Fotheringay
Member
They've done this time and again though. They make a change for the negative, blindsiding people, and apologize for it later.
Twitch: Changes To Audio In VODS
- Thread starter fluffydelusions
- Start date
They've done this time and again though. They make a change for the negative, blindsiding people, and apologize for it later.
Velcro Fly
Member
pretty much. the bot just finds the music and doesn't care if it's directly from a game or not. that's why people are mad. they can say they are aware of it all they want but it's a huge mess to sort out and i'm not sure i'd want to deal with it. and then this guy has the gall to say it's for the better of the community. they let people play whatever music they want for years and now that they've been bought by google it turns into "well we don't want any streamer's life to be ruined"
hahaha. yeah fucking right.
They're likely hoping they can weather a shorter shitstorm this way. Just get the change fully out of the way, and people will calm down in a week or two.
We'll see if they made the correct bet, or if they pulled a Digg and led an exodus away from their site.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
Strike 1 : broadcasts getting deleted
Strike 2 : 60 second delay
Strike 3 : Audio copyright
Yeah I'm out and so are you twitch.
Strike 2 : 60 second delay
Strike 3 : Audio copyright
Yeah I'm out and so are you twitch.
PotionBleue
Member
Even if they stop muting in-game music, it doesn't change the fact that Twitch still has a huge delay. Other services like hitbox.tv are already touting the benefits of low-latency.
This is true. Still don't believe they didn't think of making an announcement prior to this. I mean, the same guy admits in another answer that they expected the backlash. You don't just expect it and don't do anything to cushion the backlash -- that's the job of the PR team for christ sakes! Incompetence all around.
milkham
Member
I think removing original game music would be enough, licensed music like you get on the radio stations in GTA should be a separate issue because the recording industry is a fucking nightmare.
TheAbsolution
Member
2 more questions.
Hello Emmett, and thanks for doing this AMA.
I have some questions primary about the recent changes to twitch.
1.With the new VOD audio copyright policy, how would you justify the muting of "in-game and ambient music"? I feel they are essential parts of many games; in many cases music is unable to be disabled short of having no game audio at all.
2.Can you ensure that these checks are accurate? For instance the system wouldn't mute an official twitch VOD accidentally.
3.Why doesn't the video feed fall under the policy as it may contain copyrighted assets as the majority of games are also under copyright "protection", not only their soundtracks?
1.Muting original in-game music is a mistake. We're working on it if something slipped through the gaps. Ambient music (playing Britney Spears in the background) is not allowed on Twitch unless you've licensed it for that purpose.
2.When there are mistakes we consider them bugs and are trying to fix it.
3.Games are licensed to be broadcast by the game companies, usually in a public manner. Music is not. It's as simple as that, unfortunately.
Twitch Staff,
I just want to say you guys have built a great website over the years. HOWEVER, your recent changes to the website might have jeopardized your future. I understand why you had to limit copyrighted music. Piracy is illegal and should be illegal. However, muting VOD's is not the way to go. Muting VOD's has affected almost everyone. Here are a few examples.
Thejustinflynn. Flynn has friendships with a lot of Admins and was one of the hosts at Twitch's booth at E3. Justin is in a band with a fellow streamer ohnickel and frequently uses their music onstream. However, yesterday a ton of his replays were muted because they used HIS music. Not only that, but Justin is also in a competition to win a contract at Intel and he might lose it because he might Have no time to stream due to exporting everything.
TSM. League of Legends is consistently the most popular game on Twitch and the Championship series usually brings about 200k viewers. That is a ton of revenue for you guys. However, TSM, arguably the most popular LoL team on twitch was recently muted for playing music they own. Not only that but almost every LoL streamer does the same thing
Speedrunners. Most speedrunners speedruns are more than 2 hours. Due to this time limit the speedrunning community will have no place to save their videos. They might not have a choice but to migrate to Hitbox.
So my question is why, WHY are you doing this Twitch?
If someone needs to export a large number of VODs all at once, please email us and we can help out with that.
We aren't exempting people from this process just because they're super awesome partners that we love.
This was an edge case we missed -- before the policy goes into effect we will have a fix.
