Do you just login to YouTube to search for and watch your favorite videos? Or maybe upload a new video and share it with your friends? YouTube can do more than just that. It has included some new features – some of them currently in the experimental stage – that can make your YouTube experience more exciting and certainly more fun. Here’s a sneak peek of the less-known exciting features of YouTube, available for free, brought together in a place they call the “TestTube”.
YouTube Slam: It is an experiment that was introduced by the Google Research team as a new way of video discovery, in order to find out the next viral sensation among user-generated videos. Every day, the Google team puts up two videos head to head in each category – like Comedy, Cute, Music, Bizarre and Dance – and users get to vote for their choice. They also get bonus points if the video chosen by them wins the round. Users can then also compete to earn a place in the leaderboards in this fun and simple game of voting. It also helps YouTube to popularize user-generated videos.
YouTube Leanback: You guessed it right. With this feature, you can “lean back” on your couch and end enjoy YouTube just like TV. What’s more, it even comes with an Android app that converts your phone into a remote control so that you get effortless viewing experience just like in your living room. The Leanback feature divides the YouTube videos into various categories. So you just need to pick your interests and then just sit back and enjoy. The interests are available over a wide range – comedy, entertainment, news and more. It also includes a personal feed section based on your preferences and settings.
Relax and enjoy YouTube Leanback!
Comment Search: This feature is not available anywhere in the normal interface and it can only be found in the “Testube”. Here you can search for terms in individual user comments along with the video on which the comment was made.
Video Editor: YouTube has also got an online movie maker like video editor in which users get to edit their own uploaded videos. The features of the Video editor include video joining, video trimming, introducing video transitions and much more.
Edit your videos using the Video Editor.
Caption Editor: Make your YouTube videos more popular by adding closed captions to it on CaptionTube. CaptionTube provides an interactive interface and improved precision with a scalable timeline that lets you insert and edit captions more accurately. CaptionTube can also help you make subtitles for your videos.
Insert Captions to your videos on CaptionTube.
HTML5 Video Player: This feature uses the HTML 5 video player instead of the usual Adobe Flash Player for playing YouTube videos. So if you have a browser that supports HTML5, you can watch YouTube videos even if you don’t have the Flash Player.
YouTube Music Discovery: Some of us just tune into YouTube just to listen to music from various artists. YouTube Music Discovery is meant just for them. Just put a song, an artist or an album in the search box and YouTube creates a Playlist just for you. Enjoy your favorite music and discover new songs with YouTube Music Discovery.
Feather: The Feather project aims to provide YouTube video watch pages at the lowest possible latency by limiting some of the features available to the viewer and using some advanced web techniques to reduce the amount number of bytes downloaded. This feature is mainly for the people with slow internet connectivity or with limited data plans. However, this feature is in beta and may not work for all videos.
The TestTube section is currently still experimental under the Google Research Team and they are urging more users for feedback. On the other hand, these experimental features are more likely to attract new viewers and popularise more user generated videos.
RobG
Mar 11. 2012
Truly Awesome… waiting for your next article
Gnome2
Mar 11. 2012
Feather is awesome! Thanks
Rohit
Mar 11. 2012
Incredible article dude! Thanks…
dbakeca
Mar 12. 2012
Thx for these tips!
moli
Mar 12. 2012
Thanks for sharing this valuable post!!!
Swapnil
Mar 12. 2012
true! i didn’t knew even half of these
ToroKing
Mar 12. 2012
thanks alot! didnt know about any of these features!
RonIITK
Mar 13. 2012
I discovered 7labs via Google while looking for #, it seems Awesome. I have added to my bookmarks. David Rocks m/
roorback
Mar 14. 2012
Interesting, I like the leanback feature, anything that lets me sit back and relax is a good thing.
Kent Peterson
Mar 14. 2012
It’s Really nice post,
Thanks For Sharing.
iweb design
Mar 14. 2012
These are awesome, i have never heard of most of them …thanks
Arif Ammar
Mar 15. 2012
Caption Editor is most useful link for all. I will try it soon.
Xavi
Mar 16. 2012
The music discovery one is awesome! I use to discover new good tunes through Last.fm and being able to watch the video too is much more entertaining. Guess you could even put it in a house party
Allenwr
Mar 16. 2012
Another fun trick is to play snake. Click on the video(to pause or unpause, your choice) then press on your keyboard down, left, up, right (v,)
Ricky
Mar 17. 2012
I just stumbled upon your weblog and wished to mention that I’ve truly enjoyed surfing around your blog posts. After all I’ll be subscribing for your feed and I’m hoping you write once more soon!
jackimo
Mar 19. 2012
while you’re watching a video hold the left arrow(with keyboard focus on the video player) and while you’re holding the left arrow press the up arrow. It will turn the video into a game of Snake!
sir jorge
Mar 26. 2012
these are amazing new techniques, thank you
Mark
Apr 27. 2012
Very good.
Mac
Jun 07. 2012
You just don’t know how much easier you made my job by explaining these youtube features. Using that leanback feature makes reviewing vids a snap.
Xarticle
Jun 11. 2012
Thanks for sharing