[eatbitseveryday]

I am concerned that uploading the videos to YouTube isn't archiving. I realize they perhaps maintain their own backups of the digitized versions, but one cannot otherwise preserve them by sharing them with the world via YouTube.

[delinka]

Presumably, YouTube is merely a distribution point for those amongst us who would make local copies for redundant archival purposes.

[eatbitseveryday]

Downloading videos from YouTube is a violation of their policy, and there is no inherent way to do this from their interface. YouTube (or other video streaming services) are for viewing purposes only, not distribution.

I realize perhaps the intention of uploading to YouTube was more to advertise this project, rather than actually archiving it.

Distribution should be done via a website with links to files, e.g. ESO's gigapixel mosaic of the central parts of the Milky Way, a full size of 24.6 GiB [1]

[1] http://eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/

[dylan604]

> YouTube (or other video streaming services) are for viewing purposes only, not distribution.

Vimeo specifically has an option for allowing the viewer to download the video. I use this frequently when sending videos to clients. They can download the original file, and I don't have to use dropbox. Win-win

[anticensor]

> Downloading videos from YouTube is a violation of their policy

Unless it is licensed under Creative Commons, in which case they themselves provide a download button.

[flattone]

G Drive would be a better alternative.

[EA]

Subject to the YouTube compression algorithms and meta data changes of course...

[jonawesomegreen]

Typically the preservation copies are very large and unwieldy, as they are just a high resolution scan of every frame of the video. Whats on youtube is just a prevention copy. There are interesting software problems around how to store safely, work with, and preserve economically the many petabytes of data the preservation digitization projects like this create.

[dylan604]

One type of archival process that avoids petabytes of data is to scan the original film, process it however deemed appropriate, and then record the finished digital files back to film negative. They will even go to the lengths of separating the digital files into their RGB channels, and then record each channel to B&W film negative. This allows for much greater information to be preserved per channel. It also makes restoring this archive interesting. All 3 negatives must be scanned, and then aligned in post.

I used to work for a company that had a 16-bit film recorder that did this. The recorder was very finicky to environmental conditions especially related to humidity.