Hello Emmett, and thanks for doing this AMA.
I have some questions primary about the recent changes to twitch.
1.With the new VOD audio copyright policy, how would you justify the muting of "in-game and ambient music"? I feel they are essential parts of many games; in many cases music is unable to be disabled short of having no game audio at all.
2.Can you ensure that these checks are accurate? For instance the system wouldn't mute an official twitch VOD accidentally.
3.Why doesn't the video feed fall under the policy as it may contain copyrighted assets as the majority of games are also under copyright "protection", not only their soundtracks?
1.Muting original in-game music is a mistake. We're working on it if something slipped through the gaps. Ambient music (playing Britney Spears in the background) is not allowed on Twitch unless you've licensed it for that purpose.
2.When there are mistakes we consider them bugs and are trying to fix it.
3.Games are licensed to be broadcast by the game companies, usually in a public manner. Music is not. It's as simple as that, unfortunately.
Twitch Staff,
I just want to say you guys have built a great website over the years. HOWEVER, your recent changes to the website might have jeopardized your future. I understand why you had to limit copyrighted music. Piracy is illegal and should be illegal. However, muting VOD's is not the way to go. Muting VOD's has affected almost everyone. Here are a few examples.
Thejustinflynn. Flynn has friendships with a lot of Admins and was one of the hosts at Twitch's booth at E3. Justin is in a band with a fellow streamer ohnickel and frequently uses their music onstream. However, yesterday a ton of his replays were muted because they used HIS music. Not only that, but Justin is also in a competition to win a contract at Intel and he might lose it because he might Have no time to stream due to exporting everything.
TSM. League of Legends is consistently the most popular game on Twitch and the Championship series usually brings about 200k viewers. That is a ton of revenue for you guys. However, TSM, arguably the most popular LoL team on twitch was recently muted for playing music they own. Not only that but almost every LoL streamer does the same thing
Speedrunners. Most speedrunners speedruns are more than 2 hours. Due to this time limit the speedrunning community will have no place to save their videos. They might not have a choice but to migrate to Hitbox.
So my question is why, WHY are you doing this Twitch?
If someone needs to export a large number of VODs all at once, please email us and we can help out with that.
We aren't exempting people from this process just because they're super awesome partners that we love.
This was an edge case we missed -- before the policy goes into effect we will have a fix.
Velcro Fly
Member
the delay is overrated. it's maybe 8-10 seconds now
Duxxy3
Member
For most streamers, I think they will stay put. The speed running community though... I think they might really be gone. These changes hit right at the heart of that community.
I still don't think Twitch can do anything about that, though. As I said, it'll be up to the developers to go to Audible Magic in order to get their songs removed, as they're the ones who hold the rights to the music.
And from what I've read about similar services, they don't want to remove anything. They want to protect you whether or not you ever signed up for it, and even if you tell them to their faces you don't want them to "protect" their music. They're doing it for your own good, and you can just suck it.
That last sentence is like "Oh we yeah we pushed the button and we didn't look before we did that..sorry"
Yeah, but it went from 2-5 seconds to 30 seconds instantly for no reason other than "esports".
TheAbsolution
Member
More Questions from the AMA.
HTML5? Ever? Its 2014, flash is pretty much dead. Updates? anything?
Unfortunately, HTML5 doesn't work for technical reasons right now. We would like to move to it eventually.
(More specifically, it doesn't work with h264 HLS live streaming across several browsers)
On your blog post, you make the following claim with regards to your change to VOD storage:
"To be clear: this is not a move to economize on space. Due to the triple redundancy, it will actually require us to substantially increase our total amount of storage."
I don't understand how you are claiming that you have to increase storage to triple store the last three weeks of content, versus single storing the last several years of content. It sounds to me like triple-storing the last three weeks is roughly analogous to single-storing the last nine weeks, right? And you are currently single-storing WAY more than the last nine weeks. So in what way does going from single-storing several years of content to triple-storing three weeks of content require you to "substantially increase your total amount of storage"?
[Note: Twitch is probably my favorite site on the internet, so I only ask this out of love.]
