Partner To Remaster Over 1,000 Iconic Music Videos From SD To Full-HD (9to5google.com) 84
YouTube and Universal Music Group have teamed up to revamp more than 1,000 videos from artists including Lady Gaga, Tom Petty, Billy Idol and the Spice Girls. From a report: The goal is to "ensure current and future generations will get to enjoy these timeless classics as they've never before been experienced." At launch, 100 music videos have already been remastered and are available "in the highest available video and audio quality." This includes: Billy Idol, Beastie Boys, Boyz II Men, George Strait, Janet Jackson, Kiss, Lady Antebellum, Lady Gaga, Lionel Richie, Maroon 5, Meat Loaf, No Doubt/Gwen Stefani, Smokey Robinson, The Killers, Kiss, and Tom Petty.
Digital Killed the Analog Star (Score:2, Insightful)
This includes: Billy Idol, Beastie Boys, Boyz II Men, George Strait, Janet Jackson, Kiss, Lady Antebellum, Lady Gaga, Lionel Richie, Maroon 5, Meat Loaf, No Doubt/Gwen Stefani, Smokey Robinson, The Killers, Kiss, and Tom Petty.
What? No Buggles?!? [wikipedia.org]
Re: Digital Killed the Analog Star (Score:1)
YouTube is my old school MTV even when all others have abandoned the concept.
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Same here. I've collected some 100 music videos from the late 80s, early 90s, from YouTube and made them into a Playlist. Except that on my iPod, I've had to reconvert them into audio files to listen to it in the car, since Apple doesn't seem to allow any music videos to be played on Apple music that haven't been purchased under Apple music.
For this project, I hope that the HD music videos have full volume sound as well, so that we don't have to turn it to a high volume in the car to audibly listen to i
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For this project, I hope that the HD music videos have full volume sound as well
The loudness war keeps making new victims.
Re: Digital Killed the Analog Star (Score:4, Interesting)
> I hope that the HD music videos have full volume sound as well
Spoken like a member of the generation that utterly destroyed digital music by making clipping a real Thing again.
Seriously. CDs came out, and clipping was dead. Even with just 16 bits, we finally had a medium with enough headroom to accurately represent almost everything from the sound of a feather landing on a carpet to the cannons in "1812 Overture". And the subsequent generation of music engineers fucking RUINED it.
Ditto, for bullshit crap like 4" speakers. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, any self-respecting middle-class high school student had a sound system with AT LEAST two 5-8" primary drivers and discrete tweeters, a subwoofer with 8-12" driver, and 50x2+100 watts RMS. Bare minimum. Now, people think it's acceptable to go out and buy inadequate speakers just because "they're thin".
Newsflash: flat speakers SUCK in nearly every context where they get used. Yes... a flat electrostatic ribbon speaker CAN produce good bass... but ONLY if you have it positioned properly. And almost without exception, people who buy flat speakers because "thin is in" don't position them properly (hint: several FEET away from the wall... and especially not in a corner). An improperly-positioned flat electrostatic ribbon speaker sounds like shit, and it's not a hole you can digitally engineer your way out of. Even if you're able to use signal processing to preserve frequency response and dynamic range, your stereo imaging will be shot to hell. Your "sweet spot" won't actually BE a spot... it'll be somewhere among a RANGE of spots, depending upon the exact frequency in question.
The fact is, in terms of audio quality, we've gone horribly backwards over the past ~25 years. Yes, you can now spend $100 and buy audio gear that sounds better than $500 worth of gear did in 1990... but the sound quality we had from $2,000 worth of gear back in 1990 is now considered exotic and unattainable at almost any price... even if the hardware is technically capable of it, the audio content itself has basically gone back to disco-era sound fidelity.
Re:Digital Killed the Analog Star (Score:4)
More like commercial crap killed the talented star.
Re:Digital Killed the Analog Star (Score:5, Informative)
I mean, look at Michael Jackson's "Thriller". It has the appearance and feel of something that was shot on film originally, but you also can tell from the soft appearance of the final result- and the fact it's only in standard def 480p- that even the current official copy [youtube.com] is based on a (crappy old-school analogue NTSC) videotape transfer.
