YouTube Browse, Video Editor And Manager Updated

While closing some of the company’s lesser popular services, Google’s popular services such as Google+ or YouTube have received plenty of updates in the past. Google today announced that they have updated YouTube’s browse, video editor and video manager pages. Channels have moved into the focus on YouTube with recent updates, and the new browse pages reflects that. According to Google the updated page helps users “find even more great Channels on YouTube”.

The new browse page on YouTube divides contents into categories on the left side. You can now browse categories like gaming, science and technology, or sports more easily. Each page displays the most viewed videos at the top followed by popular videos and select channels

Here is is then possible to click on a specific video to watch that video on YouTube, or on a channel name to open that channel on the website. YouTube users and companies listed on the pages should benefit highly from the new exposure.

YouTube has improved the capabilities and look and feel of the site’s video editor. The video editor has received a visual overhaul, a “cool new timeline, easier clip trimming and a moving playhead”.

One interesting feature that is now available is the ability to join multiple uploaded videos into one. This is done by dragging and dropping the videos on the timeline. The video editor is a useful tool for basic or last minute video editing. On the downside, it does not come close to the functionality that desktop applications like VirtualDub provide.

Last December’s update of the Video Manager did not play well with many YouTube content producers. The new video manager resolves some of the issues that users had with the update. Likes and dislike statistics have for instance been re-added to the manager interface. Sorting videos by popularity has also returned.

The video manager furthermore has received a visual update, an improved “display of scheduled uploads and claimed videos”, and a search history.

You can read the announcement over at the official YouTube blog.

YouTube Slam, Vote For YouTube Videos

Logged in YouTube users can vote for videos by clicking on the like or dislike buttons displayed underneath each video. The total number of likes and dislikes are then displayed on the video page.

YouTube is taking that concept a step further with YouTube Slam, a new feature where videos are battling it out against each other.

The idea is simple: Promote talented video makers on YouTube with the help of Slam. Three different games are currently offered, comedy, cute and bizarre slam.

Two videos are displayed on the same page to the user. YouTube users now watch both videos and vote for one that they like more. The video they like gets a vote which moves it up on the overall leaderboard.

A question like “which one’s funnier” is displayed on the battle page. Videos are not obviously played at the same time, even though that’s possible by clicking play on both at the same time.

Users can also click on the skip button to skip the decision and load two new videos that they can watch and vote for.

Videos are exchanged on a weekly basis with about a thousand videos to watch in each category each week. That’s 3000 videos per week and 12000 per month.

YouTube users who do not want to vote can visit the leaderboard pages right away to watch the top videos of the current week and past weeks. A play all button is available too.

YouTube Slam serves a number of purposes. It provides users with an never ending wave of upcoming videos to watch, and video makers with an opportunity to gain extra exposure if their videos are selected by YouTube to participate in a weekly battle.

The most popular category by far currently is Comedy Slam with about four times the number of total votes.

YouTube Slam could become highly popular with the “funny” or “cute” video crowd. What’s your take on the new service?

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Play YouTube Videos Nonstop

You do not have that many options when it comes to watching multiple videos about a certain topic on YouTube. Logged in YouTube users can create playlists, everyone else could play a playlist if available, or click on individual videos that are listed in the search results, categories or video suggestions.

Show Me Nonstop is a third party service that offers an alternative that is most appealing to broadband users. The free service will play videos about a certain topic for as long as the user wants.

All it takes is to enter a search phrase into the form on the page to start playing videos nonstop on the site. You could enter movie trailers 2012, kittens, or a band name to start watching high definition versions about the selected search term for as long as you want.

Show Me Nonstop seems to load the high definition version of a video whenever it is available on YouTube. The next video is automatically loaded whenever the previous video ends, without user interaction.

No controls are available, which is one of the issues that users may experience, considering that this means no pausing or replaying a video. A click on the video does however skip the video that is currently playing to load the next video in the queue.

The only other control that is available is the Show Me button at the bottom of the screen. This opens the search form again with options to refine the search or search for a new term on YouTube.

Show Me Nonstop is a useful services for uses who’d like to watch multiple related YouTube videos. It works very well for specialized search terms. It is also interesting to note that you will see new videos when you search for the same term again (provided there are enough videos available on YouTube).

Visit Show Me Nonstop to start watching right away. (via)

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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VideoDropper, Save YouTube Videos To Your Dropbox Storage

Dropbox is more than just another cloud file hosting and synchronization service. It is a very flexible service that can be used for advanced tasks, for instance to load torrents into uTorrent remotely.

VideoDropper is a free add-on for Dropbox that can be used to save YouTube videos into Dropbox. This can be useful under certain circumstances, for instance if you cannot view YouTube videos at your current location or are not allowed to do so. Many users email YouTube video urls that they cannot view right away to one of their email accounts to view them later on another computer.

VideoDropper offers an alternative to that. The program offers two core benefits: It is easy to use, and since videos are stored in the Dropbox account, they will also be synchronized automatically with all connected devices once they come online the next time.

YouTube users who often get the dreaded “video not available in your country” message benefit from the service as well, as it can be used to bypass those restrictions.

First thing that you need to do is to connect VideoDropper with your Dropbox account. Just visit the web page and click on the Login with your Dropbox link to connect the services. You can also sign up for a new Dropbox account if you do not have one or want to use a secondary account for the videos.

You can then start to paste YouTube urls into the form so that they are automatically downloaded to the connected Dropbox account. Videos can be downloaded in their original format, or optimized for iPhone or iPod Touch devices.

All videos are added to a queue before they are downloaded. It can take a few minutes before they start to appear in the Dropbox.

