Current guideline
- Cuts should not be shorter than 1:30. These often cause unsatisfying play experiences and are generally seen as disrespectful to the artists. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.

We had some discussion in the bn server, we generally agreed that the current guideline for cuts is too restrictive.
(if u want to see the start of the discussion, search "onions on this mp3" from nevo in the bn server)

Summary / Reasons to change the guideline
- As long as a song cut has sensible progression, it shouldn't have to fulfil a required number.
- Some songs really don't support cuts that are longer than one minute. eg. for Panda Eyes - ILY , there really isn't any option other than cut at 1 minute, or map the whole song.
- For long songs with 3 choruses, having a 2 chorus cut is really hard to edit while still having a proper ending. eg https://osu.ppy.sh/s/475538 - fade out is really odd
- Long songs with 2 choruses would require you to map the full version which defeats the whole point of cut rules eg https://osu.ppy.sh/b/2096800
- Covers of songs can be used to circumvent the rule entirely if there is no longer version, this will become more common if the current rules stay restrictive. eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gNK9vxaUoc

A cut of a song that uses one chorus and one transition segment does not misrepresent the artist's work, is not difficult to cut, and provides a reasonable gameplay experience.

Proposed change:
- Cut songs should have at least one chorus and transition segment (intro/outro). If one transition segment is used, it should not be of insignificant length. This is to ensure song cuts respect the artist's work and provide a satisfying play experience.

Fully supporting this, current guideline just chops every decent cut that doesn't reach the 1:30 length. It's really subjective by saying that almost every cut that doesnt reach the specific length of 1:30 minutes that it feels disrespectful to the artist when cuts can have decent intro + chorus + and outro and can represent most of the song. I can agree that 30 second cuts that go straight to choruses are disrespectful but we shouldnt include that case with the normal cuts case.

good idea, intro + chorus is basically how for example almost all anime openings are structured so why shouldn't other songs be as well? if the cut is well made then it's fine for me

Truthfully I would say having both an intro and outro would be beneficial since the vast majority of official cuts would also have an intro and outro. Then cuts like THE ORAL CIGARETTES - Mou Ii Kai would be fine since it represents the full song even tho it's under 1:30. I can't find an example of something that has only an intro or only an outro but I feel those might feel weird to play since you would either start at the start of a chorus or stop super abruptly after it lol.


tldr;
have both intro and outro be forced like a normal tv size cut would have

edit
found something :3c
stuff like https://osu.ppy.sh/b/434913 is a good example of jarring outro

yeah I agree with Nevo, cuts at least should have the impression of the whole song by having decent intro and outro. cases like this https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1620271 are kinda disrespectful by doing random fading intros and outros.

I guess you could rewrite the sentence to this ''Cuts should include an intro, at least one chorus and an outro that don't mislead the original structure of the song. Cuts don't have to reach a specific length limit as long the above guideline is covered.''

I agree with not having a hard length limit since the quality of a cut can't be measured with numbers. There are quite a lot of good 1 minute cuts with proper song structure, here are some examples:
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/978879
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/774670
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/873811
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/443589
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/648930
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/750963
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/496549

About necessitating an intro and an outro, I think it's not really possible to define which parts need to be included in the cut because every song is assembled in a different way, some songs only have verses and choruses so it would't really work for those cases. The initial wording (transition segment) already covers that you shouldn't start/end the song abruptly as far as I'm concerned, otherwise that can be added. However, specifying that it needs to be an intro and an outro seems to be too strict for all the possible cases

Also can we drop this "disrespectful to the artist" point, it's more a matter of misrepresenting the song, not disrespecting it

@Serizawa Haruki Cuts like those https://osu.ppy.sh/s/648930 (I know what a shame, it's my own map) are kinda dumb since the outro is stopping on a spot where the music is noticeably still going on by listening the full version and this is kinda disrespectful to the original song structure. About the other cuts that you linked from what I remember all of them are using the original intro and outro and they represent most of the song's structure so it would be acceptable, lengths shouldnt matter at this point. About the last one that you linked, true it's well done edited even tho I think that it's still a good idea for the cuts to keep the original intro/outro of the song so they respect the original structure of it. But since this type of cases can be hard to deal, I guess we could add an exception about fading intros and outros that can start/end on a spot that the song is really calm with not many instruments and stuff and could still have the impression of a decent intro/outro. But I would still insist about keeping the original intro and outro thing so everyone can be happy.

