Australia Blog
News and rising stars from YouTube Australia
YouTube Reveals Video Analytics Tool For All Users
Thursday 27 March 2008
Whether a YouTube video has 10 views or 10,000,000, people always want to know the same thing: who's watching this? Where do viewers come from? How did they find my video?
Finally, we have some answers. Today we're releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.
How does this help you? Well, using these metrics, you can increase your videos' view counts and improve your popularity on the site. For instance, you might learn that your videos are most popular on Wednesdays, that you have a huge following in Spain, or that new videos that play off previous content become more popular more quickly. With this information, you can concentrate on creating compelling new content that appeals to your target audiences, and post these videos on days you know these viewers are on the site. (Maybe even post your next video in Spanish?) And for those of you who are also
partners
, the more popular a video is, the more advertising revenue it can generate.
We'll be making new features and additional information available fairly quickly -- like a specific breakdown of how viewers discovered the video -- so keep an eye out as we roll out new features. As for now, you can find currently available metrics by clicking under the "About this Video" button under "My account > Videos, Favourites, Playlists > Manage my Videos."
The YouTube Team
YouTube Videos in High Quality
Monday 24 March 2008
You may have noticed that we're now giving you the option of watching some YouTube videos in higher quality. We're making these streams available on certain videos, based upon the source file uploaded to us, and over time you'll find a greater percentage of the library is available to view in higher quality. This feature applies to all eligible videos uploaded from the YouTube community, and is not restricted to partner content, so everyone can enjoy this upgrade.
How do you watch higher quality videos? On your
Account
page you're now able to choose "always show me higher quality when available" or "never show me higher quality." We suggest you select "always show me..." only if you have a fast internet connection, otherwise you might find that videos don't play as quickly or smoothly as you're used to. Higher quality videos also have a link right below the video player which will allow you to select between the normal or higher quality settings.
We want to help everyone understand that YouTube will continue to evolve with the videos you're creating. We're especially excited about offering this upgrade in video quality to our community of filmmakers and animators, who have been requesting this feature for some time. As more of you guys produce great-looking videos, we want to make sure they can be seen in all their glory. So we'll continue to increase quality behind the scenes and make tweaks to support your uploads. (Remember, we can now support uploads up to 1GB in size.)
You may also wonder how video quality is chosen. Our general philosophy is to make sure that as many people as possible can access YouTube and that videos start quickly and play smoothly. That's one reason why you don't see us racing to call this "Super Duper YouTube HD," because most people don't want to wait a long time for videos to play.
Keep creating and watching...
The YouTube Team
YouTube Awards -- Winners Announced!
Friday 21 March 2008
And the results are in! Hundreds of thousands votes were cast during the week-long voting process, and 12 videos emerged victorious in their respective categories. Head over
here
to see the winners or click
here
to review all the nominees, which were largely defined as the videos you favourited to watch again and again, that generated the most discussion or views, and/or made some kind of societal impact.
Tell us what you thought about this year's awards experience and how we could make it better in the future. More community involvement is definitely on the top of the list, as is giving the event more of a real-world presence (beyond the the mammoth trophy winners will receive).
Meanwhile, upload those videos and start building up an audience for them. Anything could happen in 2008...
Best wishes,
The YouTube Team
The Vancouver Film School/YouTube Scholarship Competition
Tuesday 18 March 2008
Film schools have helped produce some of the greatest filmmakers of all
time -- Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, to name a few. But, in
many ways, they've also been restricted to a select few.
Which is why I'm pleased to report that today marks the start of a
partnership between YouTube and the
Vancouver Film School
to make film school accessible to up-and-coming filmmakers all over the world!
Aspiring directors, actors, animators, screenwriters – even sound
designers – in all of YouTube's 19 countries are invited to step up to
the challenge in order to win one of three scholarships to any of
Vancouver Film School's 14 outstanding educational programmes.
After Vancouver Film School whittles down the submission pool to top applicants, the YouTube community will vote for the three scholarship winners.
This is your chance to continue the democratization of filmmaking and to determine who some of our brightest future film stars might be.
Check out the
competition
and visit our
FAQs
to confirm your eligibility and pick up tips on creating a top-notch entry.
Happy filmmaking,
Sara P.
YouTube Film
The YouTube Awards Are Back!
Thursday 13 March 2008
In 2007, we witnessed an explosion of ideas and creativity on YouTube. You showed us that online video is not just a way to share pet and baby videos (though it is certainly good for that, too), but rather it can be so much more: a showcase for aspiring artists, a megaphone for everyday people, a way to learn new skills and even to change the political process.
