ATTN: Streamers, Broadcasters and Things of that Ilk

[Mr. X]

Some changes are happening at Twitch currently. I'm mentioning two of them that are pretty noteworthy to people who enjoy streaming.

Changes to Audio in VODs

Starting today, Twitch will be implementing technology intended to help broadcasters avoid the storage of videos containing unauthorized third-party audio. We respect the rights of copyright owners, and are voluntarily undertaking this effort to help protect both our broadcasters and copyright owners.


What Is Audio Recognition?

We’ve partnered with Audible Magic, which works closely with the recorded music industry, to scan past and future VODs for music owned or controlled by clients of Audible Magic. This includes in-game and ambient music. When music in the Audible Magic database is detected (“Flagged Content”), the affected portion of the VOD will be muted and volume controls for that VOD will be turned off. Additionally, past broadcasts and highlights with Flagged Content are exportable but will remain muted.

The Audible Magic technology will scan for third party music in 30 minute blocks — if Audible Magic does not detect its clients’ music, that portion of the VOD will not be muted. If third party audio is detected anywhere in the 30-minute scanned block, the entire 30 minutes will be muted.

How It Works: Scanning VODs Only

Audio Recognition will only be run against audio in VODs. We are not scanning live broadcasts and there is no automated takedown of live content.

Changes to VODs

Here’s the New Deal

This data, along with feedback we’ve heard from the Twitch community, made it obvious that our VOD system needs to be improved. Today, we start to move in that direction with an update to how we manage your VODs.

This update is the first step in a process to build features that you’ve asked for:

Better VOD quality of service for our international viewers.
Ability to watch VODs on mobile and other platforms.
Secure storage of your past broadcasts (with triple redundancy, we make three copies of your past broadcasts).
An easier way to export highlights of any length to YouTube.
A step toward conceptualizing new features like DVR, matching quality options from live to VOD, and better VOD discovery.
Going forward, we’re increasing default rolling storage for past broadcasts from 3 days to a maximum of 14 days, for everyone who has opted in (i.e., enabled Archive Broadcasts). For Turbo subscribers and members of the Twitch Partner Program, that storage is increased to a maximum of 60 days.

Unfortunately, increasing the amount of storage this way comes at considerable cost. In order to enable this, we have to remove the “save forever” option entirely for past broadcasts. Given the viewership patterns on past broadcasts, we believe the tradeoff is better for everyone. 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.

Highlights will be saved indefinitely; however, they will now be limited to 2 hours in length. All prior highlights that you’ve made will be saved regardless of length.

As for existing past broadcasts, beginning three weeks from today, we will begin removing them from Twitch servers. If you would like to keep your past broadcasts, we encourage you to begin exporting or making highlights of your best moments so that they’re saved for posterity.

 

[Mr. X]

I didn't want to include this in the first post but it's already muted GTA:VC VoD (because GTA radio stations have licensed music) and some guy playing Fallout 3 with in game music only.

 

[MajoraZ]

The fact the audio is being stripped is bad enough, but combined with the old streams being removed in 3 weeks, that's a whole lot worse. Even if people go to export and back up their streams, they'll still have muted audio from the filter.

I REALLY hope Lab Zero's and EightySixed's streams are backed up locally somewhere so they can be reuploaded on another platform.

if @Mike_Z could comment on that for L0's stuff, I would appreciate it. I don't know who runs the EightySixed stream, so I don't know who to ask for them.

 

[Snackysnacks]

Or at the very least upload them to youtube.

 

[Jake Was Here]

I didn't want to include this in the first post but it's already muted GTA:VC VoD (because GTA radio stations have licensed music) and some guy playing Fallout 3 with in game music only.

I hear they also muted an officially sanctioned DOTA 2 stream for using music owned by Valve. This is like muting Lab Zero's channel for playing the Skullgirls soundtrack.

 

[Kasumi]

Man, something I just thought of is all the AGDQ/SDDQ past broadcasts getting nuked. But I guess most of that stuff ends up on youtube anyway.

 

[Maji]

Please list the most important archives for Salty / Salty Cupcakes so they will be prioritized for saving. All answers that boil down to all of them will be disregarded since that doesn't help.