YouTube Australia Blog

Get More Into: Australia’s Laneway Festival

Friday, 2 March 2012

Cross-posted from the YouTube Official Blog. From big-time dream-pop to big-haired rock & roll, there are plenty of reasons to love festival season in the Southern hemisphere. Following the pumped up kicks, rockabilly licks, and modern-day lullabies that brought sold out crowds across Australia for Big Day Out, we spent the day hanging at St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Sydney. What began as a packed side-alley show in Melbourne has quickly developed into a national touring event and a favourite summer festival.

Between sets in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Auckland, and Singapore, here’s what some of Laneway’s biggest names had to say about touring down under, the Laneway vibe, and their favorite inspirational acts on YouTube:

The Horrors get into psychadelic pop and out-of-this world sounds of Connan Mockasin

Multi-instrumentalist, arranger, producer and vocalist Jonti talks big beats and big sounds of Flying Lotus

Hear what outstanding female vocalist have inspired The Drums to come together as a band

Recorded in their same hometown, Twin Shadows’ At My Heels brings laughs & tears to electronic pop duo Chairlift

M83, known the world over for reverb effects and loud instrumentals, has his first encounter with the electronic music of Jean Michel Jarre

The Laneway crew’s just completed their tour but you can enjoy your own little taste of this iconic Australian festival right here on YouTube. Ernesto Soriano III, YouTube Australia, recently watched “Toro y Moi ‘Still Sound’.”

Captions for all: more options for your viewing and reading pleasure

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

Crossposted from the YouTube Official Blog.
Since we first announced caption support in 2006, YouTube creators have uploaded more than 1.6 million videos with captions, growing steadily each year. We’ve also enabled automatic captions for 135 million videos, more than tripling the number of captioned videos available since July 2011. YouTube and Google’s video accessibility team have been hard at work, and we wanted to let you know about some of our progress over the past few months:
For YouTube viewers

More languages: We now support automatic captions and transcript synchronization in Japanese, Korean, and English. Speech recognition for those languages makes it easier for video owners to create captions from a plain transcript. Video owners can also add captions and subtitles in 155 supported languages and dialects, from Afar to Zulu. In Movies and Shows, you can even find out which subtitle languages are available before deciding to rent. Search for videos with captions: Looking for that great quote from a video on YouTube? Add ", cc" to any search, or after searching, click Filter > CC to only see results with closed captions. Caption settings: While watching a video, you can change the way the captions look by clicking on the “CC” icon and then the “Settings...” menu item. This includes changing the font size or colors used, and we’re planning to make this available on other platforms and add more options soon. Broadcast caption support: If the channel owner provides a video caption file in a broadcast format, we now support its position and style information, just like you’d see on TV. This means the text can appear near the character who is speaking, italicized to indicate an off-camera narrator, or even scrolling if the original captions were generated in a real-time mode. Check out this little demo from CPC to see how it looks, or even watch a rental movie with captions like those available from The Walt Disney Studios.For YouTube creatorsMore supported formats: YouTube now supports many of the common caption formats used by broadcasters, such as .SCC, .CAP, EBU-STL, and others. If you have closed captions that you created for TV or DVDs, we'll handle the conversion for you.MPEG-2 caption import: If you upload an MPEG-2 video file that contains closed captions with CEA-608 encoding, we'll import the captions along with the video and create YouTube captions. For example, the nonprofit organization Public.Resource.Org recently added thousands of public domain videos with closed captions to YouTube, coming from government agencies like the National Archives. Here’s some insight from Carl Malamud, President, Public.Resource.Org: Many of the DVDs and VHS tapes lying around in our vaults and attics--particularly those that were produced by governments and others that care about accessibility of their videos--already have Closed Captions embedded in them. Pulling that information out automatically and making it visible on YouTube means that these videos will continue to be accessible to new generations of viewers.Along with the millions of people like myself who rely on captions and subtitles, we were very encouraged when the Federal Communications Commission published rules governing closed captioning requirements for video on the web, whether that’s to your computer, tablet, phone or other device. We hope these new regulations will drive captions closer to becoming ubiquitous for video everywhere, and in the meantime we’ll keep developing more ways for you to enjoy all the great channels on YouTube. Ken Harrenstien, software engineer, recently rented “Cars 2” and was ecstatic to see its awesome captions.

