Twitch: Changes To Audio In VODS

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Oh he edited it.
The ghost of Mr. Jared!
 
More questions.

Hey Emmett, just another concerned twitch streamer.
I understand the need for copyright protection, as the site gets bigger and bigger it probably gains more attention from copyright holders too. However the current implementation has some issues but I'm sure everyone is going to post about that.
My actual question is, every time some massive drama happens (first thing that comes to mind is the Horror mod drama over banning of several accounts) your (or rather twitch) talk about how you understand that your communication was bad in the situation and you will improve. However this never seems to happen in the ways I and others would like. While you are completely transparent about your changes in your blog and emails, tweets etc. You never announce these changes BEFORE they happen. Everyone who uses twitch never gets a chance to give feedback BEFORE you make sweeping changes to the service.
Like I said, I understand WHY you made the changes, I don't necessarily agree with them, however I feel that the backlash from the community would be much smaller if you just gave people the chance to voice their concerns before they have no choice. Even if you didn't change anything (you've already begun doing it, etc) if you understand they're concerns and promise to make improvements BEFORE it happens maybe people would be happier about it.
Basically, why are you (twitch) super transparent AFTER these changes, but not BEFORE when you can give people the chance to give feedback before the changes are forced upon them?

In this case, internal miscommunication. Generally we try to announce things ahead of time (and do so) -- see our recent release of host mode.

What actions have you taken against Twitch employees abusing their power, as evidenced countless times before, escalating with the infamous Horror incident?
Why do you feel it's fair that big companies can conveniently sidestep your ToS which you feel need to enforce to smaller streamers? (Concert streams, for example - there is simply no way you can spin it that makes it OK for Valve to stream Darude while your employees are going after small streams that don't have a game running on the screen)
Why are you throttling bandwidth of small streams (<50 people) so that many people can't watch them at all because of the constant buffering every couple of seconds, while any partnered streams are just fine? Do you feel it's a fair way to give a chance to new talent?
Do you understand that by recent changed to VODs you absolutely destroyed the whole speedrunning userbase on Twitch?
And lastly, why in the name of God do you think it's acceptable to mute original game music and ambience on your server meant to stream videogames? Do you want people to play their games muted, having dead air when there's nothing to say?
Is that what you think of when you think of good production values and entertaining content?

It's not large companies. It's people who have secured the rights. If you secure the rights for a concert, please email us!
We're not throttling bandwidth of small streams. If you know of someone having a problem, please report it -- but we don't treat small streams any different from partner streams (except for whether they have transcodes)


Why is video game music that we have full rights to flagged? this system uses a guilty until proven innocent approach, which is disgusting. please elaborate and make efforts to improve the algorithms to only include music that isn't allowed. not only that, but this effects your cash flow. so why are you doing this? it certainly isn't for the betterment of the community. dont bs us.

A mistake in the system. We'll be making sure it doesn't get flagged.

don't think your problem is so much with the content ID system as it is the implementation. People can understand the need to protect yourselves and the general user base, but there are far more elegant solutions to the problem.
With the new ID system, why not allow content creators to accept the claim on individual VODS via their dashboard? The monetization could then be either turned off entirely or redirected to the owners of the claim? Either of those solutions would be infinitely more acceptable and less frustrating than carpet bombing with mute and having no way to recover.
I'm not a programmer or anything but I don't expect that would be an enormous hurdle, at least when it comes to removing monetization entirely. Redirecting it I imagine would be far more difficult but I would be surprised if users will ever be ok with the current implementation.
I'm not a big streamer but I am a partner, and while I've got a lot of patience with growing pains in this industry I also don't want to have to fight the system needlessly. I hope I don't find it necessary to jump ship but it's becoming more and more difficult.

We're working on providing the ability to "accept the claim" and share monetization, but that might take a long time.

Does the shutdown of Justin TV have anything to do with Twitch?

yes, it will allow us to repurpose resources away from JTV towards Twitch in the future.

