Webmonkey » youtube

YouTube Makeover Offers Larger Videos

Scott Gilbertson — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 16:33:51 +0000

YouTube’s new digs. Image: Google

After months of experimenting with YouTube’s interface and serving limited trials to willing users, Google has launched a new look for the web’s biggest video-sharing site.

The new YouTube is reminiscent of Flickr’s redesign earlier this year — putting the content, in this case the videos, front and center. The new YouTube offers larger videos closer to the top of the page; the title is now below the video, just above the various sharing options.

The left of the page is home to YouTube’s new “Guide,” a list of all the YouTube channels you’re subscribed to, along with your history and video playlists. The YouTube Guide now comes with you across devices, offering up new videos and suggestions on everything from Android phones to Google TV.

The other notable change is that the page is no longer centered, it’s aligned to the left edge of the browser window. The result is a slightly less cluttered page with more emphasis on the video, though the dead space to the right looks a bit strange if you’ve got a large monitor.

Google Video Adds YouTube Export Option

Scott Gilbertson — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:03:54 +0000

Good news Google Video users, Google has given the video sharing site a reprieve. Early this month Google announced it would shut down Google Video’s hosting services on April 29. Now Google has abandoned that deadline and is offering a new option to export your movies directly to the company’s far more popular YouTube video hosting.

In a moment of candor Google has admitted that the lack of YouTube export option in the original announcement was a bad idea. “We … should have done better,” writes Mark Dochtermann, Engineering Manager at Google, on the YouTube blog.

To help smooth the transition, Google has created an “Upload Videos to YouTube” option on the Google Video status page. To migrate your videos you’ll need to have a YouTube account associated with your Google Video account. If you don’t head over to YouTube and set up an account using the same email address tied to your Google Video account.

There’s still one problem for some users though, the time restriction. If you’ve got longer videos on Google Video it’s unclear what happens when you try to migrate them to YouTube (which has a 15 minute limit on videos). Some users also report losing their upload time stamps in the migration.

Still, for most users this should be welcome news. Not only is there no need to panic about April 29th, moving your old Google Video movies into YouTube just became a whole lot easier.

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Twitter Adds More Media-Sharing Services to Inline Previews

Scott Gilbertson — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:49:04 +0000

Twitter now offers inline previews for more services, like the popular Instagram.

Twitter has expanded the integration of third-party services on its website, adding five new photo and video sharing services to the growing list of what shows up as an inline preview.

Among the new services to secure a spot in the ever-expanding Twitterverse is Instagram, the current darling of the Twitter hipsters. The photo-sharing service has managed to build an impressive following even though it’s currently only available as an iOS app. The majority of Instagram fans use Twitter to post links to their artsy photos.

The other new services available as inline previews include videos from Blip.tv, music players from Rdio, slideshows and presentations from SlideShare and photos and videos from Dipdive.

The new inline preview feature, introduced in September’s make-over, shows a preview of an image or a video in the right-hand pane whenever somebody tweets a link to a supported video or photo site. At launch, that was Flickr, Vimeo, TwitPic and YouTube. Along with the inline previews, you also see associated conversations, recent tweets and mini bios of the people mentioned in the tweet. It’s a feature we really like — it takes Twitter beyond the 140 character limit to include photos, videos, maps and all sorts of other rich media.

While we’re happy to see Twitter integrating with more web services, the new web-based preview features highlight just how far behind the website the company’s official mobile apps have fallen. Neither the official Android client nor the iOS Twitter clients support any of the inline previews you’ll find on the web. Twitter’s mobile site doesn’t show them, either. For a richer mobile Twitter, you’ll need to turn to third-party mobile apps.

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Google and Arcade Fire Get All HTML5y

Michael Calore — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:56:57 +0000

The good folks at Google have published a very cool multimedia showcase for what’s possible in HTML5. Using music by Arcade Fire (the 21st century hipster equivalent of ELO), filmmaker Chris Milk has made an interactive video of sorts that spans multiple browser windows.

Eliot Van Buskirk has a full write-up, including an interview with Milk, over on Wired’s Epicenter blog.

