Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#271

Post by echelon » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #249

gausswho wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By a whisker, I would bet you're right. But only because of your clause 'completely done by AI'. And I think that renders the bet kind of irrelevant. I would also bet that sometime in the next 10 years, we'll have a masterpiece of cinema on our hands where the heavy lifting (visuals, sound, even screenwriting) was largely done by an AI, helpfully nudged and curated at important moments by human experts. Or, by just o…

I'm willing to modify the bet to "Just one person does all the labor with AI as the primary tool". What I meant by "completely done by AI" is that AI is doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting. Sound, visuals, script and ultimately humans are just acting as the director of that AI. In otherwords, a masterpiece of cinema created by one person and AI prompts. Masterpiece being judged by the above success criteria.…

> humans are just acting as the director of that AI.

My pro-AI director friends tell me this is ultimately what they've been doing with humans all along. Sometimes he humans don't give them what they're looking for, so they ask again. And they have to fit within logistical and budgetary constraints.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#272

Post by jampekka » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

jmholla wrote: post #217

TuringNYC wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense. Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max), I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team. There are complexities here,…

> Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max) With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use. I run into an at least issue daily (usually multiple times a day) in every streaming app I use except Netflix.

Gotta love how streaming torrents through shady debrid and indexing services with Stremio is a smoother experience than what these megacorporations with massive budgets manage to scrape together.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#273

Post by hathawsh » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:31 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #249

gausswho wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By a whisker, I would bet you're right. But only because of your clause 'completely done by AI'. And I think that renders the bet kind of irrelevant. I would also bet that sometime in the next 10 years, we'll have a masterpiece of cinema on our hands where the heavy lifting (visuals, sound, even screenwriting) was largely done by an AI, helpfully nudged and curated at important moments by human experts. Or, by just o…

I'm willing to modify the bet to "Just one person does all the labor with AI as the primary tool". What I meant by "completely done by AI" is that AI is doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting. Sound, visuals, script and ultimately humans are just acting as the director of that AI. In otherwords, a masterpiece of cinema created by one person and AI prompts. Masterpiece being judged by the above success criteria.…

Is there such a thing as a "HN Vote" post? Because this would be a great vote to put on the front page. The question would be "How much of the production will AI be doing in the movie/TV industries in 10 years?" and these would be the choices:

1) Everything. A single prompt will generate a full-length, high quality movie.

2) One person will be able to spend a few weeks or months to produce a high quality movie using purely AI generated visuals and audio, with at least part of the script written by AI.

3) AI will never replace some aspects of high quality movies, although it's not quite clear yet which aspects. It could be writing, acting, directing, or something else.

4) AI will never replace most aspects of high quality movies.

5) Society will rebel against any form of AI in movies; it doesn't matter how good AI gets, nobody will watch movies touched in any way by AI.

My guess is 2.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#274

Post by m_ppp » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:32 PM UTC

iancmceachern wrote: post #155

Check out Peroscope films. They take public domain footage, mostly us government stuff, and release it and claim copyright over it. I took some of their public domain footage and put it on YouTube and they freaked out. Through logic and reason I was able to get them to admit they have no copyright right, as they were initially claiming. But they did have the YouTube terms of service. So, back to this. If they had pub…

That's interesting, how did you find these guys?

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#275

Post by jasoncartwright » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:35 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #235

jasoncartwright wrote: post #137

There is an increasing amount of UK TV uploaded to YouTube from whoever owns the rights. Have seen The Bill (26 seasons) and pretty much all of Gordon Ramsey's work recently (including a 8hr entire season video). ITV appears to have even created the brand "Our Stories" for their YouTube fly on the wall telly content. Much of this not-fantastic-quality TV could probably be easily found on YouTube even without the righ…

Also 18 seasons of Taskmaster, which at least I think is fantastic quality.

