I have felt that Aussie TV has never had the same volume of standalone presentation archive sites, like how the UK has TVARK, and TV Live, and TV Whirl, and also due to recent events regarding YouTube, it has become clear how fragile archiving can be someimes.
Here in Australia, we’ve had some good efforts - both through this forum and especially when The Spy Archive was around, I’ve always thought the community of people who archive material here in Australia, are dedicated and archive really well.
That’s why I’ve started work on a new project called From The Lounge Room - a dedicated, standalone website, something to sit alongside what’s already happening here, and help give archivists a permanent, independent space to store and showcase their work, especially video content, so that no one has to worry about their videos being taken down due to reasons beyond their control.
And I just want to be clear - this new project of mine isn’t meant to replace or duplicate what already exists, and furthermore, I won’t be touching any existing content without permission. I want to build this as a space for any new and contributed material to live on in a permanent, searchable format - with proper credit, metadata, and independent hosting that’s not reliant on YouTube or social media platforms.
I want to work with you awesome people, to ensure we get this off the ground!
Good job getting something like this up and running - clearly YouTube is no longer a great place for archiving, so at least there is going to be a place where people can share content and not risk having it taken down.
Thanks for the kind words! I’ve always wanted to do something like this, just now feels like the perfect time.
Anyway, I would like to ask everyone a question:
What do you all want out of this website?
I want this website to be community driven - an archive for the people, by the people, accessible by anyone, regardless of if you’re an archvist, or someone wanting to look into TV history.
Here’s some ideas I have got so far.
Station pages with logos, history, and curated clip lists
Searchable archive by year, station, or type (ident, promo, PSA, etc.)
Tag-based filtering (e.g. “Channel 9 Perth promos from 1996”)
Clip metadata and context blurbs (airdate, source, background info)
Submission form with proper contributor credit
Regular updates or a simple archive log
But this website shouldn’t just reflect my ideas - I want to know what everyone else might want out of FTLR. What would make this something you’d want to use, contribute to, or recommend to others? I’m all ears.
I don’t have anything else to suggest, but what you’ve come up with so far would help make finding things easier as I know from trying to find stuff on YouTube that it can be tricky to find what you are looking for. Hopefully you can get the site up and running, and grows from there.
I am looking into scalable cloud hosting for the videos themselves - whether it’s hosted through Amazon AWS, or Backblaze (with Backblaze being the affordable option at $10 per TB per month).
I will not be imposing any limits on videos, or users, and I’m covering the hosting costs myself, and the site will remain free and open to everyone.
Making money will never be the goal of the site. There’ll never be ads, paywalls, or fees for contributors or viewers.
to be honest, probably not right away, but maybe down the line, once the site takes off, but really, i just want to get this thing off the ground, and get the archive up and running.
Fantastic idea, Michael. I’ve always wanted to do something like this, but struggle to find the time and patience. I’d be more than happy to contribute content once it’s off the ground.
Sounds nice, on top of hosting content it would be great to add the ability to document dates and times of content hosted elsewhere and link to them (like YouTube, Internet Archive, etc.) so it can aid in searching.
I switched mostly to Odysee which does not re-encode videos, what I upload is what you see.
A lot of content is being hidden behind private torrent trackers or by gatekeepers who think their narcissistic boasting gives them an edge. Then there is the scum who re-upload other peoples captures to YouTube usually at lower quality.
It is important that whatever you host is first generation (unless the original source has been lost) and credits the person who did the work to preserve it so that re-uploads/re-rips/2nd generation copies don’t take over and it becomes mush like YouTube.
It never was a good place and I wish people would stop treating it as such. They re-encode everything to very low quality and do not support interlacing or 576 horizontal lines. A lot of content is censored by abusing their content identification system and channel owners don’t get a fair say in dealing with content claiming trolls.
My plan will definitely be crediting the people who will be submitting content on the website, it’s a core part of how I want the archive to function. I have been going through my tapes I bought from eBay a couple of years back just as a proof of concept for what I want to do, and here’s how things will look so far:
Thanks for the insight - after comparing AWS and Backblaze, I decided that Backblaze would definitely be the more economical option at the moment, but as the site grows, I will keep monitoring this for sure, but I do appreciate the advice.
I appreciate that, especially with your experience with capturing, and Aussie media in general. It means a lot, and I’d love to have you involved when things get rolling. I’ll let you, and everyone else know when we get off the ground, and have the upload process sorted.