Get More Into: Big Day Out and the Australian music scene

Monday, 27 February 2012

Cross-posted from the YouTube Official Blog.While those in the Northern hemisphere hit the slopes (Shaun White, anyone?) and anxiously await the first signs of spring, the Australian summer is all about the outdoors. Music lovers are flocking to the land down under where summer festival season is alive and rocking, and even more are coming to YouTube to catch all the sights and sounds. During the Australian Recording Industry Association awards, we asked a few of your favorite Aussie musicianswhat YouTube videos get them pumped up. We rang in the new year with a live streamed sustainable arts & music festival. And here, in the heart of summer 2012, we asked three of your favourite musicians in town for Big Day Outhow they get into music in YouTubeThe Vaccines: all from different backgrounds & tastes and less than a year old as a band, see what live gigshelped inspire the boys from West London to record their first album in just under a month late last year:The Living End: with six albums, each one a milestone, watch legendary Aussie rockers get into their favorite 80s anthems, from big wigs to big gigs:Foster The People: From relative obscurity to one of the most talked about bands on the globe (to the tune of more than 63 million views on YouTube!) watch what mischievious musicians have inspired these pumped-up kicks through sold-out shows all across Australia:So if you’re on a ski lift, by a fire, or just waiting around till the snow thaws...we hope you can enjoy a taste of the Aussie music summer, right here on YouTube. Ernesto Soriano III, YouTube Australia, recently watched “The Vaccines: Wetsuit instagram video.”

Game on: YouTube Creator Playbook Version 2 now available

Friday, 24 February 2012

This is a cross-post from The Official YouTube Blog.When we first released the YouTube Creator Playbook with tips for succeeding on YouTube, things were a little different. You didn’t have all the new channel features, the homepage didn’t yet have a guide to help you find and follow to channels you like, and you were uploading 48 hours a minute. As we work on the site, we want to make sure you’re the first to know every tip and trick to succeed on YouTube, so today we’re launching version two of the YouTube Creator Playbook. In addition to these updates, almost every page includes your feedback (thank you!). Here’s a few of the key things to look for in the new version: New channel & homepage sectionWith the launch of our new channel pages and updated homepage, we’ve created a new section on how to organize your videos for different audiences, and how to program your channel to help you make the most of the feed on the YouTube homepage. Go globalYour channel reaches a global audience, so we’ve added a new section to help creators create, program, and optimize for audiences around the world. Updates to annotations, playlists, publishing and moreYour feedback and new features helped us update much of the playbook on topics like annotations, playlists & video responses and call to actions.GlossaryIf you’re new to YouTube or the Creator Playbook, we’ve included a glossary to help you quickly learn all the site’s features, and the strategies, terms, and topics used in the playbook.We hope this update to the YouTube Creator Playbook is a helpful tool if you’re just coming to YouTube for the first time, as well as help YouTube pros quickly learn new features to keep expanding your audience. We’ll be talking more about the new playbook during our Partner Meet-Up Livestream on YouTube.com/youtube at 5pm PT today.Ryan Nugent, audience development strategist, recently watched “Rodrigo y Gabriela and C.U.B.A. - Area 52 Album Trailer.”

Holy Nyans! 60 hours per minute and 4 billion views a day on YouTube

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

This is a cross-post from the Official YouTube blog.
Since the dawn of YouTube we’ve been sharing the hours of video you upload every minute. In 2007 we started at six hours, then in 2010 we were at 24 hours, then 35, then 48, and now...60 hours of video every minute, an increase of more than 30 percent in the last eight months. In other words, you’re uploading one hour of video to YouTube every second. Tick, tock, tick, tock — that’s 4 hours right there!

