YouTube Creator Blog [UK]: 2015

Found in Translation: Language tools for building a global audience

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Do you ever feel like your videos are getting lost in translation? YouTube has over a billion users and is available in 76 different languages. So it’s easy to understand why it can sometimes feel that way.

On average, over 60% of a channel’s views come from outside of its creator’s home country. That means two out of every three people who watch your channel might speak a different language than you. So how can you make sure viewers around the world can easily discover, understand and love your content? That’s where our latest set of translation features comes in. Designed to help creators make their content more accessible and understandable to an international audience, they include:

Community-contributed subtitles and CC - crowdsource your video subtitles and let your community help you reach more people in more languages. Opt-in by clicking here.
Translated titles and descriptions - add translated titles and descriptions to your videos.That way fans can discover your videos in their native languages. We’ll display your video information in the right language to the right viewers.
Translation marketplace (beta) - order professional translations of your content right from your Video Manager. Once you've chosen the target language(s) you prefer, simply checkout and pay. When the translation is complete, we'll auto-publish your content and send you a confirmation email.

Some of our partners have already tested out these features and the impact has been pretty remarkable. Take VICE. Their channel more than doubled the daily watchtime on translated videos from Spanish and Portuguese speakers. In fact, watchtime from Spanish users tripled. ¡Impresionante!

“These new features have the potential to fundamentally change the way VICE distributes its YouTube content on a global scale”, says Jordan DeBor, Video Partnerships Manager at VICE. “By removing the language barrier, YouTube delivers the opportunity to build new audiences in local markets and expand in our existing ones.”

With the help of over 20,000 volunteer translators, TED, another important YouTube partner, has been experimenting with crowdsourced translations across thousands of videos in more than a hundred languages. They joined the new translation tools pilot just a few months ago and for the first time combined translated captions with translated titles and descriptions for two thousand videos in 11 languages. They saw major growth in localized watchtime – the channel’s localized watchtime increased from 20% to 35% overall, and in several cases up to 60%.

"For more than five years, we’ve been working to remove the barrier of language from TED’s mission in spreading ideas throughout the world”, says Kristin Windbigler, Director of TED’s Open Translation Project. “As one of our most important partners, YouTube has pushed the boundaries in making our videos not only accessible but also discoverable for viewers around the world.”

Ready to start using these features? Check out the translation tools overview page for more information!

Vladimir Vuskovic, Product Manager, recently watched Deb Roy: The birth of a word

Say hello to the redesigned YouTube mobile app

Monday, July 27, 2015

This story was originally posted on the official YouTube blog. We're excited to be launching a range of the mobile features you've been waiting for. Subscriptions are now front and centre in the app; there’s an easy way for your fans to opt in to all new upload notifications from your channel; and we’re offering simple editing and upload tools, integrated into the YouTube app.

If you’ve watched a YouTube video recently, chances are you did it on your phone or tablet. That’s because today, more than half the views on YouTube are recorded on mobile devices. So to bring you an even better mobile experience, we’re updating the official YouTube apps – making it easier than ever to find videos you love and to create them, too.

The update – available now on Android, mobile web, and soon on iOS – introduces three new tabs:

Home: easily explore and discover videos you'll love, with recommendations based on your watch history as well as playlists personalised just for you.
Subscriptions: find the latest videos from your favourite channels and creators on the new Subscriptions tab. And to help make sure you never miss an upload, you can now tap the bell icon on the channels you love, to get a notification as soon as a new video is posted.

Account: check out your playlists, watch history, and the videos you’ve uploaded, all in one place.

You can also now watch full-screen vertical videos with just a single tap for the very first time.

But YouTube isn’t just about enjoying videos – it’s also a place to express yourself and show the world what you love. With the redesigned app, you can take your creativity to new levels using a new set of video creation tools. You’ve got an amazing camera in your phone or tablet, and now you can trim your footage, tint the image with filters, add music, and upload… all inside the app.

These are just a few of the features we’ve been working on, and you’ll see many more later this year.

Matt Darby, Product Manager, and Omri Amarilio, Product Manager, recently watched "One of those days 2 - Candide Thovex."

60fps Live Streaming on YouTube in HTML5

Thursday, May 21, 2015

We launched 60fps video playback on YouTube a few months ago, and from game walkthroughs to superbike racing, you’ve found all sorts of brilliant ways to make use of higher frame rates.