Users who do not want to paste YouTube video urls can alternatively use a bookmarklet in the browser to make the process convenient. All videos are saved into the root Dropbox folder. This could become a issue for users who download dozens of videos from YouTube regularly.

VideoDropper offers an interesting service for Dropbox users who want to download YouTube videos or use Dropbox as a way to store videos that they cannot watch right away.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Clear Your YouTube Viewing History, Workaround

Did you know that YouTube saves information about every video that you view on the video hosting site when you are logged into your Google account and also when you are not? And that those video views are saved indefinitely by the service?

The saving of YouTube video views may be a privacy issue to some users. While you could say that logging out of your account after using the computer resolves the issue, it is not that easy. Why? Because YouTube keeps track of viewed videos even if you are not logged into a Google account or a YouTube account.

Just visit the site, make sure you are not logged in and start watching a video. Once you are finished visit the YouTube History page. You should see that video listed there along with other videos that you have watched in the past while logged out of your Google or YouTube account.

YouTube uses cookies to monitor a user’s viewing history even if they are not logged in. Is that a privacy issue? I say it is, especially if you are not the only user who uses the computer.

To make matters worse, there is only one option to delete the viewing history. Visit the YouTube viewing history page. Actually, you need to visit the page twice if you watch videos when you are logged in and logged out.

You can delete individual videos by selecting them first and clicking the remove button afterwards, or all videos with a click on the clear all viewing history button.

This triggers the following prompt where you have to confirm the removal.

If you are never logged into Youtube or Google when viewing videos on YouTube, you can clear the viewing history automatically by deleting all YouTube cookies regularly (for instance on shutdown of the browser). Check out How To Clear Individual Cookies In Google Chrome or Selectively Block Cookies on Internet Explorer and Firefox In Realtime).

Users who are logged into their account when they view videos need to clear the viewing history manually regularly if they are concerned about their privacy.

There is another option for users who do not need a YouTube account but want to view videos. The core issue here is that YouTube will record the history when they are logged into other Google services. One option would be to launch YouTube in private browsing mode. Chrome users could use the Ghost Incognito extension to automate that process. This would log out the user automatically when logged in, and also clear cookies and other data on exit.

Does anyone know a better way of clearing YouTube’s viewing history? Let me know in the comments.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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YouTube Ratings Preview, See YouTube Video Ratings Everywhere

Youtube account owners can not only upload and view videos on the world’s most popular video hosting website, they can also write comments and rate videos with a simple up and down vote. These ratings sometimes can help you make decisions about a video before you have watched it. The problem here is that YouTube does not display those ratings on many pages. Video ratings are not displayed on the homepage, not on searches and not when you click on a user profile.

You only get to see video ratings when you click on the video to open the play video screen on YouTube where you can watch the video.

That’s a usability issue, considering that many users would use the ratings of a video to determine whether they want to watch it or not. While it certainly should not be the only thing you are looking at, it can move your decision into a certain direction. Would you rather watch a video with 1000 positive and no negative ratings or one with no positive and 1000 negative ratings about a topic of interest?

YouTube Ratings Preview is a free extension for the Google Chrome web browser that adds video ratings to all YouTube pages. It does so elegantly and without changing the look and feel of the YouTube website.

Once installed you will notice a new tiny bar below each video on the video hosting site that displays the number of positive votes in green and the number of negative votes in red.

You can furthermore hover over the bar to see the positive vote count as a percentage value and the number of total ratings a video has received on the site.

Google Chrome users can download and install YouTube Ratings Preview from the Chrome Web Store.

Firefox users; Do you know of a comparable add-on for the web browser? Let me know in the comments.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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How To Use YouTube To Increase Your iTunes Song Collection

The Internet offers many different options for users to increase their song collection. Among the options are to record Internet radio with tools like Streamwriter or Stream Harvester, or to download and convert Youtube videos to do the same. This guide explains how you can increase your iTunes song collection, or your song collection in general, with the help of YouTube.

For that we need to look at two things. First we need to download and convert YouTube videos and then add them to the song collection. There are lots of options to download YouTube videos, but in this guide I will concentrate on methods that make it as easy as possible.

First option is the web based service Youtube to Mp3. It is one of the easiest to use if you only want to download and convert a handful of YouTube music videos to mp3 to add them to your iTunes music collection.

All that needs to be done is to paste a YouTube video url into the form on the site. A click on the convert video button displays information about the video and an option to download the mp3.

Add-ons are available for Firefox and Google Chrome that display the download mp3 link next to YouTube videos directly making the process more comfortable.

The second option is a desktop program for Windows that can mass download YouTube videos and convert them to mp3 locally. Download and install Free FLV Converter from the developer website over at Koyotesoft. Make sure you pay attention to the installation dialog if you do not want a new search provider or search page in your default web browser.

Once installed enter a search term on the Search Video page and click on Search. This displays a list of YouTube video matches. Before you now start to download videos switch to the TubeQueue tab and select Audio only as the output format. This automatically converts downloaded videos to mp3 so that it is not necessary to convert the files manually. You can configure output settings in detail here. If you prefer a different output bitrate or audio codec you can configure it here.

Switch back to the Search Video tab and click the Download button to start downloading all the selected files. The program saves and converts the videos automatically so that you end up with audio files that you can import into iTunes.

Adding the new songs to iTunes is actually not a big problem. One could drag and drop songs or folders to the iTunes window to add them, launch them in iTunes or select File > Add File or Folder to iTunes.

The two methods describes above can be used to add new songs found on YouTube to iTunes or the local mp3 collection. Is it legal? That depends largely on your local laws. Consult a lawyer if you are unsure.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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