Steve Jobs' famous Stanford speech is 20 years old, and newly remastered
Two decades ago, Steve Jobs made a dent in the world with a moving and sensational commencement speech to Stanford graduates. You can now watch it in HD.
Steve Jobs at the 2005 Stanford commencement - Image Credit: Steve Jobs Archive/YouTube
On June 12, 2005, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs took to the stage in front of Stanford's graduating class and gave a 15-minute speech. One that would become one of the most influential and impactful speeches to graduates in living memory.
To commemorate the event's 20th anniversary, the Steve Jobs Archive has re-released footage of the speech. The video, published to YouTube on Thursday, has been enhanced in resolution, so it now plays back at 1080p and 60 frames per second via the streaming service.
It's not as low resolution and grainy as previously seen, but all you really need to do is hear the words.
An impactful speech
The commencement speech is one of the most memorable and referenced of its kind. Watched over 120 million times, it has made a major impact on many who have viewed it in the following years.
The Steve Jobs Archive even mentions how a clip from it was used by LeBron James to inspire the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016.
For the founder of Apple, it was also one that didn't really discuss technology, with it instead covering three stories from Jobs' life. It covered "connecting the dots" in dropping out from Reed College, love and loss in embracing challenges, and death and the importance of living in the form of his cancer diagnosis.
The speech was impactful, but far from the originally expected one. He was the third choice of the students after Jon Stewart and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
There were also signs of typical student distractions, including beach balls and the obligatory game of "Commencement Bingo" being played. But, while they didn't realize at the time of the speech itself, they would certainly hear of its contents later on.
For Jobs, he gave advice to an audience about to embark on their adult lives. It turned out to be part of his legacy, one that holds up decades later.
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Comments
Most likely the original footage was shoved through a cheap or free AI-powered upscaling software like Topaz Video (maybe $99 on sale) or Waifu2x-Extension-GUI (donateware, basic functionality free of charge).
For most of us this is adequate. After all, this is just a video of a talking head not an action film, it's more about what he's saying than the visuals themselves. It's not like there's much going on at a speaker podium at a university commencement ceremony.
However you are free to contact the Steve Jobs Archives and offer to underwrite a higher quality re-release of this video recording.
"Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
Until next year...
Maybe once Apple gets great at gen AI, they can redo FCP with built - in gen AI that can automagically remaster this (and anything else).
That actually would be awesome. Imagine that as part of the commercial.
No pixel by pixel remastering. Just push a button and select your desired resolution.
As Mike said, it was shot on film, so there should be plenty of data to get up to 4 or 5k without any issue.
But being able to do a YouTube video and AI upscale directly in FCP without plugins (and with much better quality - especially since Apple has the original to train on) would be awesome.
I don't know how many times I have had videographers send me stuff with low native resolution and it's expected to go into a high quality project. Usually have to get creative with transitions and art direction to make it work - even when using upscaling software. Most of the AI upscales look like trash so far.
He is Too great.