Now we default store 14 days (60 for partners) with triple storage, which is equivalent to 42 days of single-storage (technically more due to the 60 day partners) which is 10x what we were storing by default before (4 days).
That's where the math goes wrong...in order to extend the default storage time substantially (which we believe is an important and valuable change), and do triple storage, we can't afford as much unwatched video being saved indefinitely.
Repost my comment here: Why make it so that only 2 hour highlights are "permanent"? Why not also give users a finite space where they can save videos "permanently"? I know speedrunners are a big part of your community, as I associate with the SpeedDemosArchive/SpeedRunsLive community (the guys/girls who do Awesome Games Done Quick), and speedrunners need more than 2 hours.
This is obviously a problem that we need to fix. We missed an edge case here and will be fixing it before the policy goes live.
Game companies have the public stance (and private stance directly with Twitch) that they allow anyone to stream their games. See for example.
So why is Dota 2 content (even The International) flagged, when Valve is part of that list of companies you linked to?
That was a false positive (misidentification of crowd noise as music), which we've now fixed.
Nothing slipped through the gaps, the blog post at http://blog.twitch.tv/2014/08/3136/ specifically states that the Audible Magic thing affects in-game music. You all knew.
Original vs. un-original music
HTML5? Ever? Its 2014, flash is pretty much dead. Updates? anything?
Unfortunately, HTML5 doesn't work for technical reasons right now. We would like to move to it eventually.
(More specifically, it doesn't work with h264 HLS live streaming across several browsers)
On your blog post, you make the following claim with regards to your change to VOD storage:
"To be clear: this is not a move to economize on space. Due to the triple redundancy, it will actually require us to substantially increase our total amount of storage."
I don't understand how you are claiming that you have to increase storage to triple store the last three weeks of content, versus single storing the last several years of content. It sounds to me like triple-storing the last three weeks is roughly analogous to single-storing the last nine weeks, right? And you are currently single-storing WAY more than the last nine weeks. So in what way does going from single-storing several years of content to triple-storing three weeks of content require you to "substantially increase your total amount of storage"?
[Note: Twitch is probably my favorite site on the internet, so I only ask this out of love.]
Now we default store 14 days (60 for partners) with triple storage, which is equivalent to 42 days of single-storage (technically more due to the 60 day partners) which is 10x what we were storing by default before (4 days).
That's where the math goes wrong...in order to extend the default storage time substantially (which we believe is an important and valuable change), and do triple storage, we can't afford as much unwatched video being saved indefinitely.
Repost my comment here: Why make it so that only 2 hour highlights are "permanent"? Why not also give users a finite space where they can save videos "permanently"? I know speedrunners are a big part of your community, as I associate with the SpeedDemosArchive/SpeedRunsLive community (the guys/girls who do Awesome Games Done Quick), and speedrunners need more than 2 hours.
This is obviously a problem that we need to fix. We missed an edge case here and will be fixing it before the policy goes live.
Game companies have the public stance (and private stance directly with Twitch) that they allow anyone to stream their games. See for example.
So why is Dota 2 content (even The International) flagged, when Valve is part of that list of companies you linked to?
That was a false positive (misidentification of crowd noise as music), which we've now fixed.
Nothing slipped through the gaps, the blog post at http://blog.twitch.tv/2014/08/3136/ specifically states that the Audible Magic thing affects in-game music. You all knew.
Original vs. un-original music
milkham
Member
Well, assuming that twitch is a paying customer of these guys, they may have some clout there in getting these instances removed for their specific implementation, but like i said the recording industry is a nightmare.
Velcro Fly
Member
i mean how long ago was that? it's much better now. it was dumb at the time and another example of twitch doing things that hurt streamers but it isn't even a huge deal now.
PotionBleue
Member
What's gonna happen with people streaming games like Dance Central, Just Dance, DDR, Singstar, etc.?
It will work fine live and completely cease to function on VOD.
Fotheringay
Member
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2cwfu2/i_am_twitch_ceo_emmett_shear_ask_me_almost/cjjq0al
Welp. Looks like his patience only lasted so long.