In recognition of all of these vibrant uses of and communities on YouTube, we expanded the awards this year to include five new categories -- Best Short Film, Best Political Video, Best Sports Video, Best Eyewitness Video, and Best Instructional Video – for a total of 12. Each category now has six nominees instead of 10 (a special nod to those of you with short attention spans). If you want to vote local,
DarkHeartProductions
is representin' strong for Australia.
You'll also notice that the structure of the awards and the way voting works look a little different this year. Every time you refresh the page, the order of the categories and the featured thumbnail change in a random order so there can be no bias in the way the content is viewed or presented.
As you might imagine, whittling down any category to six videos was a gargantuan task and already we'll say we're sorry to the hundreds/thousands of deserving content creators who didn't get nominated. But you can't exactly blame us - you made these videos memorable and helped them rise to the top of the YouTube charts. The nominees reflect some of the most buzzed-about videos on the site, particularly the ones you bookmarked to watch later (and presumably again and again).
So head over to our
YouTube Video Awards channel
to start watching and voting for some of the videos that defined '07. You can vote once per day (though you may not change your vote on the same day) and you have until 11:59pm PT on March 19, 2008, to do so. Winners will be announced on March 21, 2008, at which point we'll feature them on
this page
as well as overnight them
a trophy like no other
(and believe us when we say this). Winners will also get a special invitation to a YouTube event later this year.
Good luck and have fun!
The YouTube Team
YouTube Everywhere
Tuesday 11 March 2008
We try really hard to make YouTube as open as possible. Anyone can upload and view videos, which can be embedded anywhere and viewed on all kinds of different devices. And, of course, anyone can participate in our community by commenting on videos, rating them, and sharing them with friends.
Nevertheless, we worried that we weren't open enough. So, we pulled some all-nighters and added some powerful new ways to integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more.
For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and web communities they already love and visit regularly. For partners and developers, YouTube has grown into much more than a website. It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device. We now provide a complete set of (CRUD) capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube "cloud," managed by us. We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause. Meanwhile, we provide full access to our substantial video library, enabling you to attract users and enhance the experience on your site. It's all free, and it's available to everyone, starting now.
Technically, we have introduced some new APIs. (This is just a geeky acronym for Awesomely Powerful Interactions, which is what users are now capable of performing from just about anywhere.) Building upon our existing APIs for querying the YouTube library and playing embedded YouTube videos, we have added the following new API services for external developers and partners:
Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
Fetch localised standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
Perform custom queries optimised for 18 international locales
Customise player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software
The number of possible new applications is endless.
Electronic Arts
has enabled gamers to capture videos of fantastical user-generated creatures from their upcoming game, Spore, and publish these directly into YouTube. The
University of California, Berkeley
is bringing free educational content to the world, enhancing their open source lecture capture and delivery system to publish videos automatically into YouTube.
Animoto
enables its users to create personalised, professional-quality music videos from their own photos and upload them directly to YouTube.
Tivo
is providing its users a rich and highly participative YouTube viewing experience on the television. For more details about the innovative ways these other partners are utilising YouTube APIs, see our
case studies
.
What will you build with our new APIs? The possibilities are endless. Learn more about the exciting new features in this release from
our engineers
or visit
Google Code
to get started now. We can't wait to see what you create.
Enjoy,
Jim Patterson, Product Management
The YouTube Team
Site Update
Monday 3 March 2008
The following features are now appearing on YouTube. Check out the goods...
CHARACTER COUNTER FOR VIDEO COMMENTS
The visual counter lets you know exactly how many characters you have left before approaching the limit. Now you will always know how many words you can fit in before hitting 'submit'.
CONTEXTUAL HELP IN MY ACCOUNT
You'll notice some new help icons next to features on your
account
. To see instructions and helpful information related to managing things like your
channel design
and
videos
, just hover over the " ? " icons. Click the "read more" link to go directly to the full article related to that particular feature in our Help Centre.
EXPERIMENTAL PERSONALISED HOMEPAGE BETA
We just launched a new experimental personalised YouTube homepage. Check out all the details in our
previous blog post
before you opt in to the beta by clicking
here
.
And now, we grace you with the stylings of
pzottolo
in the latest edition of YouTube News:
Best,
The YouTube Team
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YouTube Reveals Video Analytics Tool For All Users
YouTube Videos in High Quality
YouTube Awards -- Winners Announced!
The Vancouver Film School/YouTube Scholarship Comp...
The YouTube Awards Are Back!
YouTube Everywhere
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