In addition to some changes to our new video page, which we reported in a separate post, here are some things that have launched recently:
Over the past couple of weeks, we've been busy iterating on the new video page design based on your feedback, and we're excited to share some new developments before the page is rolled out to everyone soon. Remember to opt-in here to get a preview of these new features:Highlights view on commentsMany of you indicated that comments could use an overhaul and hoped that was a part of the redesign. We're happy to say that it is. Today, we're introducing a "highlights view" of comments which summarizes top rated comments, uploader comments, video responses and recent comments in a single "front-page story" that you can drill into for more detail. You can see an example on this video and this one. We're continuing to make the highlights better as we learn how people interact with it, so please let us know what you think in the comments below.RatingsWe've also made some improvements to the new like/dislike ratings system. When you like a video, we let you know how many people liked it and disliked it. To help you remember the best videos you've encountered, there's a new area housing all the videos that you liked, called (surprise, surprise) "Videos I Liked." In addition, we listened to your feedback and no longer tie 'Liking' something to your Favorites, which you use more for personal saving. Favoriting a video is now the first option when you click "save"; you can continue to save videos to your Favorites in this manner or create another playlist just by typing in the name. Finally, throughout the site, you'll occasionally see a video marked 'Most Liked' to give you an indication that this is a video other people loved, that you may want to check out. We surface popular videos in many ways, and we hope Most Liked becomes a reliable signal that helps you find quality videos to watch.For quick refresher on the overall video page design, check out this video produced by TheWillofDC:And if you've opted in but want to go back to the old page, you can opt out here.UPDATE: After reading your comments, we'd like to note that some of you are opted in permanently to the new page, which means you are part of our current experiment and are unable to opt out. These kinds of experiments help us learn what works on the page and what doesn't, so that we can build the best possible site for you. We've also heard your feedback on Auto-play interrupting your experience and are working on some improvements.Peter Bradshaw, Software Engineer, recently liked "SOIL & "PIMP" SESSIONS 'Summer Goddess'," and Tyler Morse, Software Engineer, recently liked "Bottle Bank Arcade - TheFunTheory.com - Rolighetsteorin.se."
If you've got a question for the director of Avatar, now's your chance to ask it. The famous director is opening himself up to the YouTube community, allowing our own DaveyBoyz to interview him based on the questions you submit via the Official Avatar Channel on YouTube.
Tens of millions of people in the U.S. experience some kind of hearing impairment and recent studies have predicted that over 700 million people worldwide will suffer from hearing impairment by 2015. To address a clear need, the broadcast industry began running captions on regular video programming in the early 1970s. Today, closed captions on video are more prevalent than ever. But generating captions today can be a time-consuming and complicated process.Making video easily accessible is something we're working hard to address at YouTube. One of the first steps we took was the development of a caption feature in 2008. In November of last year we released auto-captioning for a small, select group of partners. Auto-captioning combines some of the speech-to-text algorithms found in Google's Voice Search to automatically generate video captions when requested by a viewer. The video owner can also download the auto-generated captions, improve them, and upload the new version. Viewers can even choose an option to translate those captions into any one of 50 different languages -- all in just a couple of clicks.Today, we are opening up auto-captions to all YouTube users. There will even be a "request processing" button for un-captioned videos that any video owner can click on if they want to speed up the availability of auto-captions. It will take some time to process all the available video, so here are some things to keep in mind:
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