Haha oh shit he edited that quickly. He was asked "Why do you hate the FGC?" and responded with the classic "Why do you still beat your wife?"
Welp. Looks like his patience only lasted so long.
Haha oh shit he edited that quickly. He was asked "Why do you hate the FGC?" and responded with the classic "Why do you still beat your wife?"
What was the question?
TheAbsolution
Member
More questions flooding in.
Hello! Thanks for doing this AMA. I must say, I wish it had happened before you actually rolled out the recent platform changes. That would have helped us trust you; as it is, everyone is saying this is "just damage control".
I choose to believe that you are going through a stressful reorganization, and it's understandable that things weren't thought through perfectly. The hilariousness of official Twitch vods and many game devs' own streams getting muted is part of why I think so, and the poor timing of your community communications can be seen as part of the same thing. Hopefully, it's not too late for us to have a meaningful dialogue, and for things to be a little less hilariously terrible than they have been for the last ~18 hours.
So, here's my question: which of the following are on the table?
Audio:
Turning off audio muting altogether. Sounds like you're under a lot of pressure on this, but hey, maybe it's possible.
Removing video game OSTs from the database. You are a video game streaming service; it is fair use for people to stream and save recordings of gameplay; it is completely absurd that your system is flagging the very content your platform is intended to host
Muting things much more selectively. Half hour chunks are the most heavy-handed, experience-ruining way to do this; only a tiny fraction of copyrighted songs last anywhere near that long; you are removing access to huge amounts of your content creators' hard work. Why not just mute the actual part that matches?
Increasing the stringency of the content-owner submission process, to avoid abuse cases like this one that we've seen across youtube for a while now.
Treating users as innocent until proven guilty when making counterclaims. Given the erratic nature of the detection algorithm, the inevitable slowness of any manual investigation process, and the fact that videos are most relevant to communities shortly after they are released, it would be a HUGE improvement to user experience and community health if contested mutes were reversed until investigated.
Saving VoDs:
Only deleting old saved VoDs that haven't been watched. You mentioned in your blog post that "80% of [y]our storage capacity is filled with past broadcasts that are never watched." So, go ahead and delete those! But don't delete the archives of famous streamers who are no longer active! That is valuable history! Preserve it!
Allowing us to save VoDs forever again, at reduced capacity. Maybe only once they cross a viewership threshold?
Allowing highlights to be longer than 2 hours. Many speedruns, e.g. Wind Waker, take longer than this. Making everyone painstakingly break their runs into 2-hour chunks is sad
I fully understand that not everything I'm asking for here is possible; my intention is to get a sense of what is possible. Our trust in you is shaken, but you have a golden opportunity to regain it. Show us what you're willing to do!
We're not going to roll back, but we're moving fast on making many of the other changes you've suggested.
You recently promoted a broadcast by Steve Aoki (at twitch.tv/steveaoki) which did not contain any gaming related content. When other, smaller streamers (such as gootecks) tried to cast similar party/concert streams, you told them to go to a different website, since the Twitch Rules of Conduct specify that Twitch isn't for non-gaming content. What is the reason for this?
We secured the licensing for something we thought that the community would like as a test. Aoki is a huge gamer and popular with Twitch, so we thought it would be a fun thing to do for everyone. Based on the community response, it looks like people enjoyed it.
Why do you still hate the FGC?
Why are you still beating your wife? {Poster's note: Anyone want to fill me in on the context here?}He edited: (Statements disguised as questions aren't questions) Implying that it is a loaded question being asked.
I'd like to state that I understand why these changes are being made and that while it doesn't make me particularly happy, it is necessary to improve and grow the service. However, I think the way this is being handled is poor and the timing at which all these changes are happening is also terrible. A bit of work can be done on Twitch's side to ease the adoption of these policies.
Regarding the VODs, I agree that not everything needs to be kept forever. I run my own redundant arrays at home and I too, tend to clean up from time to time as space isn't unlimited nor free. However, the metrics you are using to justify the 14 day policy is flawed. The reason why nothing gets viewed past that timeline is not because there is no interest, it's because the tools we are offered are pretty bad. If you want to view past broadcasts, you have to either remember the title of the broadcast to find it or search for it through different means that are all independent and lacking.
