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Youtube's new "tape mode" button

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I presume this is supposed to make pristine clips look like a degraded analog videotape, but it looks more like a bad partially scrambled cable tv signal of the 80's. The kind you'd only suffer watching if Cinemax was showing something your parents wouldn't approve of. ;)

Cool feature, or lamest thing they've ever done?

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Where were you in '77?

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First I've heard of it.

My question is why? Do people really need this? Was this something people were really demanding? Youtube upgraded to 16x9, then to HD, then they go to...1980s video scrambling? Dumb seems like an understatement.

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The closed captions mode gives Backstroke of the West serious competition.

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Where were you in '77?

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 (Edited)

Bah, it hasn't shown up on my youtube yet! I even tried incognito Chrome to see if it was a cache thing, but must not be. Hopefully it's around long enough that I at least get to play with it.

Damn it, I still miss textp.

edit-it just showed up. Boy, am I glad I came around after tapes improved in quality. I don't think I've ever had the... pleasure... of having to watch a movie that looks like this. Not even a recorded cassette. Still, it's fun to watch Star Wars clips like this.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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Videotape never looked this bad unless the tape was in really bad shape, or the copy protection signal was excessive. This is what someone born after 1990 thinks crappy analog video looks like. ;)

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Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:

Videotape never looked this bad unless the tape was in really bad shape, or the copy protection signal was excessive. This is what someone born after 1990 thinks crappy analog video looks like. ;)

+1 for speaking the truth.

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Well I guess I fit the bill! Definitely their target audience haha.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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What's the point of this option? More than 50% of YouTube videos are already in poor quality, anyway.

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Most of that looks like rf noise, the bottom distortion is definitely too much.

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Haven't looked for it on my YT account yet but it sounds like their equivalent of those stupid Instagram filters that make new digital pictures look like wrinkled and faded Polaroids.

Stupid idea.  Obviously for shits-n-giggles since it serves no useful purpose.

My outlook on life - we’re all on the Hindenburg anyway…no point fighting over the window seat.

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Under normal conditions Polaroids don't wrinkle or fade. I have family photos taken in the 60's and 70's, and they look they were shot yesterday. (All the Kodak stuff is fading to mush.) Pity the film is so damned expensive now.

Funny how these attempts at a "retro" look often don't resemble the real thing.

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Where were you in '77?

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Are people actually complaining about this? It's a joke, like the vuvuzela audio option. Were we complaining about how it doesn't accurately reflect how it sounds in a stadium? ;-)

Star Wars Revisited Wordpress

Star Wars Visual Comparisons WordPress

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No, we were complaining about how they were already annoying in real life. It didn't work as a prank because once you saw the little thingy at the end of the url the first time, you knew it was enabled and so you could skip the joke links.

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doubleofive said:

Are people actually complaining about this? It's a joke, like the vuvuzela audio option. Were we complaining about how it doesn't accurately reflect how it sounds in a stadium? ;-)

A little verisimilitude in comedy goes a long way. This doesn't remotely look like what's it's supposed to be.

And this is a website full of people who live eat and breathe old video technology. ;)

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Where were you in '77?

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Presuming YouTube lasts that long, of course*.





*I have it on good authority that the Earth will be conquered and the human race enslaved by alien replicons from beyond the moon well before then.

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Well "tape mode" seem to have vanished, but there's a new "144p" resolution option that is randomly popping up. Just the thing for people still on dial up, or in case you're somehow trapped in the 1990's. What the heck?

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Where were you in '77?

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Yeah, I noticed that too. Figured that Tape Mode would be a one-day gimmick, but 144p popping up is to say the least strange.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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I have no idea what 144p looks like, so now I am intrigued to try this feature out (goddamn you, YouTube).

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I think 144p is an emergency measure on youtube's part, so they have a resolution to fallback on when even 240 is a problem. I dunno about you, but I've been having a lot of trouble with them lately.

ROTJ Storyboard Reconstruction Project

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IDK about anyone else here, but when I go to KeepVid to save a YouTube video, I will sometimes (not very often) get the option to save as a 3D video, in addition to both 720p and 1080p HD. I'm kind of wondering how this can work... I mean, how can you save 3D from YouTube, or even upload/view 3D content on YouTube to begin with?

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There are 3D videos on YouTube (I ran across them when looking for clips from Jaws 3). There are several options for viewing; I used the anaglyph glasses and you can adjust options such as red/cyan or red/green, swap left and right eyes and also the brightness algorithm used.

Don't know what format was originally used to uploaded these videos.

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