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Show HN: Entire concerts algorithmically "reconstructed" from YouTube videos
- phil 15y agoSeems to work. That is incredibly cool/terrifying.
- angusgr 15y agoWow. Many thoughts arose: - Is this more, less, or equivalently legal (copyright-wise) to just posting the youtube videos on youtube in the first place? It seems like the act of compositing them in this way would be significant, but maybe not? - The normalisation of audio could use some work. SwitchCam seems to do something (the youtube volume on each clip was different for me), but it didn't quite work. - I'd be really interested to know how automated this is, and how much human curation is required to get it right. - Presumably, the next step is stitching the multiple videos together to make 3d models, allowing you to pan to places between the various camera operators. :)
- antimatter15 15y agoCourts ruling on fair use are supposed to take into account "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole". Automated copyright detection schemes in YouTube may try to do some semblance of fair use by allowing snippets of copyrighted content under 30 seconds.
- cleverjake 15y agoHonest question - does the copyright still cover a live work when the original recording was permitted in the first place?
- brettwelch 15y agoYes it does. Just because the recording was permitted doesn't mean that the recorder has the rights to publish or replay the recording. Another example: owning a DVD does not mean you can then stream the DVD over Justin.tv. The thing about rights is that infringement must be claimed by the rightsholder for any action to be taken. Once a rightsholder claims infringement then the content/stream/video must be shut down or removed, and if the site or person continues to infringe, THEN action can be taken. This is one of the good things about the DMCA and the reason YouTube, Soundcloud and even justin.tv can continue to operate. It is also exactly what the much maligned SOPA bill is trying to change - for the worse. btw, you should sign a petition against that bill on votizen or similar. They climbin in yo' windows, snatching your youtubes up.
- VladRussian 15y agojust a sidenote - if bittorrent software ensure that no peer-to-peer interaction exceeds 30 sec. for any given title, would MPAA/RIAA/etc... still be able to claim "illegal dowload"?
- Natsu 15y agoWhen they take into account fair use, they take the entire case into account, rather than following any hard and fast rules saying that using X% is "fair." In other words, no, there's pretty much no way they'd buy any attempt to game the system so transparently. That's why you need a lawyer.
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoYouTube are just doing a first pass filter. They're not saying that 30s of a work is legally allowed.
- aidenn0 15y agoNo, the courts take context into account. So for example, it might be perfectly legal to post 2 sentences from a book on your blog, if 10,000 blog posters conspired to post a different 2 sentences to share the whole book, that would be clearly illegal. Furthermore, the law is interpreted by Judges, who are people, not machines, and they tend to take a very harsh stance against people who try to game the system.
- brettwelch 15y agoThanks! - I'm no lawyer, but the advice we've received is that we're good on the legal side. - You're on the money re: audio. It's miles better than it was 1 month ago, but we're still not 100% yet. - There is a human curation step (~5% of the process), but that is mostly for removing really crappy videos. Searching/Synching/Sequencing is automatic. - I dunno about next step(!), but i agree the idea is super interesting :)
- nextparadigms 15y agoYou may be on the legal side, but I'd argue so were Amazon and Google when it came to letting the users stream their own music from their own "cloud" accounts. That didn't seem to stop the music labels from "demanding" getting paid again for the streaming, too. So you should watch your back and don't give in to them, especially if you know you're on the legal side.
- jdunck 15y agoHow do I invest? :)
- brettwelch 15y ago... with as much money as you can ;)
- jdunck 15y agoSadly untrue given SEC oversight on "qualified investors".
- angusgr 15y agoThanks for taking the time to reply Brett. It's a really cool technology, can't wait to see where it goes.
- jurre 15y agoMaybe this is something that has been mentioned before, but I would love it if I could select a fixed audio from one of the videos. For most videos theres one audio track thats clearly the best and it would be great if I could listen to that one the whole time while switching camera views. PS: Very cool stuff!
- loboman 15y agoAmazing, thanks!!
- gmatty 15y agowow. super cool
- hospadam 15y agoThis. Is. So. Cool. Wow. I tried several concerts, several angles, and everything works pretty smoothly. Any critiques I might have are quite minor.
- devinmrn 15y agoGreat work, hope you can handle the traffic that is coming your way. I would be surprised if you didn't get bought by Google.
- unreal37 15y agoI want. Love the idea. Site is down so I can't tell if it works. But plus 1 for the idea alone.
- cleverjake 15y agoHonestly one of the coolest things i've seen in a while. If they can get around the legality of it, im sure they'll be snatched up quickly.
- ansonparker 15y agoSite seems to be struggling under load. I am excited about the concept - was thinking about this very idea while watching Coachella streaming live this year and then seeing all the cams people were uploading.