For example, it is currently impossible to search for a streamer playing a particular game. You can search for a streamer, or a game, but a simple concatenation of both is impossible. I think there are improvements to be made to the way we can search material, and these improvements could change your data considerably.
I was going to comment on the highlight creation tool being very impractical. But it seems it has improved a bit since last I used it (and gave up on it entirely back then). Keep up the good work on that end to make creating highlights and editing easier.
Moving on to the bigger issue, muting streams that has soundtrack that violates some form of copyright. Whenever I play games (streaming or not), I enjoy listening to music. Now if I decide to stream, I will have to turn off my music or my VODs (and I assume the stream itself eventually) will be muted.
Again, I understand why these changes are being made, but I think there should be some work done between Twitch and streaming platforms to develop ways to allow music.
Currently, most streaming platform (OBS, twitch to name the bigger ones) allow scenes where you can select what can be viewed. However, nothing exists to select what can be listened to. I understand that Twitch has no direct role in helping develop this, but at this time, Twitch is ready to enforce something that will hurt streamers, and I do think in the end it will hurt Twitch itself. I believe it's worth investigating this path as it will please the streamers, the viewers (a lot prefer music-less streams) and possibly improve your image towards the community.
Hopefully this gets your attention and doesn't get lost in the reddit blackhole. You have done great work up to now, and I understand there is a timeline to follow when <rumors> happen, but you should not lose focus on your community.
And now for the actual questions:
1. Are there any plans to improve the search engine for VODs?
2. Are the current VOD lifetime values set in stone or are you willing to re-evaluate (shorter or longer)?
3. Is Twitch interested in improving the streamer's experience by working with streaming platforms?
3.1. If not, does Twitch have a plan to help the streamer to extract the infringing audio while leaving the rest intact?
Thank you,
lorcas
Yes, this is part of a massive investment in VODs for Twitch that will include
The current lifetimes are a massive increase over the previous, and we will be trying to increase them further in the future.
(and 3.1) We fully intend to find ways to have music be a great experience on Twitch. We know you guys love music, we love music too and want to keep it as part of Twitch.
Hello! Thanks for doing this AMA. I must say, I wish it had happened before you actually rolled out the recent platform changes. That would have helped us trust you; as it is, everyone is saying this is "just damage control".
I choose to believe that you are going through a stressful reorganization, and it's understandable that things weren't thought through perfectly. The hilariousness of official Twitch vods and many game devs' own streams getting muted is part of why I think so, and the poor timing of your community communications can be seen as part of the same thing. Hopefully, it's not too late for us to have a meaningful dialogue, and for things to be a little less hilariously terrible than they have been for the last ~18 hours.
So, here's my question: which of the following are on the table?
Audio:
Turning off audio muting altogether. Sounds like you're under a lot of pressure on this, but hey, maybe it's possible.
Removing video game OSTs from the database. You are a video game streaming service; it is fair use for people to stream and save recordings of gameplay; it is completely absurd that your system is flagging the very content your platform is intended to host
Muting things much more selectively. Half hour chunks are the most heavy-handed, experience-ruining way to do this; only a tiny fraction of copyrighted songs last anywhere near that long; you are removing access to huge amounts of your content creators' hard work. Why not just mute the actual part that matches?
Increasing the stringency of the content-owner submission process, to avoid abuse cases like this one that we've seen across youtube for a while now.
Treating users as innocent until proven guilty when making counterclaims. Given the erratic nature of the detection algorithm, the inevitable slowness of any manual investigation process, and the fact that videos are most relevant to communities shortly after they are released, it would be a HUGE improvement to user experience and community health if contested mutes were reversed until investigated.
Saving VoDs:
Only deleting old saved VoDs that haven't been watched. You mentioned in your blog post that "80% of [y]our storage capacity is filled with past broadcasts that are never watched." So, go ahead and delete those! But don't delete the archives of famous streamers who are no longer active! That is valuable history! Preserve it!
Allowing us to save VoDs forever again, at reduced capacity. Maybe only once they cross a viewership threshold?