“The Wilderness Downtown,” features HTML5 native video and audio, canvas-animated birds that fly away from your mouse clicks, interactive SVG fonts, and photo panoramas from Google Maps Street View. You enter in the address of where you grew up and it pulls the images for that neighborhood. The neighborhood of my childhood home wasn’t available, so I opted for the section of Burlington, Vermont I lived in throughout college. It was creepy to see my old house in an Arcade Fire video.

Being Google-produced, the experiment works best in Google Chrome, of course. It had problems playing back properly in Firefox 4 beta.

If you have Chrome and can watch it, it really strikes a chord. It goes beyond all the HTML5 vs Flash dogma and presents what’s possible with these new technologies in a way which resonates on a level that’s more emotional and immediate than nerdy and intellectual.

So who do I talk to at Google about getting them to do one of these things for my band?

This post was updated at 2:45 PDT. The original incorrectly said it was a YouTube experiment. The site was created by the Google Chrome team, not YouTube.

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YouTube Launches New HTML5 Mobile Site

Michael Calore — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:12:12 +0000

The mobile version of Google’s video-sharing website received an upgrade Thursday. The new m.youtube.com has a bunch of new features, including high-quality video playback in the browser using HTML5.

Surf to YouTube’s mobile site with any modern mobile with a browser that supports HTML5′s tag (works great on iPhones, iPads and Android phones) and you’ll notice that when you click on a video thumbnail, the video loads inside a new browser-based player.

The old site on an iPhone used to launch the YouTube native app, taking you out of the browser. In fact, the first time you visit the site on an iPhone, you’ll be prompted to “install” a bookmark on your home screen. This is likely a step to move people away from the YouTube iPhone app and toward the web-based app.

The switch to an HTML5-based mobile experience comes only a week after YouTube published a public memo stating several places where HTML5 falls short when compared to Flash for delivering video. But Flash currently isn’t an option on mobiles. So, while HTML5-based video playback may not be YouTube’s first choice on the desktop (even though the company has been experimenting with it), it makes perfect sense on mobiles.

The whole mobile YouTube site has been optimized for the small screen, and the experience on the phone is now much tighter. For one, the video quality is markedly better, and the web-app’s interface has been updated to look like a native app, with big, touchscreen-friendly button icons.

There are also new features that aren’t in the YouTube iPhone app. The library is easier to navigate, the search box suggests results as you type, videos can be bookmarked like web pages, and favorites and the new “like”-style ratings have been added.

The mobile site defaults to H.264 playback, which is curious since Google recently helped launch the new WebM video project. WebM, which is already enjoying support in browsers from Opera, Microsoft, Mozilla and Google, is intended to provide an open source alternative to H.264 (and possibly even a recommended standard) for video on the web. But it’s not too surprising, considering that H.264 is more widely supported than the brand-new WebM on mobiles. And given Apple’s loyalty to H.264, which is the native format in QuickTime and iTunes, the chances are slim-to-none that Mobile Safari or Safari will support WebM in the near future.

Here’s where web apps win — If Google were to decide to start serving both flavors of video, it would just be a matter of throwing a switch. YouTube can add whatever features it wants much more quickly, since it just has to update a website instead of a native app that requires a download.

Watch the video demo starring some soccer player guy using both an iPhone and a Nexus One:

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YouTube: HTML5 Video Is No Match for Flash

Scott Gilbertson — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:37:16 +0000

YouTube has some bad news for those of you hoping the site would soon ditch Flash in favor of HTML5 video tags: It isn’t going to happen any time soon.

That’s message from the YouTube developer blog which cites half-a-dozen areas where Flash trumps HTML5 and explains why “the tag does not currently meet all the needs of a site like YouTube.”

The emerging HTML5 standard, which is quickly being adopted by browser manufacturers and developers, offers native video-playback and animation tools that don’t require Adobe’s Flash plug-in. However, while HTML5 handles the basics of video, it lacks many of the extra features that sites like YouTube, Vimeo and Hulu currently offer through Flash-based video players.

To switch to pure HTML5 video would mean YouTube would have to give up features like live streaming, dynamic video quality control and the ability to allow users to jump to specific points in a video.

While YouTube claims to be “excited about the HTML5 effort and tag,” the post makes it pretty clear that HTML5 isn’t going to take over the site any time soon. The video-streaming site Hulu has previously said the same thing: HTML5 lacks the extra features Flash enables.

