New Tier to Download Original Video Files (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

Some of you have been asking for the ability to download my videos in their original source quality, so I've made a new $15 tier called Data Hoarder.

This tier gives you access to a password protected Patron Drive with all the original pre-upload video files. Only the long-form videos listed in the Documentaries playlist (20 videos in total) on my YouTube channel are currently available for download.

If there's demand for older videos (like Top 10 Facts), I'll probably have to go back and re-render all of them, but that would take a loooooooong time.

Anyway, what's the benefit of downloading vs. streaming?

Downloading and watching videos locally means you don't have to bother with ads, and, more importantly, you avoid YouTube's compression algorithm, which reduces the quality of uploaded videos.

The quality loss is virtually imperceptible on smaller screens, so if you tend to watch videos on your phone, this tier probably isn't worth it. But if you like watching videos on a TV or large monitor, the difference becomes a lot more noticeable.

Note that the video files are not lossless. They were rendered to MP4 with varying bitrate and compression settings. But they're still much higher quality than those streamable on YouTube.

The reduced compression also means these files are quite large. For instance, The Kennedy Assassination: Inside the Book Depository is about 40 GBs while Bygone Visions of Cosmic Neighbors is about 15 GBs. Older videos are smaller (around 1-3 GBs) because they were rendered at 1080p instead of 2160p and at a lower bitrate.

Please let me know if you have any other questions about this tier.