Allowing highlights to be longer than 2 hours. Many speedruns, e.g. Wind Waker, take longer than this. Making everyone painstakingly break their runs into 2-hour chunks is sad
I fully understand that not everything I'm asking for here is possible; my intention is to get a sense of what is possible. Our trust in you is shaken, but you have a golden opportunity to regain it. Show us what you're willing to do!
We're not going to roll back, but we're moving fast on making many of the other changes you've suggested.
You recently promoted a broadcast by Steve Aoki (at twitch.tv/steveaoki) which did not contain any gaming related content. When other, smaller streamers (such as gootecks) tried to cast similar party/concert streams, you told them to go to a different website, since the Twitch Rules of Conduct specify that Twitch isn't for non-gaming content. What is the reason for this?
We secured the licensing for something we thought that the community would like as a test. Aoki is a huge gamer and popular with Twitch, so we thought it would be a fun thing to do for everyone. Based on the community response, it looks like people enjoyed it.
Why do you still hate the FGC?
Why are you still beating your wife? {Poster's note: Anyone want to fill me in on the context here?}He edited: (Statements disguised as questions aren't questions) Implying that it is a loaded question being asked.
I'd like to state that I understand why these changes are being made and that while it doesn't make me particularly happy, it is necessary to improve and grow the service. However, I think the way this is being handled is poor and the timing at which all these changes are happening is also terrible. A bit of work can be done on Twitch's side to ease the adoption of these policies.
Regarding the VODs, I agree that not everything needs to be kept forever. I run my own redundant arrays at home and I too, tend to clean up from time to time as space isn't unlimited nor free. However, the metrics you are using to justify the 14 day policy is flawed. The reason why nothing gets viewed past that timeline is not because there is no interest, it's because the tools we are offered are pretty bad. If you want to view past broadcasts, you have to either remember the title of the broadcast to find it or search for it through different means that are all independent and lacking.
For example, it is currently impossible to search for a streamer playing a particular game. You can search for a streamer, or a game, but a simple concatenation of both is impossible. I think there are improvements to be made to the way we can search material, and these improvements could change your data considerably.
I was going to comment on the highlight creation tool being very impractical. But it seems it has improved a bit since last I used it (and gave up on it entirely back then). Keep up the good work on that end to make creating highlights and editing easier.
Moving on to the bigger issue, muting streams that has soundtrack that violates some form of copyright. Whenever I play games (streaming or not), I enjoy listening to music. Now if I decide to stream, I will have to turn off my music or my VODs (and I assume the stream itself eventually) will be muted.
Again, I understand why these changes are being made, but I think there should be some work done between Twitch and streaming platforms to develop ways to allow music.
Currently, most streaming platform (OBS, twitch to name the bigger ones) allow scenes where you can select what can be viewed. However, nothing exists to select what can be listened to. I understand that Twitch has no direct role in helping develop this, but at this time, Twitch is ready to enforce something that will hurt streamers, and I do think in the end it will hurt Twitch itself. I believe it's worth investigating this path as it will please the streamers, the viewers (a lot prefer music-less streams) and possibly improve your image towards the community.
Hopefully this gets your attention and doesn't get lost in the reddit blackhole. You have done great work up to now, and I understand there is a timeline to follow when <rumors> happen, but you should not lose focus on your community.
And now for the actual questions:
1. Are there any plans to improve the search engine for VODs?
2. Are the current VOD lifetime values set in stone or are you willing to re-evaluate (shorter or longer)?
3. Is Twitch interested in improving the streamer's experience by working with streaming platforms?
3.1. If not, does Twitch have a plan to help the streamer to extract the infringing audio while leaving the rest intact?
Thank you,
lorcas
Yes, this is part of a massive investment in VODs for Twitch that will include
The current lifetimes are a massive increase over the previous, and we will be trying to increase them further in the future.
(and 3.1) We fully intend to find ways to have music be a great experience on Twitch. We know you guys love music, we love music too and want to keep it as part of Twitch.
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
Is there anything stable enough to replace YouTube and Twitch right now?
Unfortunately for him, all kinds of music is on Audible Magic. Even "original" video game music that the developers didn't put on it.