Also Haruki about your point at the end ''Also can we drop this "disrespectful to the artist" point, it's more a matter of misrepresenting the song, not disrespecting it'' well I think that both phrases apply for the same thing(?)

Definitely support this change. I think using arbitrary numbers such as a 1:30 hard limit is a bad metric for these sorts of rules; songs of varying genres, BPMs, and instruments will differ massively in appropriate "cut" times. This initial hard limit also seems based on or draws from the typical TV Size length of anime songs, which is also 1:30. This should not really be taken into consideration since TV Size anime songs are just one genre of music; there are many more genres which would be hard pressed against this restriction.

Necessitating an intro and outro (or intro and outro equivalent) shouldn't also be necessary but rather encouraged, since again some songs differ wildly in their presentation and structure, thus these guidelines won't be a sufficient blanket for the entire range of songs on osu!.

Expanding on what Haruki wrote: I would also like to suggest (even if the initial proposal doesn't go through) that we remove the "generally seen as disrespectful to the artists" part. This seems like more of an opinionated statement, and while it may be a majority opinion, I still think a ranking criteria designed to lay out formal rules and guidelines should stray away from reasoning like this. Cutting songs is not always "disrespectful", while it may at times undermine the potential of the entire song, it in no way disrespects the artist simply by removing a chorus. In some cases it might misrepresent the song, but again, this is not always true and shouldn't be reflected on the ranking criteria.

i feel like y'all are misusing the terms "intro" and "transition", that would just be like a measure or 2. one of the main points of this guideline was to nuke chorus-only cuts, which is basically what your proposal would be allowing with the current wording.

i really dont get most of these bulletpoints. if a song doesn't have a way to be cut nicely except <1 min, then... map the full song? (also ily was literally cut to 1:30 so bad example there lol) the point of cut rules isn't to allow cuts, it's just to keep out shitty cuts and overly short cuts, so it doesn't matter that some 2-3 min songs can't be cut nicely. the 1:30 limit being a guideline is specifically to allow for some wiggleroom around that number for stuff like bpm/etc., but if your cut is straight up 45sec-1min, that's too short.

and covers are completely different from cuts, if people go the extra mile to make their own version of a song then more power to them? thats peppy's stance, anyway

As UC said changing to this wording would essentially render the guideline completely useless and would only ne applicable to extremely rare things like Uta intro ver. Most of the god awful cuts we've seen all fall under the intro + chorus category, as that can be done to have only 30-40s.

Gonna be a phat no from me

Maybe add something that says cuts should include a verse and a chorus if chorus-only cuts are the problem

@UndeadCapulet We can simply keep the current guideline by keeping only the second part of it about the choruses only cuts which is ''Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song. Cuts that make significant changes to the overall listening experience of the song are very misleading and often cause unsatisfying play experiences. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.''

The only thing me and other people dont understand is the ''standard threshold'' that you guys have put about the 1:30 length in the first guideline by having it as the ''significant'' or ''only way to go'' for a cut to be ''acceptable'' for some people. As you said on a line, not all songs have the same length and structure and they can variate from 2 to 3-4 minutes. Well, those type of lengths can be cut with the same impression of a ''1:30 weeb anime tv size length'' that you all insist for to 1 minute to 1:20 or something and whatever length above 30 seconds. And by also saying that ''meh it doesnt reach 1:30 length, just map the full version 4Head'' is simply subjective. Playing this type of drain times dont feel shorter than a typical 1:30 anime size simply because they include most of the full version's structure and melody just like the 1:30 ones that you all hold on as the only acceptable length cut and way to go through. Stop treating this type of cases the same with the ''only choruses'' cuts just because both cases can may have a similar length of slighlty above of 30 seconds till 1:15 minutes or so, they are completely different things. A cut can be good above 30 seconds when the full version of the song is already short with small gaps than usual songs between intro-chorus-outro phases by representing the whole impression of the song. The mapper that cuts the song ''disrespectfully'' or ''misrepresenting'' as you all think its practically not true simply because the song ITSELF is already too short. This is the perfect example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVhsGMp9t7Q with Nevo's cut on it at 1:24 minutes https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1702172.