Just watched one for the first time today! You are correct.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#276

Post by cogman10 » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:45 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #258

cogman10 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the subject of the visuals being completely AI, we need to be able to steer the video with more than just text prompts. Do you remove the possibility of using motion capture performances, compositing, or other techniques? Yes I exclude that, because the primary reason to say "We'll be making more long-form, quality content per month than entire Hollywood production years." is that AI has eliminated or vastly eli…

> Yes I exclude that, So humans steering diffusion is off limits? No Krea, no Invoke, no articulated humans? It's like you're taking away Premiere or Final Cut here. Text prompts are not the currency of AI film. Controllability levers are essential to this whole endeavor. > I do not think something that augmenting that input data counts towards actually reducing production costs and speeding up the process of creatin…

> I'll posit this: a two person team will make a better Star Wars, a better Lord of the Rings, a better Game of Thrones. An ensemble cast of actors piloting AI diffusion characters (or whatever future techniques emerge) will make a film as well acted as Glengarry Glen Ross. Perhaps even set in some fantasy or sci-fi landscape. I bet that we'll have a thousand Zach Hadels, Vivienne Medranos, and Joel Havers finding massive audiences with their small footprint studios, making anime, cartoons, lifelike fantasy, lifelike science fiction, period dramas, and more. And that AI tools will be the linchpin of this creative explosion.

If that happens in the next 10 years and we judge "as good as starwars" using my above criteria. You would win the bet.

We on?

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#277

Post by iancmceachern » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:48 PM UTC

m_ppp wrote: post #274

iancmceachern wrote: post #155

Check out Peroscope films. They take public domain footage, mostly us government stuff, and release it and claim copyright over it. I took some of their public domain footage and put it on YouTube and they freaked out. Through logic and reason I was able to get them to admit they have no copyright right, as they were initially claiming. But they did have the YouTube terms of service. So, back to this. If they had pub…

That's interesting, how did you find these guys?

They found me. I found public domain old black and white military training videos on a public resource on the internet and put them in YouTube. Then they did the YouTube strike thing and I called them and the guy was a total jerk on the phone. Like Jerry McGuire or that other guy Tom Cruise played in Tropic Thunder.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#278

Post by echelon » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:50 PM UTC

hathawsh wrote: post #273

cogman10 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to modify the bet to "Just one person does all the labor with AI as the primary tool". What I meant by "completely done by AI" is that AI is doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting. Sound, visuals, script and ultimately humans are just acting as the director of that AI. In otherwords, a masterpiece of cinema created by one person and AI prompts. Masterpiece being judged by the above success criteria.…

Is there such a thing as a "HN Vote" post? Because this would be a great vote to put on the front page. The question would be "How much of the production will AI be doing in the movie/TV industries in 10 years?" and these would be the choices: 1) Everything. A single prompt will generate a full-length, high quality movie. 2) One person will be able to spend a few weeks or months to produce a high quality movie using…

#2, minus the part about AI script writing, and with a caveat that changes "purely AI generated visuals and audio" to something human-driven, AI-accelerated.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#279

Post by zoogeny » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:52 PM UTC

akovaski wrote: post #35

jerf wrote: post #23

For your searching convenience, they do seem to have all their full movies in a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Y4rNBCLaU&list=PL7Eup7JXSc... That will pop up to The 11th Hour but the playlist has them all.

A link to just the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h... From IMDb: The 11th Hour (2007, Documentary, 7.2) The Wind and the Lion (1975, Adventure Epic, 6.8) Mr. Nice Guy (1997, Martial Arts Dark Comedy, 6.2) City Heat (1984, Buddy Cop, 5.5) Michael Collins (1996, Docudrama, 7.1) The Adventures Of Pluto Nash (2002, Space Sci-Fi Comedy, 3.9) Chaos Theory (2007, Comedy Drama Romance,…

Out of that list, The Science of Sleep stands out to me. It is a film by Michel Gondry who also directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It is kind of an indie pretentious movie, but if you are into that kind of thing it is a decent one.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#280

Post by jonas21 » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 8:53 PM UTC

meithecatte wrote: post #124

robertlagrant wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be really nice if YouTube could give uploaders the ability to schedule ad slots, rather than them appearing randomly. Unless they do this already and stuff I watch just does it badly, of course.

I'm pretty sure this is a feature that's available at least to big creators – I remember a Tom Scott video doing a bit involving scheduling an ad at a particularly fitting moment. You might have to be a YouTube partner or something like that to make use of this stuff, though.

You need to be in the YouTube partner program, but that's not just available to big creators.

You need at least 1000 subscribers and a certain amount of video watch time per year to qualify, but even fairly small channels can meet this bar. When people talk about getting monetized on YouTube, this is what they mean.