In that case, since everything up to and including the final captions and credits (#) was done on film, the potential exists to get a much higher resolution transfer simply by rescanning it. (##)
However, from what I can tell, "Video Killed the Radio Star"- like a lot of videos of its time- appears to have been entirely shot on video equipment in the first place- presumably UK 576 line PAL- so that's all there ever was to it. You might get a pseudo-HD version by sophisticated upscaling, but that's it.
Ironically, a lot of *later* videos- late 80s and much of the 1990s- run into a similar problem again. Due to improvements in digital equipment et al, by that point it was possible to take film-based source footage but do much more of the editing and effects on video equipment. Unfortunately this was still just standard definition. Which means that, unlike the everything-done-on-film-except-the-final-transfer case of "Thriller", if you want (for example) Jackson's 1991 "Black or White [youtube.com]" video in HD, you're probably going to have to re-edit it from the original sources and redo a lot of the post-processed effects (many of which would only ever have existed in SD in an early-90s digital effects machine).
(This is also why Star Trek: The Next Generation's remastering was far more complicated than that of the original 1960s series. The latter was shot and edited entirely on film, so it was just a question of doing a better transfer. The former was mostly shot on film, but the editing and a lot of effects were done entirely on SD video equipment).
(#) Note that "judder" on the lettering here [youtube.com] that's a trademark of film transferred to video. OTOH, you can also tell that it *has* been transferred to analogue video at some stage by the very minor colour interference/fringing around those same letters. (##) Considering how famous Thriller is, it surprises me they haven't done this already. Maybe it's something to do with the rights. I'd be incredibly surprised if they hadn't archived at least one copy of the final edited film before it was transferred (though stupider things have happened). Maybe they already did it and realised how badly the HD transfer showed up the effects and makeup that were only intended to pass muster at SD?
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A remastered high-res scan of Thriller exists, it was post-processed to 3D and played in front of IMAX screenings of "The House with a Clock in Its Walls" last year for some reason. Didn't see it myself, but IIRC it was a big part of the marketing push (don't care about the movie? no problem buy a ticket anyway and walk out after you get to see a remastered version of that old music video you like this time in *3-D*)
What a goal... (Score:1)
'The goal is to "ensure current and future generations will get to enjoy these timeless classics as they've never before been experienced."'
Yeah, that's the way to experience the past -- by upping the resolution and making it not look and feel at all like it did originally...
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We've seen AI up scaling for a while.
"Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen have used artificial intelligence to create a high-definition version of a low resolution image. While not pixel-perfect, the system produces a better result. "
https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/fromsmallton.jpg
EnhanceNet-PAT is capable of upsampling a low-resolution image (left) to a high definition version (middle). The result is indistinguishable from the o
I don't like it (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer the warmth of the original analog videos of Boyz II Men.
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Quote: "I prefer the warmth of the original analog videos of Boyz II Men."
Translation to Optics: "I prefer using the old scratched out-of-focus lenses instead of using a proper clean focused lenses that match 1:1 the real original analog source quality of the videos of Boyz II Men".
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You haven't seen the Boyz II Men unless you have seen "Uhh Ahh" in the original analog. Keep your clean lenses away from my classics.
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You had a projector? In my day, we watched “music videos” by hitting “play” on the cassette machine, then quickly flipping the pages of a picture book.
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In my day, we pirated lyric sheets and hummed quietly.
Would have gotten away with it too, but Genius embedded Morse Code in their lyrics and busted us in a most public way.
I think you're missing the point (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
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The list is in TFA, the artist names in the list are clickable links to their HD videos on YouTube.
I watched a few, they don't look HD. They look like a low quality upscale with a bit of sharpening. In high motion scenes the original SD compression artefacts get sharpened up too it seems. The contrast and colour doesn't seem to have improved much, if at all, either.
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Beastie Boys (Score:3)
I appreciate the effort of remastering a music video (Sabotage) that was intentionally shot to mimic the style of the 1970s into HD.
Let's hope they do a Lucas-style Enhanced Edition of their video for Intergalactic next with CGI mechs. /sarcasm
IS IT ME... (Score:1)
Or is this a completely forgettable list?
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Mike D shot first!
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(#) Sitcoms and cheap soaps did tend to be more (analogue) videotape-based, but that's a different thing.
