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motbob
United States12546 Posts
At some point, we lost an important piece of Starcraft history.
Y'all are familiar with the Day[9] Daily. As a refresher, it was a daily SC:BW/SC2 strategy/analysis show that essentially made Day[9] the most prominent figure in eSports for a time.
The Daily grew out of Day[9]'s podcast series, a series of audio recordings which dealt with topics of strategy in Brood War. The last audio podcast was released on Oct 13, 2009, and the first Daily was on Oct 22.
But the first Daily was not the first video recording Day[9] did. On Oct 20, in front of a little more than 50 viewers, Day[9] did a video analysis of Bisu vs Shine (a game which is certainly in the top 5 list of "games which made Starcraft fans incredibly salty").
As far as I can tell, the Day[9] video has been lost to the ages. The immediate precursor to the Day[9] Daily is gone. Learning this was not a good feeling.
Which brings me to the point of this blog. On the internet, nothing lasts forever. Sites come and go, and old videos are regularly deleted by thoughtless authors and websites looking to save money. If you love something, or you think that it might be historically important, you should download it and archive it, especially if you have reason to believe that the video has a high chance of disappearing in the future (due to an author's mental instability, or copyright claims, or the fact that it's hosted on a relatively small website). And I don't mean "you" in the abstract. I mean you personally. How much do external hard drives cost nowadays?
Two of the top players in SSBM played a grand final series in a small tournament that was streamed on Twitch in 2013. I happened to be looking for the VOD, saw that it hadn't been uploaded to Youtube, and uploaded it myself. A few months later, Twitch started deleting old VODs. If things had turned out a little bit differently, that match might have been lost forever.
We are in a different world from when the Library of Alexandria burned to the ground. Any writing of importance nowadays is preserved many times over, thanks to the efforts of entities like Google and The Internet Archive. (Even if something like bash.org ever went offline, there wouldn't be much of a problem recovering that material.) But in our still-small niche of eSports, the existence of something amazing doesn't guarantee that that thing will exist years later.
 
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I'm amazed that almost most of my hard work back when I used to cast when Twitch was new is all gone. Sad day. Thanks motbob. I hope you find that day9 video though.
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On December 17 2014 16:35 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:
I'm amazed that almost most of my hard work back when I used to cast when Twitch was new is all gone. Sad day. Thanks motbob. I hope you find that day9 video though.
Brent, I might have some of your old videos from Twitch. I remember capturing at least a few casts. If you like, I can look through my old external when I get back after the holidays. 
Motmob, you might try asking Sean. He's probably got almost all of his old VODs archived, himself.
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Australia6097 Posts
day9's osl casts were also deleted and lost forever T_T i think he also did some proleague casts too but those are gone as well.
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I'm a collector at heart, and so I'm always partial to archiving. For a decent time now I've been collecting replays and vods for starcraft 2 (also adding old results to aligulac when I'm bored / have the time for it), and the amount of them that are completely lost now saddens me. There are tourneys of admittedly not the greatest importance - but still - for which you can't even find the brackets anymore.
And SC2 is only 4 years old. I can imagine how much BW has lost over the years.
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motbob
United States12546 Posts
On December 17 2014 20:07 Nebuchad wrote:
I'm a collector at heart, and so I'm always partial to archiving. For a decent time now I've been collecting replays and vods for starcraft 2 (also adding old results to aligulac when I'm bored / have the time for it), and the amount of them that are completely lost now saddens me. There are tourneys of admittedly not the greatest importance - but still - for which you can't even find the brackets anymore.
And SC2 is only 4 years old. I can imagine how much BW has lost over the years.
For BW, maybe the foreign scene has lost a lot, but the Korean networks had a healthy archive of VODs, so if Youtube channels got copyright'd, stuff generally wasn't lost forever. It helped that TL had a culture of downloading VODs in the early days, so you could find old games if you asked enough people. And Korean tournaments were meticulously documented on TL.