- nprincigalli 15y agoGoogle cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://switchcam.com/&hl=en&safe=off&sa=G&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- EwanG 15y agoEven using that, all I get are Internal Service Errors...
- catshirt 15y agothis is awesome. seriously. maybe you could package the technology in a way that lets other platforms use this without youtube. i am reminded of the original Color app.
- mambodog 15y agoVery cool, just a slight niggle about the 'lightroom' colour scheme (dark area surrounding the video) which I see being poorly implemented time and time again: it doesn't really work when you have elements of bright white on the page, because they just end up looking even brighter next to the dark parts. The glaring white strips are distracting while watching the video, moreso than even an all white background. TL;DR: lose the strips of white from the video viewing page.
- brettwelch 15y agoThanks for the feedback, I agree actually. We've been talking about changing the color scheme to either be all dark or all white but haven't pulled the trigger.
- chartley 15y agoSorry guys, probably should have sured up servers for HN load - my bad =\ On Caltrain, brb...
- fat0wl 15y agoDoes anyone believe that this is done algorithmically? All the examples I checked seemed to be really poorly sync-ed, & as a DSP engineer I don't believe this task to be incredibly difficult... would also be cooler to have a seating chart to click around to make sense of perspectives
- chartley 15y agoIt's all algorithmic but the flash player only seeks to the nearest key frame (every 2s) so that's why it isn't flawless. This can be overcome ... but I'd prefer to work on the seating chart thing - thanks!
- fat0wl 15y agoAh, didn't realize the flash / keyframe limitation. Best of luck! very cool idea.
- inspiredworlds 15y agoseating chart is a good idea, or at least direction of the camera.
- mitchellhislop 15y agoThis is one of the coolest things I have seen. While there are some little bits of feedback, I can admit that I spent the last 30 minutes watchings concerts, amazed at how great this felt. MPAA: More of this, less of SOPA. If you give us great ways to get content, we will pay for it.
- brettwelch 15y agoI'd love to hear your feedback, Mitchell... And thanks for the kind words.
- evan_ 15y agoReminds me of "Awesome, I Fuckin' Shot that", a Beastie Boys concert filmed by 50 audience volunteers and edited together: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awesome;_I_Fuckin_Shot_That http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awesome;_I_Fuckin_Shot_That!
- saurik 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awesome;_I_Fuckin%27_Shot_That http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awesome;_I_Fuckin%27_Shot_That! <- working URL
- tomkinstinch 15y agoVery cool. What about other applications? News reports?
- jamesgagan 15y agoPretty cool. Looks like they are a 500 startups project, formerly Veokami. Guess they used some of their funding to buy a better name! http://www.startupsmart.com.au/growth/veokami-among-500-startups-latest-intake/201110174213.html http://www.startupsmart.com.au/growth/veokami-among-500-star...
- brettwelch 15y agoYep, that's us. I miss Veokami sometimes, but my cofounder and I were two of about 4 people who could actually pronounce the name :p Incidentally, Switchcam.com was only a little more than $1k, which was definitely worth it.
- inspiredworlds 15y agoGreat concept and like how you can change views! Been following them since they were veokami.
- ChrisArchitect 15y agoGreat stuff. This is like Photosynth for videos! Remember Photosynth?
- berberous 15y agoMind blowing. I don't know that I'd ever really use it, but this is super cool and really well done!
- autrefoius 15y agoMaybe it's just me, but the site rick-rolled me on each concert I tried to check out.
- stevetjoa 15y agoSame here.
- brettwelch 15y agoSorry about that. It only happens when the JS borks out completely (which is rare), when JS is turned off, or when you're using a really old browser (which i assume you're not). If you're inclined (I completely understand if not) can you tell us the error that the console in Chrome or Firebug gives you?
- autrefoius 15y agoThe error I'm receiving on Firefox Aurora 10.0a2 (2011-11-27) is: VKLog is not defined http://switchcam.com/assets/js/utils/facebook.js?ver=20111129-223208 http://switchcam.com/assets/js/utils/facebook.js?ver=2011112... Line 81 VKLog.dlog("checkSessionStatus()"); It does seem to work with Adblock disabled, so I'd guess a subscription is blocking something essential.
- brettwelch 15y agoThank you! I think you must be right about the adblock thing. We once had a similar thing with a Chrome plugin that borked things. We'll look into it; thanks again.
- OoTheNigerian 15y agoReally cool stuff! A little suggestion. The first video I picked had only one camera angle for the first two tracks of the concert. So it was an effort for me to understand how it works. I would suggest you have a prominent link to a 'model video' that has multiple camera angles so new visitors can easily see it in action. Very good job lads! Of course, I presume the bigger play is for switchcam to be the default app that people use to record at concerts and other events. Smart!
- aDemoUzer 15y agovery cool. worked swell.
