What happens when you click on a YouTube video? Well, it depends. If the video is embedded in a web page and it's already playing, a click on the video will open a new tab and send you to YouTube's page. Until now, this behavior was annoying because the video started to play from the beginning and you had to pause it or pick up from where you left off. Now YouTube's player is smarter: it pauses the video and opens a YouTube page that continues to play the video seamlessly.
You can try the new feature using the video embedded below. You'll notice that YouTube uses a URL format that lets you link to certain sequence from a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Umj1lvgoI68#t=1m15s
(where 1m15s is the start time)
Another change is that YouTube's watch page lets you pause videos by just clicking on the player.
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An interesting side-effect of YouTube's recent push for higher quality videos is that most videos can be downloaded as MP4 files directly from YouTube. Until now, you could only get FLV files from your browser's cache or using one of the many websites that let you download YouTube videos. In fact, to download the MP4 files, you need to use the same URL like for FLV files and append "&fmt=18":
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=ID&t=SIGNATURE&fmt=18
ID is the video's identification value, SIGNATURE is a value that prevents you from downloading the file just by knowing the ID. You could create this URL by looking at the source code of a YouTube page, but it's much easier to automatically generate it.
One way is to save the following link as a bookmarklet by dragging it to your Links bar (in Firefox, Safari) or right-clicking and adding it to your favorites (in Internet Explorer, Opera):
If you didn't manage to add the bookmarklet, this post has more detailed instructions.
When you want to download a YouTube video, just click on the bookmarklet.
After clicking on the download link, YouTube will try to save the video as "video.mp4". You should enter a more appropriate name if you want to find the video later.
Having to click on the bookmarklet is annoying, so this Greasemonkey script is a better alternative because it adds the download link automatically. It requires the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox or a similar plug-in for userscripts. Opera has built-in support for userscripts, so you only need to go to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Content > JavaScript options, select the directory where you will put your script and copy the script to that directory.
YouTube's MP4 files have a higher resolution, stereo sound and can be played with applications like VLC, MPlayer, iTunes, QuickTime. Not all YouTube videos can be downloaded as MP4 files and the fallback format is FLV.
Note that YouTube's terms of use require you "not to access User Submissions or YouTube Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Website itself, the YouTube Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate," so these scripts could break YouTube's policies. The scripts only download files that are used by YouTube's player, so you may also find the videos in your browser's cache.
Update: You no longer have to right-click and select "save link as" because YouTube sends the right MIME type. Just click on the download link.
Update 2: If the video is available in HD, the bookmarklet and the script download the HD version. Thanks, pepemosca!
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ctivism today isn't limited to picket lines and marches on the Mall — people have taken their movements to the web, and YouTube has become an important platform for exposure. Every day, people use YouTube to fight for causes, whether they're hunger-striking celebrities like Mia Farrow, or 9-year-olds trying to save the neighborhood kickball lot from destruction. On Citizentube, our YouTube blog that chronicles the way people use video to change the world, we've seen digital activists use YouTube in three basic ways: to shine a light on issues that need more exposure, to drive action around causes they care about, and to create connections between people and organizations that share their desire to make a difference.
Some of the most compelling videos we see are those that spotlight important issues that aren't being covered in the mainstream media. Witness, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to document human rights abuses around the world through video, offers an excellent example — this video from their YouTube channel chronicles the clashes between the Burmese military and rural ethnic minorities. Invisiblepeople.tv, a relative newcomer to YouTube, is taking a similar approach by tackling a more domestic issue: homelessness. This summer, the group is traveling across America to document the real, unedited stories of people living on the streets, in tent communes and in cars — and posting all of the footage to their YouTube channel. And of course we've seen protesters in Iran, China and elsewhere use YouTube to amplify their causes far beyond national borders.
Other individuals and nonprofits are using YouTube as a direct advocacy tool, experimenting with ways to drive action from their videos to a particular cause. And we're building new products to make it even easier for them to do this effectively. For example, in March, we launched a tool called "Call to Action," which allows nonprofit organizations to drive traffic from an in-video overlay to an off-site page where they can collect donations, signatures or email addresses. Shortly after launch, to commemorate World Water Day, we featured a video from charity:water on the YouTube homepage that used a call-to-action overlay to encourage YouTube users to donate money to build wells and provide clean, safe drinking water for those who don't have it. Through YouTube, charity:water was able to raise over $10,000 in one day — enough to build two brand-new wells in the Central African Republic and give over 150 people clean drinking water for 20 years.
Yet some of the most innovative uses of YouTube for digital activism are those that leverage the communities that exist on YouTube around particular causes. YouTube is inherently a social experience and many of our users are hungry to partner and collaborate with others who share their passions. Last December, popular YouTube users the Vlogbrothers launched the "Project for Awesome," a campaign which asked fellow budding change-makers to make videos about their favorite charities. Over 1,200 people joined the effort to promote their cause of choice. And just a few weeks ago, in partnership with President Obama's launch of serve.gov, we created "Video Volunteers", a new platform on YouTube which connects nonprofits that lack video resources with proven video-makers who want to use their skills to do good. There are already hundreds of posts from nonprofits seeking help on the Video Volunteers YouTube channel, so if you're interested in creating a video for an organization, head over to the channel now and find a cause you care about.
Activism is constantly evolving on YouTube, so we'll keep posting fresh accounts of how citizens and nonprofits are changing the world, one video at a time, on Citizentube.
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YouTube test a stereoscopic player for watching videos in 3D. If you go to this video, you'll notice a drop-down that includes some options for red/cyan and amber/blue 3D glasses and some options that don't require glasses.
"Stereoscopy, stereoscopic imaging or 3-D (three-dimensional) imaging is any technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual information or creating the illusion of depth in an image. The illusion of depth in a photograph, movie, or other two-dimensional image is created by presenting a slightly different image to each eye," explains Wikipedia.
To enable the 3D player, you need to add the following tag to one of your videos: yt3d:enable=true. Pete, a Google employee, has more information about this experimental feature:
I'm the developer working on the stereoscopic player as a 20% project. It's currently very early, hence the silly bugs like swapping the eyes for the anaglyph modes. A fix for this is in the works.
The current tags are provisional and may change or expand. They are:
yt3d:enable=true Enables the view mode.
yt3d:aspect=3:4 Sets the aspect of the encoded video.
yt3d:swap=true Swaps the left and right sources. You may need to add this to videos when the player with fixed anaglyph modes ships.
You can try the new feature by searching for yt3d:enable=true.
{ via Search Engine Roundtable }