Mr. Luchador
Member
The Rocksmith Devs have just said they have an exemption from the VOD mutings.
The Blackrose
Member
I am in the wrong industry.
Time to get my resume updated. How I would love to be paid to put half ass implemented middleware into a system with little testing and not tell the public at large until the move to production.
EDIT:
It refers back to a previous AMA he did, where honzogonzo set him up to get got.
That's a standard 'the question is irrelevant' answer to the question. The idea being that you can't *still* be beating your wife if you never did in the first place (so how can he still hate the FGC when he never hated it in the first place)?
Still, a terribly unprofessional response to the question (and quickly edited, I see).
Youtube will never be fully replaced. It's accrued too many videos over the years that no other service can even compete.
Twitch, however, is different. It's a streaming site, meaning its content is ephemeral. If the big streamers leave for another service, Twitch becomes nothing.
Hitbox.tv is currently the main competitor for Twitch at the moment, and it's growing fast. It uses HTML5 video (instead of Flash still used on Twitch) and it has an incredibly low chat delay.
just tested in multiple streams average of 22seconds
TheAbsolution
Member
Thanks. Makes sense now.
Yeah and it's pretty surprising when you consider that Romscout is part of Twitch now, too. You'd think with him on board nothing like this would turn out this way -- yet it has.
And the esports community will definitely still be on twitch for the foreseeable future. But as someone who doesn't really care about LoL and DOTA, I sure hope other streamers move over to hitbox/etc.
TheAbsolution
Member
Questions just keep on coming in.
Could you guys PLEASE add a feature that allows the broadcaster to select their own stream delay?
I know that the delay was added with good intentions in order to stop things like stream sniping and ghosting, but there are many streamers who like to have interaction with their chat and it is very awkward for the streamer who reads chat and for the viewers when there's a question asked by either of them and they have to wait 20-40 seconds for a response.
I believe many people who don't really care about being stream-sniped (it still happens anyway), or just want to have interactions with their fans while streaming would appreciate the ability to set their own stream delay. I know Hitbox has this, so it would be a very wonderful feature on Twitch.
We're working on turning down the default stream delay, and hopefully it will be much lower soon.
Why did you decide to use such an archaic system that doesn't even care/know where the music is coming from? Why even use this if it even contains video game music when 99% of streamers' content are video games themselves and the sound they emit is part of the experience of watching a streamer?
I'm tearing my hair out at this, it blows my mind you went through with this.
Most in-game music is not flagged. There appear to be a few cases where it's happening mistakenly, and we will be fixing those.
On your blog, you've encouraged people to get permission to stream the music that they're playing. In principle, I understand why this is important. When someone turns off the game music and plays "Darude - Sandstorm" instead, certainly Darude deserves the chance to get royalties from that.
However, you've signed up with a ContentID system, which just detects that music they (probably) cover is (probably) being played. They don't have any way to know that you have permission.
Suppose someone does get permission to play a particular artist's music, but that music is indexed by Audible Magic. How will Audible Magic know that they have permission? Do you see any realistic outcome that's better than:
Streamer plays music with permission
Audible Magic recognizes the music and mutes it
Streamer appeals the muting through some appeals process that doesn't exist yet
E-mails ensue where the streamer has to prove they have permission
The audio comes back, much later
Repeat every time they put up a new highlight or VOD
And are you talking to your "partner" Audible Magic about the fact that their content matching is so inappropriate for Twitch so far?
If someone gets permission, we'll be implementing that on an ongoing basis on our side. It won't require going through the steps over and over.
Could you guys PLEASE add a feature that allows the broadcaster to select their own stream delay?
I know that the delay was added with good intentions in order to stop things like stream sniping and ghosting, but there are many streamers who like to have interaction with their chat and it is very awkward for the streamer who reads chat and for the viewers when there's a question asked by either of them and they have to wait 20-40 seconds for a response.
I believe many people who don't really care about being stream-sniped (it still happens anyway), or just want to have interactions with their fans while streaming would appreciate the ability to set their own stream delay. I know Hitbox has this, so it would be a very wonderful feature on Twitch.