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Bisutopia19372 Posts
On December 17 2014 16:35 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:
I'm amazed that almost most of my hard work back when I used to cast when Twitch was new is all gone. Sad day. Thanks motbob. I hope you find that day9 video though.
My stuff from just two years ago is gone too! 
And motbob, there's a reason why that first daily has disappeared. You know it, I know it, everyone else knows it. Let it die!
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Well said. I did a tournament over a year ago, now I can't even relive the fun memories with friends T.T, I bought a 1 TB drive specifically to archive things now.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
We should have downloaded the interview of Oz's PvP is all skill so we could prove curses exist D:
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good advice. a lot of television companies learned this when they started showing tv because no one thought to make sure everything was saved. they lost a good chunk of video from the first super bowl as result and also old tv shows (and I want to say a lot of Johnny Carson episodes although I think that was because someone taped over it.)
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oh god. i got so scarred the Chill vs Combat-Ex bo5 was gone but i found it and am downloading it. need to keep the few non-pc Day9 casts around.
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So true, I need to re watch all of these old Day9 Dailies ( The ones that are still around... ) , Day9 is very informative and educational to new players, It would be great for someone to do a new daily show.
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On December 17 2014 22:57 BisuDagger wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2014 16:35 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:
I'm amazed that almost most of my hard work back when I used to cast when Twitch was new is all gone. Sad day. Thanks motbob. I hope you find that day9 video though. My stuff from just two years ago is gone too! And motbob, there's a reason why that first daily has disappeared. You know it, I know it, everyone else knows it. Let it die!
What is the reason? Selling out BW for fame and glory?  jk
I remember an early Day9 podcast, just audio, where he talked about Mech vs Z and it's popularity since Fantasy started the trend. The idea was to spread out and build lair units and to not get ultras because they didn't take full damage from mech, although nowadays zergs will get ultras vs T mech switch haha.
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On December 17 2014 18:07 Shock710 wrote:
day9's osl casts were also deleted and lost forever T_T i think he also did some proleague casts too but those are gone as well.
That's a damn shame. :/
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I actually knew of a website that would host GSL related content from GOM, and I would download all of it, or at least the games with zerg in them and finals matches for exactly the reason the op suggest.
I stopped doing that because I ran out of harddrive space around mid 2012 iirc. I tried to get BTN to help me upload the stuff but the guy who was taking on the daunting task flaked.
A few months back, a friend gave me access to his private server and I used a free program called filedzilla iirc to upload 100s of gigs of movies, tv shows, pictures, vods, replays, games etc.
Maybe like half of it was the old GSL content.
I think the site still hosts new stuff but it regularly deletes old stuff to make room for the new, and I stopped keeping on tabs with it and a lot of it is probably on YT as well now through gom official. I don't even know.
PS- as a side note, I have at least 2-3 drives (ironically all seagate), with old vods, replays, and even personal pictures and stuff that had their boards fail and I can't get information off of them. So back up your shit every couple of years or get a raid or whatever.
Also, my old livestream videos with procaster are all mostly gone. And the compilation I made of pro gamer 4 and 5 pools playlist on youtube has like 1/3 of the videos deleted now.
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Does anyone have vods from 2011 European Battle.net Invitational they are all gone ;/
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United States11637 Posts
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I can't find Ascension VOD's anywhere, I want to relive that moment. :/
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There was a saying
"The internet never forgets!"
but it seems those times are gone!
And yes, I also archive quite a few things for myself or if I think it will be gone in a short time! It's sad!
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there is a still a msl/osl/something commercial which was a Bisu tribute video to music black parade or that other song, which i have been unable to locate on youtube. (there is one tribute video but its the wrong one). it probably still exists attached to a vod somewhere
replays with audio yo :D
we shud probs archive all the klaz/cholera/etc videos. god i spent my entire life watching them. holy shit bw is so good.
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On December 19 2014 00:36 boesthius wrote:
i know that feel
i was looking for some of ret's fpvods on livestream and there's only one left out of the hundred or so that used to be there. i just wanted to fall asleep to some zvt on outsider ;_;
That's a name I haven't thought of in a while. Damn, those TL feels.