Hi Emmet, i have a few questions.
Why the 2 hour limit on Highlights now? That will hurt the speedrunning community TREMENDOUSLY as most game runs are over 2 hours, and nobody wants to split runs into multiple parts. Not to mention, the audio copyright flag thing is confradictory, as it blocks video game music ON A WEBSITE BUILT TO STREAM VIDEO GAMES!

We will fix the 2 hour issue for speedrunning.
Blocking original video game music is not on purpose and will be fixed.
 
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

Well, whatever they're doing, it's superior to Twitch. The stream quality is better, smoother, and there is an incredibly low chat delay.
 
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.
Yeah. And perhaps an announcement to everyone who had VODs on the site so that they would know all their videos are suddenly going to get muted. Springing this stuff on people probably makes them angrier than the actual effects it will have (which are still problematic all on their own).
 
Yeah. And perhaps an announcement to everyone who had VODs on the site so that they would know all their videos are suddenly going to get muted. Springing this stuff on people probably makes them angrier than the actual effects it will have (which are still problematic all on their own).


The order of this is so hilarious that it's offensive he's trying to claim it was just a mistake and not a calculated decision to roll it out like this. Really? It's just a coincidence that within an hour of notifying people that they had to save all their VODs that all of them got ruined? In fact, if not a single person in charge realized what kind of a shit show this would be, I have less confidence in the company and equally little desire to see them successful.
 
The order of this is so hilarious that it's offensive he's trying to claim it was just a mistake and not a calculated decision to roll it out like this. Really? It's just a coincidence that within an hour of notifying people that they had to save all their VODs that all of them got ruined?
Yeah, it's about as calculated and draconian as you can get. There's simply no way this was an "internal miscommunication."

I think what's worse is that so far all the answers have been standoffish. Everything will be "fixed" or "addressed" without any explanation as to what that means. How is it going to be fixed? What is going to be addressed?
 
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.

I'm not sure. A few semi-large Dota tournaments have done alright streaming on Dailymotion, if Hitbox can secure a Steam log in for hat drops or something like Twitch has, they might switch over more easily.
 
Some of this was expected obtuseness, but this:

Highlights for tournaments should be of individual games, not the entire tournament at once.

That's a shitty way to watch a tournament. Wow.
 
Man, this AMA is really making Twitch look poor in my opinion. It just seems like they didn't put any thought into this at all.

It seemed like were really trying to salvage some of the lost trust and angry when they switched the AMA to a non-twitch controlled subreddit but then instantly lost it by pretty much offering deflective answers that feel very hollow ("we are working on it" and "things will be fixed")
 
Highlights for each individual game for tournaments would spoil the outcome of the tournament, would it not?
 
In this case, internal miscommunication. Generally we try to announce things ahead of time (and do so) -- see our recent release of host mode.

haha of course...

Sing, Dance and pat yourself on the back for announcing 'positive' features. Of course.
 
Some of this was expected obtuseness, but this:



That's a shitty way to watch a tournament. Wow.

For some exceptionally long Dota games, it might not even be possible to show the entire game (starting from when drafting starts until the final score board appears at the end), this isn't even including important pre and post game commentary...
 
There's also no reason to believe that they won't mute livestreams in the future as Google already has them bent over. Hollow words from the unprofessional people at Twitch don't really count for much.
 
That's a shitty way to watch a tournament. Wow.
Tiresome and cumbersome for slower, longer games like SC2 or Dota 2, flatout impossible for an FGC tourney.

Not sure what kind of revelations some people were expecting out of this AMA that could turn this around - it reinforces everything that was apparent about the announcement at first glance. It negatively impacts all users of the site on both sides (creation and consumption).


This is unspinnable.
 
edit: Apparenlty it was more than four, but you have to load more comments. But he hasn't answered of the incredibly upvoted questions.

I can't believe he's only answered 4 questions. Two of them are "we're not scanning live video" and one is about Twitch Plays Pokemon.

I'm checking out HitBox.tv, because it's looking pretty good to me.
 
Yes, this AMA shows that they did this haphazardly and didn't test the functions of the ContentID or whatever well at all. He even admitted they screwed up by not announcing it first, then taking feedback before implementing.

