The video of the Zombie Crawl in the previous post is hosted on Vimeo. But judging by the number (and variety) of motion cams I saw a the zombie crawl, I knew there must be a lot of video out there, probably on Youtube. Collette suggested I post the video on Youtube, so more people could see it.
So I did, and I got a couple of surprises. Firstly, I was pretty shocked at the quality of the video. I uploaded the same 315 mb H.264 file I used on Vimeo and the Youtube quality was good. Really really good. I was very happy with that, in that Youtube doesn't limit the number of vids you can upload and you can load very long vids too. My main purpose for hosting vids is to put them on this blog but it is nice to think that the vid will be hosted on a site accessible to so many people.
But my bliss was quickly demolished by a cold hard reality (isn't that always the way?) Now, I make these vids for fun, I don't use this blog to promote my business or showcase my commercial videos. It's just for entertainment. But i do have a certain standard I like to maintain so I spend some time creating the soundtracks; selecting the music, mixing it with the ambient sound from the video, making a nice mix between different songs, etc. Well, Youtube doesn't give a shit about that. I was totally shocked to find that Youtube had completely removed the audio from my video. All of the audio
The reasoning was copyright violations. Yes, I used commercial music, three songs I think. And yes, I do get the whole creative licence thing. I have had my own work pilfered by other studios and used as their promo, it's not good. But that's business. I'm certainly not making money off this blog or any of the videos on it and it would not be difficult for anyone to take them and use them as their own. I don't like that idea, but I can live with it.
And I get the legal ramifications. And I understand that sharing communities like Youtube are being spanked by entirely greed based entities like the recording industry (and if you think that this kind of legal action actually puts more money in the pockets of the artists, may I visit your planet some day?) So, OK, Youtube scorched my goofy little vid to protect themselves ... I've hosted vids on Google and they do the same thing. Though I have to say I have vids there whose soundtrack Youtube didn't remove and one video they removed entirely for copyright infringements... and since it was home video of Hayley, I'm wondering who's being protected here ...
So, now, what to do. I thought I could always go back and re edit the video using only the natural ambient sound. Creatively, this doesn't appeal to me and it was more work than I was willing to do. Then I find was looks like a solution, a Youtube feature called Audio Swap. They have a library of music that you are allowed to use. It's a pretty good library, with recognizable songs and artists. So although I had put a lot of thought into my original music choices I was willing to live with what the choices with which I was provided. But of course, there is always a rub ...
The problem with Audioswap is that it replaces your entire soundtrack, not just the music. So all the ambient sound was gone as well. So I wondered, was there a way I could download this song from Youtube and use it as my music bed, still maintaining that ambient sound? The answer was yes ... if I was willing to buy the song from iTunes.
OK, take a long pause here. Let's think about this. Youtube removed my audio because it contained music to which I did not have publishing rights, for a video from which I have no expectation of making money. Their solution: Pay them to use a song in my non profit hobby video.
You have to love greed, don't ya?
So the video is living there at the moment with a song from Audioswap, looking dorky because there are moments in the video where people are speaking and even singing but you can no longer here. It's too bad, cuz something has changed at Youtube and I'm finally able to get the quality of video I like, and I like the fact I could post much bigger files and more files there. But you know, I just don't think I can deal with this kind of bullshit. A file sharing site should be about people expressing their creativity to other people, it shouldn't be about said site imposing their concept of economic correctness on to you.
So let's all love Vimeo. Great quality uploads, freedom of expression and a real sense of community.
As for Youtube, clearly, the zombies ate its brain
1 comment:
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