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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

#11

Post by cobookman »

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

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

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

#12

Post by jordigh »

Call me old-fashioned, but I often prefer screenshot-based LPs. LParchive is a great resource for those.

I did enjoy Void Burger's video LP of Silent Hill but I liked that she used subtitles for commentary instead of her voice (I think the only time she spoke was to grumble after a particularly frustrating game over).

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

#15

Post by [deleted] »

cobookman wrote: post #11
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

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

[deleted]

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

#16

Post by kibwen »

cobookman wrote: post #11
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

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.

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

#17

Post by duiker101 »

cobookman wrote: post #11
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

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

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

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

#18

Post by RandomInteger4 »

cobookman wrote: post #11
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

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

Maybe I'm mistaken, but my understanding is that YouTube has been operating at a loss for its entire existence.

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

#19

Post by Already__Taken »

duiker101 wrote: post #17
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

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.

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

#20

Post by ru999gol »

thatannoyingguy wrote: post #6
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.

But there are people who are constantly downloading the let's plays of those youtubers, so there will nearly alway be a copy of a video if it isn't on youtube and it might end up on archive.org later on

Are there really? I do watch a lot of let's plays and sometimes download them in bulk, but I don't keep them around for long. 1080p60 takes a lot of space and recently a lot are even in 4k.
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