Now we want to help you take it even further with something new: 60fps live streaming, launching today as an early preview on HTML5-compatible browsers. When you start a live stream on YouTube at 60fps, we’ll transcode your stream into 720p60 and 1080p60, which means silky smooth playback for gaming and other fast-action videos. We’ll also make your stream available in 30fps on devices where high frame rate viewing is not yet available, while we work to expand support in the coming weeks.

We know high frame rates are especially important for gaming streams, so we’ve worked with Elgato and XSplit on new versions of Elgato Game Capture, XSplit Broadcaster and XSplit Gamecaster that support 60fps live streaming to YouTube, available for download starting today. In addition, any app using our live streaming API can add a new high frame rate flag to enable 60fps streaming.

But wait, there’s more! We’ve also added another long-requested feature for live streaming: HTML5 playback. As of this week, YouTube live streams will use an HTML5 player in supported browsers. And because our HTML5 player supports variable speed playback, you can skip backwards in a stream while it’s live and watch at 1.5x or 2x speed to catch back up.

These are the latest in a series of improvements that we’ve been making to live streaming on YouTube and there are plenty more to come, so stay tuned for more very soon. In the meantime, check out some live streams or create your own!

Alan Joyce, Product Manager, recently uploaded a 60fps playthrough of a terrible NES game.

Make your videos even more interactive with cards

Monday, March 16, 2015

As a creator, you’ve probably been using annotations to engage with your viewers for years. But one of the things that you’ve told us is that you need more flexibility with the info that you share through annotations, and—most importantly—you need it to work across screens and especially on mobile. That’s why today we’re introducing cards.

You can think of cards like an evolution of annotations. They can inform your viewers about other videos, merch, playlists, websites and more. They look as beautiful as your videos, are available any time during the video, and yes, they finally work on mobile.

Right now, you can choose from six types of cards: Merchandise, Fundraising, Video, Playlist, Associated Website and Fan Funding. You’ll find a new “Cards” tab in your Video Editor to create and edit them at any time.

Because cards work across mobile and desktop and give you more flexibility to share what you want, our goal is to have these eventually replace annotations. But this will happen only once they can do everything annotations can do today and more. Until then, we’re looking forward to your feedback on cards, including what you want them to do for you in the future.

Check out these Help Centre articles if you want to find out more.

Muli, Product Manager, recently watched “Karl Johan: Limbo time!”

A new way to see and share your world with 360-degree video

Friday, March 13, 2015

You share incredible videos with your fans every second of the day, but what if you could share even more in that video? Like, sharing the entire moment that you’re filming?

You could let viewers see the stage and the crowd of your concert, the sky and the ground as you wingsuit glide, or you could even have a choose-your-own-adventure video where people see a different story depending on where they look. Only you know what’s possible. That’s why today we are starting to support 360-degree video uploads on YouTube, to continue giving you all the best resources to connect with your viewers.

People can watch your videos on the existing YouTube app for Android, and by moving the phone or tablet around they’ll see all the different angles while the video plays. They can do the same on youtube.com or embedded videos on Chrome by using the mouse to drag the point of view around, and we’re working to bring this to iPhone, iPad and other devices soon.

Creating and uploading 360-degree videos on YouTube

To make it easy for you to create and upload 360-degree videos to YouTube, we’ve been working with companies across the industry. Bublcam, Giroptic’s 360cam, IC Real Tech’s Allie, Kodak’s SP360 and RICOH THETA are 360-degree video cameras compatible with YouTube that are available today or are coming soon. You can find more technical information on the video format, along with a script you need to run on the video file to insert the correct metadata. We’re working to make this automatic, but in the meantime, this script will make sure your video uploads to YouTube as a 360-degree video.

If you’re around the YouTube Space L.A., our Creator Tech team is also hosting a technology showcase from now through April, where you can try out these new cameras and learn new techniques from our staff.

Remember when the vantage point of the fisheye lens blew your mind? Now let’s see what you can do with every possible angle at your recording fingertips.

Sanjeev Verma, product manager, recently watched “Tomorrowland 2015 | 360 degrees of Madness”.

Creator Blog

Found in Translation: Language tools for building a global audience

Say hello to the redesigned YouTube mobile app

60fps Live Streaming on YouTube in HTML5

Make your videos even more interactive with cards

A new way to see and share your world with 360-degree video

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