YouTube has been running an experimental HTML5 version of the site for more than a year, and it remains an opt-in choice for those who want to avoid Flash. The site also continues to serve raw H.264 videos to mobile devices like the iPad, but don’t expect the main browser version of YouTube to make the same changes.

The YouTube developer blog lists several things Flash can do that HTML5 video tags cannot:

Flash cuts down on the number of formats YouTube needs to encode.
With browsers divided over which video codecs to use, YouTube would need to re-encode most of its content. With YouTube users uploading 24 hours of video to the site every minute, that’s no small task. The new WebM video codec offers some hope here, but it isn’t universally supported yet.

Flash offers “fine control over buffering and dynamic quality control.”
The HTML5 video tag doesn’t cover live streaming, nor does it allow for adaptive video quality when streaming long movies. However, as the post points out, “a number of vendors and organizations are working to improve the experience of delivering video over HTTP,” meaning there’s hope this problem will eventually be solved.

Flash offers content protection.
While not the top of the list when it comes to features a user is looking for, without a means of protecting content from being distributed illegally, most of YouTube’s content partners would likely jump ship.

Encapsulation and embedding.
Flash makes it easy to send extra data along with your embedded video, meaning ads, captions, annotations and extras like related-video lists automatically show up. There’s no easy way to do the same with HTML5 embed code. JavaScript, sure, but not the native code.

Fullscreen video.
This one makes the least sense. Firefox and WebKit both offer rudimentary support for fullscreen HTML5 video, though there is no hardware acceleration or other extras you’d get with Flash.

Camera and microphone access.
The ability to record video directly to YouTube requires the site to be able to access your computer’s camera and microphone, something HTML5 video on its own cannot do.

YouTube also doesn’t mention a couple of other areas where HTML5 video lags well behind Flash: accessibility and translation tools.

Clearly YouTube isn’t going to abandon Flash just because the web seems to think that’s the cool thing to do at the moment. For those uploading their own videos straight to a blog or similar site, the HTML5 video tag makes sense, but for sites like YouTube and Hulu, the HTML5 video tag still clearly can’t match what Flash has to offer.

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YouTube Adds Simple Video Editing Tool-

Scott Gilbertson — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:03:17 +0000

YouTube has launched a new video-editing tool that lets you edit your uploaded videos inside your web browser.

The new video editor will definitely not replace desktop software like iMovie or Windows Live Movie Maker anytime soon. That said, YouTube’s editor does cover the basics like combining uploaded clips, trimming, editing and adding audio to your uploaded videos.

This isn’t the first time YouTube has experimented with in-browser editing. You may remember YouTube’s Remixer tool, which was released in 2007 as an experiment, had limited capability and was buggy to boot. It was based on Flash and other Adobe technologies.

The new editor is definitely a big step up, and it’s powered mostly by JavaScript. The interface is simple and quite easy to use. To start editing, just drag the thumbnails of your uploaded videos into the filmstrip at the bottom. Once you have your clips in the editor, you’ll notice the cursor turns to scissors. Click one of the thumbnails, and you can start trimming and editing your footage.

There’s also an option to add music to your clips, though the selection is limited and, as Google Operating System notes, some tracks will cause YouTube to display ads in your final video.

Once you’ve got your clips edited and arranged the way you want, you can watch a low-res preview and then save your changes back to your videos. The interface is quite snappy when it comes to editing, and even saving, though it takes some time for YouTube to actually process your video and make it available on the site.

While YouTube’s new editor is clearly a limited, work-in-progress effort, it’s not hard to see how Google can build on this foundation to create something that will serve the needs of most casual video editors, eliminating the need for yet another piece of desktop software.

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YouTube Embraces HTML5, But Stops Short of Open Web Video

Scott Gilbertson — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:42:00 +0000

Google is now offering up YouTube videos using HTML5′s next-generation video tag. But this advancement is only available to those surfing with Chrome or Safari — Firefox and Opera users need not apply.

YouTube’s HTML5 video support effectively eliminates the need for Adobe’s Flash plug-in for viewing videos on the site. The move comes in response to a survey where users voted “support HTML5 open web video with open formats” to the top of the YouTube’s feature request list.

Unfortunately for fans of the open web, Google seems to have stopped reading at “support HTML5″ because “open web video with open formats” is entirely missing from the new features.