- mrjasonroy 15y agoAbsolutely amazing, great job. I just got chills from watching the National and feeling like I was back there.
- baddox 15y agoCool idea, but I was sad that it wasn't finally an implementation of an idea I've had for a long time. My idea is to actually use video and audio information from distinct sources to create a single video/audio stream that is of better quality and/or completeness than any of the constituent parts. Essentially, my idea would do to video what Photosynth does for photos. http://photosynth.net/ http://photosynth.net/
- jcitme 15y agoIt's a cool idea, but I have a feeling that making that video would probably not be in polynomial time...
- jeswin 15y agoThat is just so much harder; though I haven't looked at the website yet, seems to be overwhelmed right now. Besides, I would want one consistent audio signal instead of one that varies in noise, volume, whatever. Video from different sources is alright though, since we are used to switching scenes and cameras all the time.
- baddox 15y agoThe idea I'm talking about should provide a single consistent audio signal. I know nothing about audio processing, but it seems like it should be possible to take multiple bad audio signals and combine them into one signal that's better than any constituent audio source. Perhaps one audio source captured low frequencies well, while another captured higher frequencies better.
- rhizome 15y agoYou can certainly automate crossfaded audio between multiple sources to try to get the cleanest copy, but it's hard. For instance, how do you decide whether it's noise or the letter "s" or the "chk" of a pick across muted guitar strings? The heuristics for "better than any constitutent audio source" can be extremely nuanced, algorithmically intensive, and still difficult to pin down, akin to speech recognition. Speaking purely to SaaS'y automated purposes, natch. Typically what it seems you're talking about for audio here is similar to a matrix mix in the amateur/live audio world. People have been (manually) mixing soundboard audio with audience-recorded audio to improve the audio quality of recorded shows for some years now.
- pavedwalden 15y agoI love it. Any chance you would expand to more general "news" applications? The audio wouldn't be as good for syncing against, but I've always wanted an interface like this for watching protest videos.
- nextparadigms 15y agoI would love this, too. Fortunately, it has a name that can become more general, too. But first focus on promoting your service as it is, to this "niche", and later you can try growing into more general stuff.
- PStamatiou 15y agoTake a look at this: http://blog.switchcam.com/uc-davis-pepper-spray-incident-from-all-angle http://blog.switchcam.com/uc-davis-pepper-spray-incident-fro...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- njloof 15y agoIs music a requirement? I'm trying to add Henry Rollins' spoken word at Coachella from April 18 2009, but your YouTube search always seems to fail. I can see the videos on YouTube just fine if I search for myself.
- aslewofmice 15y agoAbsolutely one of the better ideas I've seen lately! An original idea with a lot of wiggle room for future growth. I think it could be pretty cool if users had the ability to reference a higher quality audio source (when available - something on Archive.org or uploaded mp3s).
- blcArmadillo 15y agoPretty cool. One thing... after switching camera angles from the first camera I can switch between all other camera except I can never get back to camera 1.
- andrewfelix 15y agoSweet execution. Finally a use for all those dickheads who hold up their phones in the middle of a live performance.
- exDM69 15y agoYeah, now that you can't see anything but camera phones while you're actually at the concert, you can watch it from youtube when you get home. Thankfully this isn't too much of a problem at heavy metal gigs. No-one wants to take their smartphone to the moshpit :D
- hyperbovine 15y agoThe solution must be to institute moshing at all live shows, then. Lilith Fair, here I come.
- ianbishop 15y agoThis is really cool. I went to add a concert with time/date but landed up getting lot of videos that didn't meet the criteria. The concert was part of Osheaga (a festival in Montreal) but the listing shows up as Parc Jean-Drapeau, where the festival is held. I think including the ability to indicate what event it was part of might narrow down your search a bit. Since most of the 300 videos found were unrelated, I decided to go through manually and select only those which were relevant. By default, all 300 videos are checked with no easy way of unchecking them. Your average user isn't going to be able to just use a jQuery one-liner like I did, so this is something else you should consider! Overall, great job and I look forward to seeing how you guys progress with this idea!
- brettwelch 15y agoThanks Ian, for the feedback and also for adding an event. I just saw those come through on the back end. We've put the processing on hold for the moment until the load becomes manageable - hope that's cool. We'll email you when they're up.
- wittjeff 15y agoI had been thinking about something like this, but in the context of recreating riot crime scenes. After the last riot in Toronto the police received over 1M stills and thousands of hours of relatively low quality cell phone video. The main task for them is to connect different shots of individual offenders over time to build a) a coherent story demonstrating premeditation, b) an unbeatable description and connect it to some identifying info that might not necessarily be present at the exact time of the offense.
