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YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

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Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#21

Post by zegl »

kibwen wrote: post #16
cobookman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You overestimate the cost of storage at this scale. It's totally worth them storing the data given the marginal cost. A 10TiB HDD is only 150$ retail. These videos can likely be stored in less than 200MiB on average. Storage has gotten cheaper YoY

I'd like someone to do the math on that 200MiB estimate. YouTube stores every video at multiple resolutions, and has replicas in data centers all around the world.

For low-traffic videos they likely only keep a copy in a single region.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#22

Post by SkyBelow »

velcrovan wrote: post #3

Does YouTube have any incentive to “preserve” anything once it costs them more money than it brings in? If not, maybe it's a little early to say they are actually preserving anything. (The article does kind of acknowledge this.) Maybe its real role is as a link in a chain that leads to /r/datahoarders

Isn't this true of any entity? Even a Museum will eventually have to pay bills and have to decide to downsize or make changes. Even government funded preservation can have voters decide it isn't worth the costs and preservation can be dropped.

I do think private companies will be the ones most fastest to drop preservation and the ones least likely to look for external entity to swap preservation with, thus making YouTube worse than a museum.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#23

Post by amelius »

Already__Taken wrote: post #19
duiker101 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a few days ago there was a discussion about how Google is now indexing less contented from a years ago[1]. If Google can't keep indexes which are relatively inexpensive why should they keep videos that are more expensive and possibly no one will watch? Especially as the length and number of videos is increasing faster than ever? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19762907

You're not scanning through bulk storage like that all the time. Indexes have to be managed to be useful too which is another cost.

Okay, so the videos may become preserved but inaccessible.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#26

Post by nullandvoid »

SkyBelow wrote: post #22
velcrovan wrote: post #3

Does YouTube have any incentive to “preserve” anything once it costs them more money than it brings in? If not, maybe it's a little early to say they are actually preserving anything. (The article does kind of acknowledge this.) Maybe its real role is as a link in a chain that leads to /r/datahoarders

Isn't this true of any entity? Even a Museum will eventually have to pay bills and have to decide to downsize or make changes. Even government funded preservation can have voters decide it isn't worth the costs and preservation can be dropped. I do think private companies will be the ones most fastest to drop preservation and the ones least likely to look for external entity to swap preservation with, thus making You…

I don't think this is a fair comparison as a museum is normally opened with the sole desire of preserving history ( Profit is often desired but not the incentive for opening )

Do you think google bought YouTube originally to preserve history or to create a new line of profit and enhance its brand?

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#27

Post by duiker101 »

Already__Taken wrote: post #19
duiker101 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a few days ago there was a discussion about how Google is now indexing less contented from a years ago[1]. If Google can't keep indexes which are relatively inexpensive why should they keep videos that are more expensive and possibly no one will watch? Especially as the length and number of videos is increasing faster than ever? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19762907

You're not scanning through bulk storage like that all the time. Indexes have to be managed to be useful too which is another cost.

Videos still need to be indexed, why would Google keep the videos without indexing them?

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#28

Post by danso »

d33 wrote: post #2

You can only talk about preservation if you actually can pull the content out. It's not like Google doesn't shut down a handful of projects early - at some point they might decide to wipe unprofitable videos as well and we might end up with no preservation whatsoever.

Hopefully fans are archiving dedicated channels, like speedrunning groups, e.g. AGDQ, which is easy with youtube-dl's playlist command-line option. I'm probably being naive but deleting unprofitable videos seems like a remote risk compared to DMCA takedowns. But even without legal issues, YT seems to be finding more and more ways to stuff ads into the normal video viewing experience.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#29

Post by nullandvoid »

ru999gol wrote: post #14

Unfortunately disk space is still expensive and rather limited, its unfeasible to really preserve YouTube in any meaningful sense. Maybe someday, like Google Video, YouTube videos will disappear forever.

Perhaps we may have a data revolution before the point of having to delete this old content arrives. I remember watching something on the possibility of storing data within DNA ( the long-term storage possibilities looked very promising not that long ago ).

Is there any other exciting tech which may be on the horizon / advancements in this field?

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#30

Post by 1f60c »

zegl wrote: post #21
kibwen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like someone to do the math on that 200MiB estimate. YouTube stores every video at multiple resolutions, and has replicas in data centers all around the world.

For low-traffic videos they likely only keep a copy in a single region.

That, and I’m sure they employ “cold storage” using slower (and cheaper) spinning disks.
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