In the past we’ve made charts and infographics to describe the kind of mind-boggling engagement you’re driving, and this time we let our dataheads run wild. They came back to us with onehourpersecond.com — an interactive collection of what happens in a YouTube second. Here’s a sample:

For all the hours of video you’re uploading—you’re watching more as well; we’ve now exceeded four billion video views globally every day. That’s up 25 percent in the last eight months and the equivalent of more than half the world’s population watching a video every day, the same number as there are US $1 bills in circulation, the same as number of years since there was water on Mars...it’s a big number, and you’re making it bigger every day.

With more original Channels rolling out this year, a new homepage to help you find and follow Channels you love, and new tools for creators always on the horizon, we’re excited to see how many times you’ll grow these numbers this year!

The YouTube Team recently watched “The Joy of Books.”

A global search for the world's best storytellers

Thursday, 19 January 2012

Cross-posted from the Official YouTube BlogOne of the best parts of working at YouTube is helping connect creative voices from around the globe with the audiences they deserve. So, we've teamed up with Ridley Scott and Scott Free London, the Venice Film Festival, and Emirates to create Your Film Festival, a global competition that will provide one deserving entrant with a half million US dollars to work on their next great story. Here’s an overview:Starting February 2, you can submit your short, story-driven videos (15 minutes or less) on Youtube.com/yourfilmfestival. Entry is free and open to people 18 years of age and above, and all genres and formats are welcome: live action short, animation, documentary, web-series episode, TV pilot — you name it. Your video must be story-driven, and cannot have been publicly shown or distributed prior to January 1, 2010. Full rules are available on the Your Film Festival Channel.From there, the Scott Free team will select 50 semi-finalists from across the globe by June 2012. YouTube users will then vote for their favorites to select 10 finalists, whose videos will then be screened at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. A jury led by Ridley Scott will crown one grand prize winner, who will receive a $500,000 production grant to work with Scott’s team to create a new story for the world to see.For more information, check out the Your Film Festival Channel, and get your entries in before March 31 at midnight ET.We can't wait to see what you've got.Nate Weinstein, entertainment marketing manager, recently watched “Panic Attack."

Sixty YouTube Space Lab Finalists Announced: Vote Now For Your Favorites

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

A few months ago we set 14-18 year olds the bold challenge to design a science experiment that could be performed by NASA aboard the International Space Station, something that has traditionally been the preserve of qualified astronauts and scientists. Coming up with a suitable idea required huge imagination, passion and scientific curiosity, which is why we were thrilled with your response—we received a total of 2,000 video submissions from students in more than 80 countries!

Expert scientists helped us check and rank all of the entries, and today we are very proud to announce the sixty finalists. All of their submissions can now be viewed on the YouTube.com/SpaceLab Channel, and from 17-24 January, you can vote for the ones you want to win. We need your help selecting the six regional winners, and ultimately the two global winners that will have their experiments performed 400 kilometers above Earth and live streamed on YouTube. Start voting today.

Among the finalists for the Asia-Pacific region were three teams of Australian students: Wyatt McCoach and Forrest Gerner and Thomas Gambuti, Francesca Mcgrath, and Ruby Wright in the 14-16 year-old category as well as Luke Ditria and Johnny Udall in the 17-18 year-old category.

And remember, the channel is also a launchpad to some of the best space and science videos on YouTube. We’ve already received more than 39 million combined video views worldwide and we’re adding new videos and playlists regularly, like this new playlist about the mysteries of the Red Planet. Subscribe to the channel to keep up to date with all the latest content.
Didn’t make it to the final round? Check out the newly launched Google Science Fair 2012 for another chance to enter an amazing global science competition. Zahaan Bharmal, YouTube Space Lab lead, recently watched “Living in Space: 225,000 Miles Above Earth.”

Australia Blog