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In the same way, the old British habit of 'Video Inside, Film Outside' means transfers to HD are also a no go for most output from the dawn of TV up to the 80s - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pm... [tvtropes.org]
I remember as a kid always noticing the discontinuity between studio shots and cuts to exterior shots, but never really gave it much thought. I guess it was also more obvious because it never seemed to happen with shows imported from the US.
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In the same way, the old British habit of 'Video Inside, Film Outside' means transfers to HD are also a no go for most output from the dawn of TV up to the 80s
Oddly, they still seem to be releasing the "classic" era on Blu-Ray now anyway. I can only assume they're using some form of high-quality upscaling, but at the end of the day, while it might lack some of the compression artifacts of DVD, it still doesn't look *that* good to me [youtube.com].
Anyway, that "piebald" mixed film/video look was okay if you were used to it, I guess, because you were used to seeing outside on film and inside on video. I remember seeing an early 70s Pertwee episode (repeated in the early 90s) w
So You Will Always... (Score:2)
Remember the 80s.
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coming down the pipe
It's pike.
and the sins of the father shall be (Score:4, Funny)
The goal is to "ensure current and future generations will get to enjoy these timeless classics as they've never before been experienced."
Lady Gaga, the Spice Girls.Boyz II Men, , Janet Jackson, Gwen Stefani, "
what have the poor unborns done to deserve such bad karma?
Read this as "Ironic" music videos (Score:3)
Remastered? (Score:2)
The real legal reason for this announcement (Score:5, Interesting)
It's recently come to light that UMG had a fire in 2008 that destroyed the original master tapes of many classic artists, which even includes Tom Petty from the list of artists in the summary. UMG is being sued for mishandling of those properties as well as being challenged over lack of payouts to artists. The original masters from Chuck Berry, Nirvana, Aretha Franklin, and many other important songs from other artists are now lost forever in a situation reminiscent of the Library of Alexandria. UMG is arguing that since there are derivative commercial copies in existence, that nothing of value was lost and so they shouldn't be held accountable. Publicly announcing the publishing of these "remastered" music videos is an attempt by UMG to demonstrate this position to cover themselves in court for their upcoming inevitable legal issues.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.c... [digitalmusicnews.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:The real legal reason for this announcement (Score:4, Informative)
Slightly more complicated than that.
UMG stored many master recordings of the many recording labels it acquired with NBC Universal. NBC Universal, the studio, had a fire in one of its buildings, and that fire spread to the one that was holding the UMG masters (as well as a ton of NBC-Universal archives of movies and such as well). This was a big fire and destroyed quite a few back lots at NBC-Universal, including a Back To the Future set that was still around.
UMG sued NBC-Universal about the loss of the masters (that's how we knew a lot of the original masters were destroyed). And now UMG is being sued by the artists,.
Countless masters were lost. Of course, those masters made commercially sold recordings, but not all of those recordings are modern - or were in print.
The big thing now is that many early printings are now the only "best" copy of a song available - and forget smaller artists who only had a single release on vinyl and were never even made into a CD.
Meh (Score:3)
Weird Al is the only one that matters.
Lady Gaga? (Score:3)
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You sound right, but it looks significantly better to me.
I have been wondering for 5-10 years now why automatic higher resolution uploads for music videos were not made, once the technology became available. I guess I am still wondering why higher quality uploads are not made. Was Lady Gaga's Bad Romance not shot in HD? Even Babylon 5 was shot in HD, and that was in the mid to late 90s.
I enjoyed re-watching it and I intend to do it again.
Original link (Score:3)
Surely a pure coincidence (Score:2)
... they just admitted they've been hiding for 11 years that a major fire on the Universal lot destroyed countless historical master tapes including Miles Davis, Buddy Holly, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry's Chess masters. 150,000 original song recordings, sessions, out-takes, gone forever.
If challenged to prove ownership for any of these, they have absolutely nothing. They hid the loss of cultural treasure to avoid a hit to their value. These, the same people who will issue YT take-down noti
If we had real AI... (Score:2)
The same thing should be a bit simpler to do for music. Analyse what instruments are being played, then reconstruct what a perfect recording of these instruments would be.
2x Kiss (Score:1)
Youtube's audio compression is horrific so... (Score:2)
Good luck with that.
No comment... (Score:1)
Maybe they don't want anyone calling BS on their video upscaling. They specifically claim "...be on the lookout for