Youtube stinks.

[Enrique]

What a bad place Youtube has become over the years. Recently watching a picture, duration 76m, strange duration for a picture. They're generally over 90m. The cause? The speed has been incremented. And this is not uncommon! You can also see inverted pictures (like watching them in a looking-glass, or the picture is so enlarge you can't see the actor's faces, or a large oval speck appears in the screen center and so on.
That's not all. From some time since, you can also see pictures and adds all together! Five minutes of picture, an add, five more minutes of picture, and add,... Isn't it fantastic?

From the point of view of classical music diffusion I can't find faults. I hope other genres are equally well represented.

[Chris]

Generally when you see a video that has been sped up or mirrored, that is something that was done deliberately to confuse automatic tools that search for copyrighted audio and video.

The ads can be annoying, true, but they have to generate revenue somehow. I'm pretty sure that even with all the ads, YouTube itself is still not profitable.

[Enrique]

I can only say cable TV, at least externally is the same phenomenom. It began with no ads. I suspect classical music, going back to quality, enjoys a privilidge position in youtube. The videos I see (orchestras) are made by professionals, outstanding from the visual point of view. And the still videos, like score videos, both the interpretative and audio technical aspects are remarable.

Of course youtube is not directly responsible but is says something about them. Or are they? Thanks for the tech info.

[Quijote]

Dear Enrique, I have to say that I was once (not so long ago) a bit anti YouTube, but I've come to appreciate it enormously over the last couple of years for the riches that it offers, especially regarding performances of "forgotten" composers.

[Enrique]

If you search (youtube) with something like HYMN APOLLO ANCIENT GREECE, you'll find all of the musical fragments now extant of ancient Greece. In the 1970's there were exactly nine of them, as listed in a book by Curt Sachs. Now there's a lot more. Not bad for internet, eh?