Other examples: https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1702172
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/958093
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/760464
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1925405
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/2116878
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1766811
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1827432
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1346121
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/2164997
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1915794
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1612453


If you will go and play all of those drain times you will feel that you are playing a typical 1:30 length because all of them have the basic structure of the original version of having a start, a middle and ending just like the 1:30 cuts. So debating on what is an acceptable short time or not acceptable for some 10-30 seconds difference from the typical 1:30 anime tv size length standard that exists right now is really pointless and subjective for the above reason I explained of songs having different length and melody structures from start till the end.

This is what we want to remove from the current guideline that you brought up 2-3 months ago. None wants to bring the only choruses cuts because yeah they are dumb as hell, thats true. All we want is that we should not treat a 1 minute or whatever length above 30 seconds cut differently from a 1:30 length like a bot by saying that it doesnt reach some specific seconds just to be called a ''nice'' or''acceptable'' cut for guys like you. We should really have a more realistic view about this type of cuts and not treat them the same way with the only choruses mp3 cuts, each case is completely different from each other. It's simple logic

@uc and celerih the issue is a limit of 1:30 kills many maps TECHNICALLY that are 1:27. Most anime tv size openings are 1:27ish so why kill cuts that are also 1:27 that's the main point I at least am trying to make here. (1:27 being and example) You can make a cut with an intro chorus and outro and not be 30 seconds. So it's a win win cuz minute cuts with intro/outro are allowed like https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/807850#osu/1695382 but wack 30 second cuts like uta intro ver aren't.

ALSO we should force intro and outro imo since i mean if you are cutting from a full version the song should have a start and end section you can use lol (for lack of better term im sure theres music words for the intro and outro)

I don't how we are going from Cut songs should have at least one chorus and transition segment (intro/outro). To the wack 30 second cuts. This proposal would keep those dead but also allow cuts that aren't completely wack.

@uc I don't know of anything that's under a minute and can have intro chorus and outro but I know of cuts that are 1 minute and are fine under the second guideline "Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song." But break "Cuts should not be shorter than 1:30."


https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/874345#osu/1827432 | Full version 4:08
48 seconds before chorus
10 second chorus
10 seconds after chorus
68 seconds total

another example is
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/2164997 | Full Version 3:15
30 seconds before chorus
22 second chorus
17 seconds after
69 seconds total heh 69

has the same song structure (for lack of better term) as something like
https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/732101#osu/1544786 is an official cut
50 seconds before chorus
30 second chorus
9 seconds after

If the cuts are well made and don't sound trash/have weird mid-song fade-outs it's fine to cut the song down to any lengh in my opinion.

my opinion on this matter is that i agree that the cut length should be shorter but not removed entirely. i think having the length requirement be adjusted to 1 minute would be fine, although it just causes the slippery slope of 'what if i can make good 50 second cuts' ect. but you could probably readjust the wording to say 'cuts should be close to or above 60 seconds.' the type of cuts that wouldn't benefit from this would be mostly on sped up vers of already short songs or really bad cuts. about the proposed changes with the transitions you should force having both intro and outro since having a 20 second intro and 20 second chorus with no outro is fine according to the wording. and at the same time, as a mapper, i think they they would perceive doing a fade out is fine as an 'outro' to the song. overall, i figure to most people these are the type of 'lazy/bad' cuts that the proposal for length tried to avoid, so to remove it entirely would still be allowing these to exist as there would be basically no restrictions to how you could do your cuts.

i support this, let's see if this get somewhere.

This just seems like another attack on quality beatmaps by pandering to lazy people. Just map the whole song and stop trying to destroy the artist’s intent.