To test YouTube’s new HTML5 support for yourself, head to the TestTube page and enable the new features for your account. Just make sure you’re using either Google Chrome browser or Safari because those are the only two browsers that support the new features.

The video quality of HTML5 playback (shown below in a screenshot taken with Google Chrome on a Mac) is a little chunkier than the Flash version, but it works. The frame rate is just as smooth and the player controls, which are JavaScript and CSS, operate as you’d expect.

Eliminating the need for Flash means YouTube videos will be less likely to crash your browser and should stop your PC’s cooling fan from turning into a jet turbine, but it doesn’t really advance open video on the web — it just moves from one proprietary solution (the Flash plugin) to another, the H.264 video codec.

While Google’s early support for the new HTML5 tag is a win for HTML5′s vision of a web without plug-ins, unfortunately Google’s HTML5 support also highlights what will be a thorn in the side of open web video for some time: codec compatibility issues.

At the moment, YouTube’s HTML5 video support is limited to web browsers that support the H.264 video codec — namely Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari. Because the W3C declined to specify a standard video codec to go along with new video element, the choice of codecs to support lies with each web browser.

Browser manufacturers are split into two camps, those that support the free, open Ogg Theora codec (Chrome, Firefox, Opera and others) and those that support the proprietary H.264 codec (Chrome and Safari). Internet Explorer is entirely removed from this debate, as it does not support the video playback capability of HTML5 — in fact, IE support for HTML5 in general is almost entirely nonexistent, even though all the other browsers are racing to build in support.

Google’s decision to start with the H.264 codec is disappointing since Mozilla and Opera have declined to pay the expensive licensing fees for H.264 and instead support Ogg Theora for open video on the web.

What makes Google’s choice of video codec even more regrettable is that the Ogg Theora codec (a free, open video codec) works in Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera. Had Google opted to support Ogg Theora, only Apple would have been left out of the fun.

Furthermore, the latest version of Firefox — version 3.6, which was ironically released within hours of Google’s YouTube announcement — expands the browser’s ability to play videos using proposed HTML5 standards, including support for fullscreen playback. But Firefox’s video capability is limited to Ogg Theora.

However, there may be a simple practical reason YouTube chose to start with H.264 — it most likely already has most of its videos in H.264. Thanks to the YouTube application for the iPhone and Flash 10′s H.264 support, behind the scenes much of YouTube’s video is likely already in H.264.

Hopefully Google will add support for Ogg Theora in the near future, after all the number-one request in YouTube’s survey wasn’t more HTML5 support, it was “support HTML5 open web video with open formats.”

We welcome this baby step away from web video plug-ins, but keep in mind that we’re still some ways away from truly open, free video on the web.

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Google Shows Off Chrome Themes With Cool YouTube Hack

Michael Calore — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:48:37 +0000

Click on the image above (or here) to see the video Google just posted to YouTube to promote its new theme library for the Google Chrome browser. The themes, which are designed to give your browser’s skin a splash of color and personality, were developed by famous artists and designers.

The video in the link shows some of them off, but be sure to watch until the end, when the browser skin literally explodes out of the video frame and takes over the page. Once the video is over, there’s more cool page-skinning trickery to be had — the video player window turns into a theme browser you can click through, altering the design of the YouTube page itself.

Chrome is only available now in stable form for Windows users. Mac and Linux versions are still in development and will be finalized later this year.

Google first began developing themes for Chrome in August, as we noted in a previous report. Firefox has a similar theming architecture for its browser called Personas, which you can explore at Mozilla’s dedicated Personas site.

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Find Your Neighbor’s Videos Online

Adam Duvander — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:06:47 +0000

The YouTube team released an example mashup that merges Gears geolocation and the video geo search. Using the demo application, you can find nearby videos based on your location, maybe even your neighbor’s Firefly tribute movie.

The technology grabbing the videos is YouTube’s new geotag searchable API. With a latitude/longitude pair and a keyword, the service spits back a list of videos.

So, where do those coordinates come from? YouTube’s example uses Google Gears’ new geolocation feature. There are a few different implementations, and a developing standard for accessing location. My JavaScript geolocation tutorial covers the bases, including the similar Geode plugin baked into the next version of Firefox.

The best part about the example application is that the source code is available. I wish everyone did this. It sure makes picking up new technologies easier.

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