Why don't they remaster old S-Wild videos? Well that's a trick question, they do. In 2016, 8 old S-Wild videos were re-uploaded to S-Wild extra in HD with a new soundtrack, same with Braenimated in 2021. Newgrounds also has all the old videos in their best quality, sort of. So it's like movie makers still have baked in subtitles. And while 4K wouldn't make the doodet next door any less terrible, it's a shame that every video is capped to 1080p when they could look so much better if you cared about that sort of thing. Older S-Wild videos should be preserved in the highest quality, if you ask me. They are undoubtedly a part of internet history, and while online flash players aren't really being supported anymore, the original files still provide ultra-high definition animation to pair with some very low fidelity audio. The problem is that a lot of these older videos were made with stolen music in the background. Songs that made the scenes better, but YouTube doesn't like because they break copyright law. The original version of Zomere Attack uses the song Tub Thumping by Chamber One during the climax. This was flagged by YouTube as a violation of copyright law and was taken down, so in the reupload it was replaced with a song written by one of the legacy composers. The very first, it's all episode, is essentially just a music video for there she goes by the laws, which opens up with a rip of the Terminator 2 theme. Both fantastic songs, but legally you can't use them for a project like this without some kind of expensive licensing agreement. There is no way that this video can be classed as fair use. Remasters have gotten away with music that captures the same spirit as the original, like with those examples from earlier, or even something like the homage to Zomere Attack and Chorn of the Dead in funded. But licensing or composing, the perfect replacement music, can be quite expensive, or at the very least time consuming. There's also an argument to be made that altering old media, even if it makes that media better, the values it's work as a remaster. Top Thumping is not a great song, but it fits surprisingly well in its on-be-fight scene. It's a fun creative decision that reflects the artist's vision, and I really like it in this context. The living tombstones replacement music isn't bad by any means, it allows the video to stay up on YouTube, and you may even think that it's an improvement over the original scene, but something has been lost in translation. When Lucasfilm released, the Star Wars special edition box set, George Lucas made the decision to alter some of the scenes using CGI and other special effects. Some of these changes are objective improvements over the originals, fixing errors and improving continuity, but a lot of these changes were artistic decisions that dramatically changed the vibe of some scenes and straight up ruin others. Some of the changes I really like, others I really do not. But as of right now, there is no legal way to watch the unaltered films as they were originally shown in cinemas in their highest quality, unlike the special editions which are all viewable in HD on Disney Plus and the new DVD releases. It's all to actually made a jab at this last year in their April Falls video, teasing a quote unquote, It's all remaster, with added stormtroopers where they didn't need to be and there are a move of things that shouldn't have been there in the first place. They recognise just how silly it can be to erase aspects of art, regardless of whether those changes improve the actual product. And just to clarify, I am talking specifically about changing the content of an original work. Moving a quality side up from 240p to 4k is not going to be devaluing anything most of the time. All that's all episodes were animated in a vector-based program, they could be projected onto the side of a building with no quality loss and nothing about the work itself would be altered. The videos only look bad because high definition video was uncommon on the internet two decades ago. Most filmmakers want their art to be seen in the best quality possible, and it's usually technological limitations that get in the way of that. Avatar The Way of Water was intended to be viewed in IMX 3D at 48 frames per second. That's how James Cameron wants you to experience it. But because most people don't own a VR headset, 24 FPS high definition 2D is a good compromise. Rainy, compressed video was the compromise that had to be made when shifting Ed's World to YouTube. It's never how the videos were meant to be seen. Likewise, all Ed's World was made with copyright infringement built in. Hosting that on YouTube is just not possible from a legal standpoint. The compromise when remastering these old videos is changing the score. It's not perfect, but the replacement tracks are usually pretty good and it means that the old videos can be preserved for YouTube. It's a compromise. As it stands, this is how Ed's World remastered is going to look and sound. Either we go out of our way to seek out the originals on Newground, turn to some free booter who re-uploads the old videos without permission, or we support the show by watching slightly altered versions with new music. The latter is the best option that we've got under the current system. But maybe the system should change. I'm not the first to say that copyright law is currently not suited for the modern day. Right now, you could make something that could be seen by millions and your adherence to copyright law will be held to the same standard as multinational corporations. That just wasn't a thing until the advent of the internet. But copyright law hasn't been substantially changed to accommodate that. Also a huge part of our culture is built upon the modification and transformation of ideas that came before. That's what culture is. I'd go so far as to argue that most of the characters and artworks and ideas of the past 100 years maybe should be in the public domain, but they're still protected by predatory laws from the 20th century that limit creative freedom. The internet is the place to practice culture nowadays. And companies that host us now have to work out how to accommodate the human desire to transform and modify ideas while also compensating the copyright holders who create the art that we like to modify. There have been some creative solutions to that. YouTube's content ID system is far from perfect, but copyright holders taking revenue from stolen content is better than a sea of seasoned assist letters. The system still limits creativity however. If for example there is a piece of music that is just so perfect for a particular video or a song just has to be used for the purposes of its criticism or view, or indeed if you're preserving a piece of art like an old Ed's World video, you still have to license that music or you won't get paid for the rest of the work you put in. For a better solution we may be able to look elsewhere. TikTok's monetization system also has a lot of problems, but it offers its users the creative freedom to use copyright protected music in their videos. The company has agreements with a number of music distributors, so TikTok users can incorporate an artist's music into their videos and that artist will receive a cut of the revenue. Users make the videos they want, artists get royalties from having their music on the platform and some of them really benefit from the added exposure. Creativity is promoted, artists are protected and the platform has better content. Everybody wins. I see no reason that YouTube can't adopt this system. They already do something similar in YouTube shorts and they have all the parts in place to enable a more creative use of copyrighted work. Even if they don't ever create something like this, there are some pretty fantastic songs in the public domain that you can use for your videos. Some of the greatest and most well-known songs of all time are old enough to predate copyright law and though they can be a little bit cliché, they can absolutely be made to work in the right context with a little bit of creativity. Other than that, there are loads of artists today that make work for the public domain and only ask that you credit them. Music credits in the description as always. I wanted to cap off this video by talking about Ed's world reanimated. What the future, spares and a...dowing were all recreated by an eclectic group of fan animators, each animating in a different style. I mentioned the project both because it is relevant to the discussion of remakes and remasters, but also it highlights what can be done when artists are given the freedom to use the entire well of culture to create new things. Not only is the animation here absolutely gorgeous, it goes without saying, but a lot of the animators use this opportunity to bring new meaning to some scenes or add in extra jokes to make existing dialogue even funnier. Ed's world do have to protect their IP, so you can't just go around using their logos or monetising your fan art or getting endorsements from them. But because fans do have some creative freedom to express their love of Ed's world, with a team doing a great job of celebrating and nurturing their fan base rather than shutting them down, we get works of art like this that would have never been made otherwise. And I think that's pretty special.