That aside, some of the comments from people are so ridiculous. Every time he directly answers a question, there's a list of replies saying basically "Thanks for not answering the question." Or even better "We all KNOW that's BS, so give us a real answer." No, we don't know shit right now. Another favorite was when he said that this will never affect live streaming, someone replied and demanded he "say this in writing" when the post he was replying to was, actually, him saying it in writing. It's just so dumb. I have no idea how gaming execs/devs/journalists/whatever deal with some of the grossly immature bullshit that gets slung their way.It makes it seem like 90% of the gaming community as a whole is impossible to reason with whatsoever.


EDIT: And before I get quoted to hell and back saying I'm supporting these changes, I'm not. I especially think that them springing it on people was ridiculous. But, I'm thinking about it logically rather than freaking the fuck out and slinging shit at the guy/site immediately.
 
Highlights for each individual game for tournaments would spoil the outcome of the tournament, would it not?

Theoretically, yes, as the video would be shorter and so you could predict who would win the grand finals and the 'hype' would be ruined for you despite avoiding spoilers from outside sources like forums/Twitter. And of course where the tournament highlights would get split off at due to the 2 hour limit...
 
Yes, this AMA shows that they did this haphazardly and didn't test the functions of the ContentID or whatever well at all. He even admitted they screwed up by not announcing it first, then taking feedback before implementing.

That aside, some of the comments from people are so ridiculous. Every time he directly answers a question, there's a list of replies saying basically "Thanks for not answering the question." Or even better "We all KNOW that's BS, so give us a real answer." No, we don't know shit right now. Another favorite was when he said that this will never affect live streaming, someone replied and demanded he "say this in writing" when the post he was replying to was, actually, him saying it in writing. It's just so dumb. I have no idea how gaming execs/devs/journalists/whatever deal with some of the grossly immature bullshit that gets slung their way.It makes it seem like 90% of the gaming community as a whole is impossible to reason with whatsoever.

"In writing" implies something firmer than a comment on a message board. They won't get it because it's basically implied that they're going to do it one day. When you do something exceptionally shitty with basically no warning and admit to a public forum that it was a massive fuck-up, don't expect people to be kind.
 
"In writing" implies something firmer than a comment on a message board. They won't get it because it's basically implied that they're going to do it one day. When you do something exceptionally shitty with basically no warning and admit to a public forum that it was a massive fuck-up, don't expect people to be kind.

They already said they're not going to do it on live streaming in the announcement! What does the guy want, a hand-written contract??
 
They already said they're not going to do it on live streaming in the announcement! What does the guy want, a hand-written contract??

Probably. I'm not saying it's reasonable but people are right to speculate about the future of livestreaming with regards to all that's happening with Twitch. Keep in mind that YT already ContentIDs livestreams.
 
Since I have like no followers on Twitch anyways, I'm going to give Hitbox a shot. Worse case scenario, I can always come back to Twitch with my tale between my legs.
 
Since I have like no followers on Twitch anyways, I'm going to give Hitbox a shot. Worse case scenario, I can always come back to Twitch with my tale between my legs.

I feel that even giving Hitbox a shot will be great! It'll show Hitbox that this is their chance to shine, more than even when the stream delay controversy was hot. When I get back from vacation I'm definitely looking at giving their platform a shot as well, as a broadcaster.
 
Since I have like no followers on Twitch anyways, I'm going to give Hitbox a shot. Worse case scenario, I can always come back to Twitch with my tale between my legs.

I'm in the opposite boat. My wife and I have hundreds of followers and so we're watching this was a cautious eye. As for all the changes, none of them affect us or our type of stream at all. I understand the poopstorm especially when it comes to tourneys and speedruns but for us the changes don't really have a baring on how our stream works. The audience currently is at Twitch and it'd be a risk to switch over to Hitbox hoping that the audience follows. Us personally we've never had any issues with the service and so there's little to no incentive for us to move.

If anything Hitbox might motivate Twitch to make more changes to better their service. Competition is good.
 
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