We're working on turning down the default stream delay, and hopefully it will be much lower soon.
Why did you decide to use such an archaic system that doesn't even care/know where the music is coming from? Why even use this if it even contains video game music when 99% of streamers' content are video games themselves and the sound they emit is part of the experience of watching a streamer?
I'm tearing my hair out at this, it blows my mind you went through with this.
Most in-game music is not flagged. There appear to be a few cases where it's happening mistakenly, and we will be fixing those.
On your blog, you've encouraged people to get permission to stream the music that they're playing. In principle, I understand why this is important. When someone turns off the game music and plays "Darude - Sandstorm" instead, certainly Darude deserves the chance to get royalties from that.
However, you've signed up with a ContentID system, which just detects that music they (probably) cover is (probably) being played. They don't have any way to know that you have permission.
Suppose someone does get permission to play a particular artist's music, but that music is indexed by Audible Magic. How will Audible Magic know that they have permission? Do you see any realistic outcome that's better than:
Streamer plays music with permission
Audible Magic recognizes the music and mutes it
Streamer appeals the muting through some appeals process that doesn't exist yet
E-mails ensue where the streamer has to prove they have permission
The audio comes back, much later
Repeat every time they put up a new highlight or VOD
And are you talking to your "partner" Audible Magic about the fact that their content matching is so inappropriate for Twitch so far?
If someone gets permission, we'll be implementing that on an ongoing basis on our side. It won't require going through the steps over and over.
Looking at it from that angle, it explains and fits of the few reasons why the sudden and lack of announcement ahead of time and how unprepared they are/were for all the questions and concerns they should had answers already to go...
Implementing a very systemic "feature" that has the potential of falsely flagging content NEEDS to have a reversal/whitelist system in place before it touches a single video. Telling the important users (aka streamers that are pretty much THE SOURCE of INCOME for Twitch) that they can direct their concerns or counter claims to a email address is fucked up...
Wait, I don't watch much on Twitch but know that there was a significant delay added to streams earlier this year, wasn't it around 30-45 seconds... Has it increased?
Flacracker
Banned
Subtervotion
Member
How I would I go about disputing Twitches muting of my videos? I have used in game audio only from The Last of Us. I haven't done anything wrong right? Can I get my videos unmuted?
Video for example: http://www.twitch.tv/subtervotion/c/4848397
Video for example: http://www.twitch.tv/subtervotion/c/4848397
Also gamers are significantly quick to jump ship if they feel they're being slighted. I'm interested to see how this plays out. I imagine we could see a segment where all the esports stuff stays on twitch like lol and dota2, but all the speedrunners and casual streamers switch to hit box.
TheAbsolution
Member
I assume those were just past broadcasts.
CambriaRising
Member
The logic makes no sense. If it was only a small number of videos, why even limit it at that point?
Which are now being deleted after 14 or 60 days.
2 hour highlights will be the only things left for eternity.
Haunted
Member
Highlights, not past broadcasts. No highlights above 2 hours is how they came to the conclusion that this is an acceptable length limit.
But it's obviously just them being obtuse about the fact that there's no need for 2+ hour-long highlights BECAUSE PAST BROADCAST COULD BE SAVED IN THEIR ENTIRETY.
edit: exactly.
DigitalRicket
Member
No one would ever make highlights of speedruns longer than 2 hours and/or tournaments longer than that because past broadcasts saved several hours and were never going to disappear so their research "makes sense". However, now that past broadcasts can disappear so quickly highlights now have even more of a use and so the 2 hour limit is, frankly, absurd. They did not think this change through.
They implemented a program which flags fucking crowd noise as copyrighted music. I don't think any more evidence is needed that this plan needed a lot more time in the oven.
No it does not!
It uses Flash just like Twitch.
It covers it up with some clever HTML5/js tricks that "controls" the playback of Flash content.
If you don't believe me, kill the flash-player process while watching a live stream or if you are using Firefox, block flash from running on the site and you will get nothing but a blank grey canvas.
http://i.imgur.com/kVX8wFR.png
The chat feature however uses WebSockets instead of Flash for it's chat connection