Twitch Makes Huge changes to VoD

So this is going to change how people use twitch. Basically the tl;dr of it is they are removing past broadcasts entirely. The past broadcasts can be made into highlights that WILL be saved forever or exported.

ALL archives of past broadcasts WILL be deleted in the coming weeks! So export your most cherished videos now! You can read the whole blog here: http://blog.twitch.tv/2014/08/update-changes-to-vods-on-twitch/

Really the TL;DR is that past broadcasts will still be a thing, but they will only be retained for up to 14 days (60 if you're a turbo/partner user). You won't be able to save them forever (Unless you manually archive them yourself of course). Highlights can still be made and those are kept forever.

Makes sense. It was kind of shocking that they've saved all this video of people life streaming, and other insanity.

The people who recorded that stuff should save it if they really care. That's a lot of space to use up.

Someone else on the site has created a thread trying to do something to archive the old Giant Bomb live streams. We can't let stuff like the Bad Company 2 TNT disappear!

Edit: Also, @demoskinos, I made the link work for you, because I can do that now.

That kinda sucks, but not really unexpected. Well better get to watching some of those old Giant Bomb video shenanigans that aren't on this site.

There's also that content the staff did on their personal twitch channels. Sad to see those go as well.

Oh man, all those Divekick eSports Hours. I'm gonna miss 'em.

Anything I have ever done on twitch I save locally while I'm streaming and then produce it up to YouTube. I've never really thought of twitch being a "placeholder" for my past videos, I have always considered it just more of my live channel place.

It's interesting that they would be doing this considering that most of the content will just end up on YouTube anyway. About the only reason I can think of them doing this is to just clean up twitch from any sort of liability from copyright claims before Google does take over. I wonder if once Google does take them over, if this would ever change, or if they are going to try to keep Twitch content and YouTube content that separate.

It's a good thing I literally just started streaming on Twitch, apparently...

I mean, everything I have is archived locally because online services come and go all the time and I figured this would happen eventually, but I liked the idea that if someone wanted to watch a full, unedited stream, they could do so at any point.

It still sounds to me like anyone can make a highlight of any length, thereby just manually "highlighting" entire videos for the purpose of "permanent" archival. But then I guess the idea is to transfer those over to Youtube and the Google overlords for monetization.

@andrewb: Im not sure if there leaving that option open for the three weeks before they delete everything as a loophole, but highlights are limited to two hours now, so anything longer then that would need multiple highlights. The only option for a full length archive is exporting to YouTube it looks like.

Now im wondering if all the Extra Life and Child's Play events are archived on here, gana have to do some searching when im not feeling lazy.

@bisonhero: I'm pretty sure those are all uploaded to Iron Galaxy's YouTube. Pretty sure.

So who is going to transfer old TNTs and other wierd shit from GB twitch channel to YouTube? If it's done already then I would love to have the link so I could replace all of these.

Sucks but makes sense. Archiving all those multi hour streams can't be cheap

Maybe they can just do this and not sell out to Google?

aaaannnnnnnd also a giant policy change regarding audio.....

it's safe to say that google bought Twitch I think...

Damn.

RIP

They've already muted several GTA streams because of in-game music, the first 48 or so minutes of this stream with only in-game music etc. It seems like Google's robot is going about this with a fucking sledgehammer instead of a scalpel.

But good thing, I was gonna watch a 4 hour DOTA stream to listen to some random song while someone talks over it instead of buying the song on itunes. So they're really fixing a problem here.

Even Lord Helix isn't safe.

"We respect the rights of copyright owners, and are voluntarily undertaking this effort to help protect both our broadcasters and copyright owners."

"voluntarily undertaking this effort to help protect both our broadcasters and copyright owners."

"voluntarily"

The audio policy change is fucking outrageous:

http://blog.twitch.tv/2014/08/3136/

They are COMPLETELY MUTING 30 minutes either side of ANY COPYRIGHTED AUDIO. Guess what? You streaming a GTA game? Well now your VOD is 90% fucking silence. This is beyond draconian, this is ridiculous.

They have to go back on this, they have to. Everyone I know from the #gta speedrunning community will probably migrate. I mean, who wants to run a GTA game only listening to VCPR or KCHAT?

EDIT: I didn't even touch on what the ludicrous 2 hour highlight limit does to RPG runners. Enjoyed Chrono Trigger speedruns at AGDQ? Not on Twitch you don't.

All of this just seems like the worst.

Not really an indication of anything. Twitch has been manually taking down/banning/removing streams with copyright infringing music for years now. They seem to be attempting to streamline the process now that they're growing.

Blame the litigious music industry you guys. It's not twitch's fault, nor game developers (or even publishers for the most part).

This is also important to note: 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.

@irvandus said:

Yeah, this is kind of heartbreaking. So much content is just going to be lost forever and will cripple aspects of the site for good. This is atrocious.

I feel like I should just buy more hard drives and start ripping every fucking thing I like these days before it's inevitably lost to time.

Well awesome all that PS4/XBone streaming capability is now fucking useless due to this new system. Draconian Copyright laws win again. Was fun while it lasted. Oh.... also... this:

VODs are useless now. All games have copyrighted music, there is no escape.

Gonna be fantastic when streams are getting flagged/muted during extra life you know when people are raising money for charity for sick kids. Good job Twitch.

Press spacebar twice over the affected position.

@wikitoups: If that is true, it wont be for long now that you've highlighted it.

@demoskinos: This doesn't affect live broadcasts so a charity stream will not be affected other than when it is archived.

The bolded statement means dick. It's terrible as it is. Also, it is Twitchs fault. They did it, I don't think it only falls on the ones who are pressuring them. They're accountable for their actions.

There are already reports of live streams being muted. See above tweet I posted.

@spraynardtatum: It made itself bold, just so you know. I didn't.

Anyway just saying, the live broadcast is still unaffected. This is important- to live broadcasts. People are already confusing this and archives (only thing affected is archives).

@demoskinos: if they are then that is a bug and is not part of their supposed new policy.

Just to be clear, I am not standing up for this move, but I don't blame Twitch for it. The music industry has been shady and hated the internets practices of sharing for a very long time now. Ya'll remember that web cartoon: Napster Bad. Ya...

This is just plain depressing. Also since they killed Justin.tv I really wouldn't be surprised if Twitch became an all encompassing streaming service not just for games. That also sucks, but has yet to happen so I'll keep my hopes up.

Twitch has muted its own official channel.

http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/c/4691978

A good indicator of a fine system they've implemented.

@giganteus: Ya, I saw that on that tweet someone posted. It's very funny. (The one that says "IM DEAD")

Fuck Google. There I said it.

Time for another streaming service to rise and then eventually have this happen and the cycle will go forever

This went to shit faster than I expected.

@demoskinos: Only affects archives from what I read.

Well this is pretty bad. I haven't finished watching all of the EVO archives yet!

People use Twitch to watch past streams?

This kinda sucks for the speed running community.

@alexw00d: Not as much anymore.