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I just noticed sc2-replays.net has closed down, that's a little jarring to me. They had a bunch of unique replays I'm pretty sure (especially on craftcups and stuff like that)
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Also the English commentary of 2012 FanTaSy vs Jangbi was lost.
This and this.
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It's a little silly, but I still really miss Husky's Brood War casts, with how he had to delete all of them off of his YouTube in order to start monetizing his channel years ago. Those were what actually got me interested in pro Brood War!
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I've commentated and been actively involved with League of Legends Dominion since 2011. Not a lot of people care/cared about dominion because Summoner's Rift is the more popular and most promoted mode. There is/was an active community of people who played Dominion exclusively. The first tournament and only LAN for Dominion was held on the BeyondGaming stream played at Devastation LAN 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona. Those games would have been lost forever had I not went looking for them and saved them before twitch deleted their archives. Later when I was a commentator for DominateDominion and other Dominion tournaments I was the only person who was exporting the VODs to youtube. FourCourtJester was the only other person who's commentated Dominion that I know has saved their VODs of their casts. Later they were highlighted and archived on twitch but laziness got progressively more rampant. We lost two great tournaments, DD73 and DT1, to not having the autoarchive enabled. When twitch announced the removal of old VODs I downloaded all the video from twitch that wasn't already exported to youtube.
Presently all the video from NA's LoL:Dominion competitions is all safe on 3 different hard drives as well as uploaded to youtube. If not for me it's possible no one would have done it. I even downloaded and archived the casts that I was not personally involved in because the people who were running the stream in my absence didn't do it. Were it left up to the twitch VODs we would have lost a couple hundred games out of 118 total dominion tournaments which is something like a third maybe. Additionally Azubu ran 3 tournaments and after deciding not to run any more they deleted their Azubu channel that was associated with the tournament. If I didn't download them they would be lost. The same applies to the two tournaments LoLPro ran. They never uploaded the VODs but I kept copies anyway just in case and it's a good thing that I did.
cyber-sports' website went down and with it the brackets from DDs in the late teens to late 30s were lost with it, but I kept copies. The original brackets hosted on dominatedominion's own site were lost when the site went down, but I kept copies. The LoLPro and Azubu signup threads are also gone, but I kept copies. I have a large portion of the registrations and all the brackets for every dominion tournament except the Devastation LAN. According to FourCourtJester and Semmler, who I've asked about it, those are not recoverable. They were the commentators for that tournament.
Additionally I saved all the post-game screenshots, picks/bans and outcome screens, all associated match media from the threads where match proof was posted. There's thousands of images saved across three hard drives, but the images aren't all uploaded. Many of the threads with the links to those images are gone, but thankfully I have them. Some of the links are still in the threads but the image host expired.
All of those hours of downloading images, renaming them, downloading video, editing it together into individual games, uploading + tagging it on youtube, and all the work that went with it is worth it. Every time a new person finds the youtube channel and watches the videos it makes me smile because new people wouldn't be able to see many of the oldest games otherwise. I just want to share the history and community of Dominion with as many people as possible in the most accessible way as possible. All the tournaments are in playlists and everything is tagged/titled appropriately.
If you see something you like online, save a copy. You never know when someone might go looking for it. Even with all my backups if my youtube channel gets closed it may take time to get those videos back online and it's possible I might not want to do it all again if that were to happen.
I'm glad the nevake youtube channel exists for Brood War. Hopefully my VATOCLAN youtube channel can do the same for League of Legends: Dominion. History is important.
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Easy.
Call the NSA and ask for the videos with a timeframe. When you are US-Citizen they are going to send 5 Workers to the mineral patches errr..... personal computers to go and find the requested data for you as they have multiple copies of the whole internet available.
Should you, however, happen to not be of american rights heritage, go and find some american to do it for you.
Solved. Next please.
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Sanya12364 Posts
yikes. Save the old VODs!!!
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EPT