Pretty much, no

I support this, even tho 60 seconds should be the bare minimum

isn't this fine as a guideline? follow it most of the time, break it for good exceptions. the 1:30 limit is completely arbitrary but I think it's okay cuz generally nobody likes playing cuts shorter than the typical tv size

"good exceptions" would be like Nevo's examples in this thread

--

that being said, if you wanted to convert this guideline into a rule, I think Nevo's suggestions would work well for it.

clayton wrote:

isn't this fine as a guideline? follow it most of the time, break it for good exceptions. the 1:30 limit is completely arbitrary but I think it's okay cuz generally nobody likes playing cuts shorter than the typical tv size

"good exceptions" would be like Nevo's examples in this thread

--

that being said, if you wanted to convert this guideline into a rule, I think Nevo's suggestions would work well for it.

The point of this proposal is that an arbitrary number limits what is allowed to do and what isn't, no matter if it's good or not. People can use the current guideline to stop cuts below 1:30 to be ranked, even if they are good quality and don't misrepresent the song's structure.

guidelines don't change what's allowed if you have a good reason to ignore them. having a good quality cut is a good reason to ignore this one

it sounds like you might be in favor of rewording it into a rule then? I'm not against that but it seems needlessly high-effort if what we have now is working fine

clayton wrote:

guidelines don't change what's allowed if you have a good reason to ignore them. having a good quality cut is a good reason to ignore this one

Yes, it's a good reason to break the guideline but people tend to have different opinions on what is good and what isn't. Plus, the current wording doesn't say anything about quality, it lumps all cuts shorter than 1:30 together and says they "cause unsatisfying play experiences and are generally seen as disrespectful to the artists".

clayton wrote:

it sounds like you might be in favor of rewording it into a rule then? I'm not against that but it seems needlessly high-effort if what we have now is working fine

Definitely not, a rule would be too strict for such a subjective topic.

...yeah, the guideline's not supposed to say anything about quality, it's just the length thing. it's up to BNs to tell if a cut shorter than 1:30 is worth putting in ranked

so I'm confused why we're even talking about changing this, has there been some issue with the current guideline? are there any maps that never made it to ranked with their cut despite being widely accepted as okay? all of the OP examples could've just been cut anyway and they would've been allowed for the provided reasons

clayton wrote:

...yeah, the guideline's not supposed to say anything about quality, it's just the length thing. it's up to BNs to tell if a cut shorter than 1:30 is worth putting in ranked

so I'm confused why we're even talking about changing this, has there been some issue with the current guideline? are there any maps that never made it to ranked with their cut despite being widely accepted as okay? all of the OP examples could've just been cut anyway and they would've been allowed for the provided reasons

I don't know exactly since I obviously can't keep track of all maps but I saw this map getting bubbled like 2 months ago (by the creator of this proposal) and it's now graveyarded. Now I'm not saying that it's because of the length because there is nothing in the discussion page that would imply it, but if someone wanted, they could point it out and in the case of a BN they could even veto the mapset because of it. And that could happen to any cut below 1:30. I personally think this cut is fine because the sections match the full song quite well, even if it's really short. Also the fact that it's a faster version of the song reduces the length so that should be kept in mind, but it's something that the current guideline doesn't take into account.

im not sure how to proceed with this thread since there's some clear disagreement on how it should be handled. if anything i'd go with what clayton wrote, allowing cuts that are reasonable but slightly below the 1:30 threshold based on subjectiveinterpretationofquality. idk how many people want really short cuts back, but if it's desired, removing the guideline would work for that instead of rewording to the proposed thing (which could have a lot of different interpretations as it is currently)

so should something happen here? or is no talking a sign to archive the thread?

Yea idk why these threads die every time but I still think something needs to be changed about the current guideline because most mappers and BNs now think that all cuts below 1:30 are straight up unrankable (someone I know even dropped their mapset because it was a 1:27 cut) and that shouldn't be the case. As I and several other people have said a while ago, the length limit doesn't indicate quality and should therefore be removed. Instead of it we need to define what makes a cut good or bad. This could either be implemented in a new guideline or in the other existing guideline about cuts:

RC wrote:

Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song. Cuts that make significant changes to the overall listening experience of the song are very misleading and often cause unsatisfying play experiences. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.