- balbaugh 15y agoFirst thing I thought of was the Nine Inch Nails fan project "This One Is On Us". It works. Very cool and I wish you all the best. http://www.thisoneisonus.org http://www.thisoneisonus.org http://www.ninwiki.com/This_One_Is_On_Us http://www.ninwiki.com/This_One_Is_On_Us
- phil 15y agoSo if you can do this with concerts, presumably you can do it with any collection of video shot in the same place, if there's enough audio in common. That makes me think that all kinds of crowd video (protests, speeches, etc) should be stitchable, which seems like it would open larger (and potentially morally ambiguous) markets.
- pirko 15y agoCool idea but when I tried "Arcade Fire - Austin City Limits" 2011 http://switchcam.com/event/arcade-fire-austin-city-limits-2011/ http://switchcam.com/event/arcade-fire-austin-city-limits-20... it was far from correct.
- minikomi 15y agoMaybe a next step could be a video app which had some kind of time code embedded in the resulting video - for much easier syncing.
- georgieporgie 15y agoThis is awesome for two reasons: 1) it's just plain cool and 2) it finally gives a reason to tolerate annoying people who hold up their cell phone cameras during concerts.
- plytheman 15y agoIt's funny because watching a concert I thought how cool it was that when someone had a camera or phone in my line of sight I could simply switch to another unobstructed view. Then I realized the chances were good that my new view was coming from the very camera I switched views to avoid.
- wingerlang 15y agoNice. However - the timeline should be default. I was pretty meh'd until I found it, works great. Now it would be nice with an underlying concert-track or / per song mp3. I don't like the crappy cellphonesound. I guess the syncing will be hard though, with the videos lag not very constant (most often, seems to work good now but I have a nice broadband connection)
- mitjak 15y agoPretty cool indeed. A question though: how much of a need is there for a service like this? Beyond the more mainstream artists and festivals, most of the artists whose shows I've seen have typically had more respectful audience members who didnt put recording with their cellphones ahead of enjoying the show.
- giulivo 15y agoto me, it looks amazing some techie questions, how does it work? how do you get to know which videos are actually part of a specific event? how do you match the video with the actual song?
- jwblackwell 15y agoThis is really awesome. I hope you don't have any issues with copyright though. Best of luck with the project!
- citricsquid 15y agoMy out loud comment when I tried it was "Holy shit this is genius if it works".
- PaulJoslin 15y agoCool concept, fairly good execution. I think I would advise not to just focus on concerts, but potentially other mass events, e.g. sporting events. I guess you're using the audio stream to do some form of sync / time stamp though, so that may limit potential uses.
- jhealy 15y agoThis perfect circle gig is a good sample: http://switchcam.com/event/a-perfect-circle-lollapalooza-2011/ http://switchcam.com/event/a-perfect-circle-lollapalooza-201... Some of these concerts may have bootleg audio available, often recorded by audiophiles with decent equipment. It'd be amazing if supported syncing that up so you'd get great audio with multi-camera video
- smackfu 15y agoToo bad some artists apparently take down concert videos.
- nico 15y agoLooks a lot like Hadza http://hadza.com/ http://hadza.com/ (ex Wesync)
- jkap 15y agoI had the idea to do this (albeit, manually) a while ago, syncing the audio from Justice's "A Cross The Universe" with Youtube video of the concert it came from. Really cool to see it done, though!
- meatsock 15y agogreat idea. do you have any solution to all of the shaky and unsteady video?
- aclements18 15y agoVery impressive. Very cool. I assume this will eventually extend beyond concerts to all kinds of other live events (sports, plays, etc). This is going to be big. What's also interesting is how much the effect of SOPA will have on such an awesome service like this. So disappointing to think about how the copyright holders would rather shut you down then come up with a great way to enhance the service and share revenue with you. Best of Luck. We'll all be rooting for you guys.
- jjcm 15y agoThis is awesome. My only suggestion is to allow the user to switch angles without changing the audio track. Since these are concerts, the audio track is going to be one of the most important things. Often times one video will have significantly better audio than the other ones. It'd be nice to be able to choose that one to stay constant. Alternately, it'd be awesome if there were a way for the bands themselves to upload the recorded concert audio. I realize that often times getting the recorded audio for a concert can be a finicky matter, but maybe you could partner with one of the many music festivals that are cropping up to make it happen.
- nodata 15y agoExcellent work! It says a lot that the music industry didn't invent this.
- grabble 15y agoThat's because they're too busy suing people to innovate.
- lisper 15y agoUmmm... am I missing something? Every video I click on is a rickroll.
- saltwatershane 15y agoThis is freakin awesome! Keep it up! How big is your company?
- wittjeff 15y agoWatching Ocean's 11 last night it occurred to me that other contexts in which intelligent multi-camera stitching might be profitable are casino security and retail loss prevention.