S J Birkill
MV Administrator
just a sensible reserve
Posts: 895
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"Postcard from..." videos reinstated
« : 08.04.25 at 20:16 » |
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Five years ago, as part of my reconstruction of Clive James's original website (find the project at archive.clivejames.com), I created a page providing video access to Clive's travel series "Postcard from..."
The page worked by consolidating video content uploaded to YouTube by various individuals across the world who had captured the programmes from their original TV broadcasts in the 1990s, collectively building a unique resource for viewing the otherwise unavailable material. It wasn't easy to locate good quality copies among YouTube's offerings, so I picked the best and used YT's "embedding" technique to allow viewing of all episodes (bar three "missing in action") without leaving my "Postcards" index page:
archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerPC.htm
Some time later I discovered that five or six episodes had vanished (as in "This video is not available") from YouTube. One of 'my' best sources had had his or her channel taken down. I had to source alternatives, all unfortunately in lower quality, for my page.
It seems YouTube has been steadily tightening its grip on copyrighted content: no longer did they take down only the most blatant breaches of copyright law, such as copies of current Hollywood movies, but they would flag an infringement based on just a few seconds of a song, even an obscure one. Their database of rights-claimed material was growing by the hour, and their "copyright cops" routine probing for ever-smaller fragments of creative DNA.
But I hadn't re-checked my "Postcards" page for a while, until I got an e-mail a couple of weeks ago on the subject, from a fellow enthusiast. I discovered that almost all of the videos were either unavailable or blocked from embedding due to regional restrictions. I began searching for alternative sources on line, to little or no avail -- such videos as I could find were of seriously degraded technical quality, and most still unembeddable.
Should I shut it down and leave just a programme index? I really didn't fancy the hard work of uploading higher quality copies myself, checking YT's "copyright details", editing out the offending bits, re-uploading, re-checking (they always seem to find some jangly little toon with an owner, publisher or 'moneytizer' -- is that even a word?), editing and uploading again, and even then risking potentially fatal "copyright strikes" silencing my own "CJ" channel. Notwithstanding the fact that the programmes were made by Clive's own company Watchmaker, and that he'd wanted them to be on YouTube!
Anyway, after a few days' contemplation, I did it. Thanks to AI, I was able in most cases to eliminate 'offending' incidental music without disrupting Clive's narration. And, as a bonus, I found copies of the three rarest episodes, Havana, the Melbourne Cup, and Las Vegas (not to be confused with Clive's "Live in Las Vegas", a non-Postcard visit). Unfortunately these three had been dubbed into Hungarian! I looked at generating English subtitles, but the task was formidable -- I'm hoping original soundtracks will show up eventually (as ever with the CJ archive, I dream of some reader coming up with the missing material!).
  
Anyway, that's where we stand as of today. All 18 episodes viewable on the page. Enjoy them while you can -- there will be gaps before long, thanks to YouTube.
Steve
PS -- Hmm... That didn't take long! Only 9 hours since I published, and already three episodes (Sydney, New York and Hong Kong) have been de-embedded. Back to the editor, see if I can remove the 'objectionable' content. Meanwhile the YouTube error screen does at least provide a direct link to YT. [sobs]
SJB
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