Swiftly after wrapping up the Twitch Reddit AmA, where CEO Emmett Shear answered questions about the recent changes to the service, an announcement via their official blog has brought some promising news. Highlights will no longer have a two hour limit, something that was causing major worries to the speedrunning community within Twitch, who often use these highlights as proof of their success.
Also the introduction of a new appeal button that will enable streamers to directly flag their VODs if they think they’ve been wrongly identified by the new Audio Magic software.
“Over the last two days, you’ve provided us with an incredible amount of feedback about the new Video Manager, VOD storage, and Audio Recognition system.” said Twitch. “We take your opinions very seriously, and we’re acting on your concerns.”
The speedrunning community, who use Twitch to stream their record breaking runs and even earn thousands of dollars for charity, will definitely breathe a sigh of relief.
“First, effective tonight, the maximum time limit on highlights will be removed.” Twitch stated. “You will once again be able to create highlights of any length and they will be saved indefinitely.”
The introduction of a new audio recognition system that scans for copyright infringements on VODs has been running rampant since its release. To help combat the many false positives, Twitch are implementing a simple way for streamers to contest them.
“Secondly, we’re deploying an “appeal” button for VODs that have been flagged for copyrighted music by the new Audio Recognition system.” explained Twitch. “We recognize that the system is not yet perfect. We want to make this system as fair and unobtrusive as possible, and we greatly appreciate your help.”
Have you been affected by the recent changes, if so do these improvements help at all?