I think this guideline already covers most low quality cuts but I guess a more detailed definition could be added.

hi pishifat and other guys, i was going to bump this these days and i will tell my opinion again about current guideline:

1) imo 1:30 limit time can't be defined as the only representive threshold length for a song when each song can have different length structure, for example a cut lower than 1:30 can still represent most of the song if the full version itself is already short (having short beginning segment, kiai, etc.) so I personally find it pretty dumb to put all song structures in the same basket of ''1:30 the only representive length for a song''. example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVhsGMp9t7Q , cut: https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/807850#osu/1695382

2) obviously none wants dumb cuts back that jump directly to a kiai but we can simply avoid that with the current guideline:

''Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song. Cuts that make significant changes to the overall listening experience of the song are very misleading and often cause unsatisfying play experiences. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.'' It covers the sudden bad cuts case pretty decently already with the first sentences, I dont see any practical usefulness of the 1:30 length limit for this case by having the above guideline only.

Most of us explained already on why this 1:30 isn't realistic to write it down in a guideline for different structured song lengths with the above posts so I find it pointless to explain things again unless you want me to write down my thoughts again.

That's pretty much it to be honest, if we are gonna remove the 1:30 thingy from the guideline we can still avoid the really bad cuts that jump to kiais etc. , I think none is losing anything from that.

My final proposals:

1) remove this ''Cuts should not be shorter than 1:30. These often cause unsatisfying play experiences and are generally seen as disrespectful to the artists. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.''

and keep this ''Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song. Cuts that make significant changes to the overall listening experience of the song are very misleading and often cause unsatisfying play experiences. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.''

2) We can reword the 1:30 thing in a way that people dont read it with the impression that the 1:30 length is objectively the ideal and acceptable one only, thats the feeling that im getting at least from the current guideline. Most mappers nowdays think that anything shorter than 1:30 isnt acceptable.

Nikakis wrote:

My final proposals:

1) remove this ''Cuts should not be shorter than 1:30. These often cause unsatisfying play experiences and are generally seen as disrespectful to the artists. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.''

and keep this ''Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song. Cuts that make significant changes to the overall listening experience of the song are very misleading and often cause unsatisfying play experiences. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.''

2) We can reword the 1:30 thing in a way that people dont read it with the impression that the 1:30 length is objectively the ideal and acceptable one only, thats the feeling that im getting at least from the current guideline. Most mappers nowdays think that anything shorter than 1:30 isnt acceptable.

if keeping only the second of these rules, it may help to include an example of what's okay cut-wise (like intro+verse+chorus+outro). even if it doesnt apply to every song since not every song is structured so simply, it gives a general idea of how much of a song should be included, and usually ends up being close to 1:30 for average songs(?).

does anyone agree with this? and if so, how would it be worded?

Including such an example sounds okay, but if you want a more general definition of how songs should be cut, adding something like this would also be helpful:

RC proposal wrote:

Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song, as well as the integrity and order of its core sections. Cuts that make significant changes to the overall listening experience of the song are very misleading and often cause unsatisfying play experiences. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.

I'm not sure if this wording is clear, but the intention is that cuts should start/end before/after a section and not in the middle of it and that changing the order or removing one of the main sections should also not happen. For example if the song consists of verse + pre-chorus + chorus, removing the pre-chorus would not be acceptable, however leaving out the guitar solo or the bridge would be okay.
This would hopefully allow using good cuts that are below 1:30 again while restricting low quality ones.

i think putting segments examples like intro, prechorus, chorus, bridge, etc. lead in too much confusion and things get more complicated. imo the sentence of the current guideline ''Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song.'' pretty much tells you already that your cut's structure should consist the main impression and structure of the full version by not editing the segments' order differently from the original version. so imo we dont need to reword the current guideline any better as it pretty much covers the extreme cases of bad cuts.

if we still need to reword it I guess that the small sentece of haruki makes it a bit more clear, although I still believe that it could be simplified more so its easier to understand:

''Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song. Cuts that change the structure of the full song can lead to mispresentation of it and often cause unsatisfying listening and playing experiences. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.''

went with this wording

- **Cuts should maintain the general impression and intensity of the full song.** Cuts that change the structure of the full song (such as excluding or rearranging a song's intro/verse/chorus/outro) can lead to mispresentation of it and often cause unsatisfying playing experiences. This does not apply to official cuts or recreations of official cuts.

i still feel like including at least some example of song structure is important. otherwise it's super easy to argue that many 30s cuts are fine because there's no clear terms

https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/3015

merged