YouTube Digitally Remasters Nirvana´s "Smells Like teen Spirit" in HD

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YouTube Music and Universal Music Group plan to upgrade 1,000 music videos

YouTube Music and Universal Music Group have announced an initiative to remaster a series of iconic music videos. Over the next year, they plan to upgrade nearly 1,000 music videos, with new titles appearing each week. The first groups of videos to be remastered include works by Beastie Boys, Janet Jackson, Lady Gaga, and Tom Petty, as well as Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” (That’s a screenshot of the remastered clip above.) Watch a remastered version of Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” below.

Many of the classic videos were made for now-outmoded formats, resulting in poor video and audio quality on today’s high-definition screens. Remastering the videos meant recreating them using material from their original formats, a process that required arduous archival work, according to The New York Times. “We have sources coming from everything from original film to Digibeta, HDCAM to one-inch Cs and Betacam SPs to D2s—and the format it was shot in isn’t necessarily the format it was edited in,” Barak Moffitt, Universal’s executive vice president of content strategy and operation told The Times.

“Once that dirty coloring is removed, it’s a lot more vital somehow,” Billy Idol, who’s had six clips upgraded, told The Times. “It gives these videos a chance against the modern high-quality definition. And I’m forever that age in these videos — it’s kind of fantastic.”

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