YouTube Has Tripled Their Number Of Captioned Videos Since July 2011

Over the past few months YouTube has been making major strides towards making content accessible for as many people as possible, putting a lot of effort into new initiatives to get as many of their videos captioned as possible.  Today on their blog, YouTube provides an update on their recent progress with closed captioning.

Software engineer Ken Harrenstien writes on the YouTube 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.”  Pretty impressive, eh?
So what have they been up to over the past few months?  YouTube has rolled out a variety of new tools and features for YouTube viewers, as well as for YouTube creators.  Read on to learn more.

Captioning changes for YouTube viewers

More languages

Automatic captioning and transcript synchronization is now available not only in English but also in Japanese and Korean.  Captions and subtitles can also now be added by video owners in 155 supported languages and dialects.  Additionally, in Movies and Shows, viewers can now see a quick list of which languages subtitles are available in before they decide to rent.

New captions search filter

YouTube has also added a search filter that allows you narrow down a search to only videos with captions.  Just click Filter > CC.

Change the look of captions

Don’t like the way the captions look on screen?  Click the ‘CC’ icon on the video player and you can change the caption settings, including font size and colors.  Harrenstien writes, “we’re planning to make this available on other platforms and add more options soon.”

Broadcast caption support

When channel owners provide video caption files in broadcast format, YouTube displays them like you would see on television.  Text can appear in different areas of the screen depending upon where the person talking is standing.  Click here for an example.

Captioning changes for YouTube creators

More formats

YouTube now supports a wider variety of common broadcast caption formats including .SCC, .CAP, EBU-STL and more.  Harrenstien adds, “If you have closed captions that you created for TV or DVDs, we’ll hander this conversion for you.”

MPEG-2 caption import

If you’ve got an MPEG-2 file that contains closed captions with CEA-608 encoding, YouTube will import those captions right along with the video and create the captions for you automatically.
It is clear from these awesome upgrades that YouTube is taking major strides towards making their content available to everyone.  Do you have closed captions on your YouTube videos?  If not, do you plan to?

10:03 by Robert dawne · 0

How To Optimize Your YouTube Videos For A Global Audience

YouTube is a global platform but language and cultural barriers can often make it difficult to reach a global audience.  In the latest update to the YouTube Creator Playbook, version 2, YouTube offers up some tips on how to optimize your video content to reach as many viewers as possible.

Consider this: You upload a video to YouTube.  The video is in English, but it’s got international appeal.  Sure, people from North America, Australia, the UK, South Africa and other English speakers around the world will be able to watch and enjoy.  But what about those that don’t speak English—how will they be able to discover, let alone understand, your content?  And what about those that are hard of hearing?
You don’t have to sacrifice those views, or leave those viewers in the dust.  Here are four tips for reaching all audiences, care of YouTube.

Cater Your Content To a Global Audience

If you want to reach a global audience then, first things first, you need to be producing content with global appeal.  A video about a trend or topic that is only interesting to Americans isn’t going to take off outside of the United States.
In the Creator Playbook, YouTube suggests, “Make use of subjects or themes that have cross-cultural and global appeal such as animation, dance, animals, or strong visuals without dialogue.”  They also suggest focusing on trends that are popular in different specific regions around the globe, tying in content related to tent-pole events happening internationally and more.

Caption your videos

Language is one of the biggest barriers when it comes to getting audiences in different countries watching your videos.  Captioning your videos can help make your videos accessible to an international audience, as well as for the hearing impaired.
YouTube makes it easy to upload captions or to create captions on your own.  You can even use YouTube’s CaptionTube to let fans create captions for you.
If you do caption your videos, make sure to include an annotation or message in your video to let viewers know that the video is captioned so that they can turn on captions if they aren’t already activated.

Add multi-language metadata

Let’s say you’ve created and uploaded a video that you think would be great for a Spanish-speaking audience.  If you write your title, description and tags in English, these Spanish-speaking viewers (who are probably performing their YouTube searching in Spanish) aren’t likely to find your videos.
If you have a video that you think would be good for viewers speaking a couple of different languages, write your title, description and tags in both languages.  Use the language of your primary audience first, followed by the secondary.  This will help viewers discover your content.

Cross-promote with International YouTubers

If there’s a specific global market that you’d like to get into, try finding YouTubers from that region that are similar to you in the types of content they are producing.  Reach out to them to see if they’d like to collaborate.  When you collaborate with other YouTubers you introduce them to your subscriber base and vice versa.  If they’ve already built a subscriber base in the region you’d like to get into, you can gain access to this audience through the collaboration.
YouTube suggests that to find similar YouTubers around the globe, “Change the country setting at the bottom of the YouTube homepage to explore worldly videos and channels.”
Do you cater your YouTube videos to a global audience?  What tricks have you used to help make your videos accessible and to reach the widest audience possible?

07:02 by Robert dawne · 0

Anonymous Threatens Facebook Shutdown Jan. 28[VIDEO]

  Anonymous claims on Twitter that the video is fake, and they do not plan to take down Facebook.
Anonymous is planning to target Facebook in an attack Jan. 28 — at least that’s what a video uploaded to YouTube Monday is claiming in the name of the hacker network.
And you thought a day without Wikipedia was bad.
“An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people and the government of the United States,” the video begins. “While SOPA and PIPA may be postponed from Congress, this doesn’t guarantee that our Internet rights will be upheld.”
Following the U.S. government shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload Friday, Anonymous attacked the U.S. Department of Justice’s website, among others.
Monday’s YouTube video calls on the American people to participate in the hack by downloading Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), the tool that was successfully used to target the Department of Justice. LOIC crashes websites by sending thousands of information packets to their servers.
The video gives instructions for downloading and running the program, as well as a time — 12 a.m. on Jan. 28 — to launch the attack. No time zone, however, is distinguished.
“Would you like to become part of the greatest Internet protests and first official cyber war?,” the video asks. “Operation Global Blackout is ongoing and everyone can be a part of it.”


Facebook, of course, is one of the world’s largest websites, operating through thousands of servers located across the world. In the video, Anonymous acknowledges the difficulties of attacking such a large site.
“While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers, it is still possible to bring it down,” says the Anonymous voice. “Anonymous needs the help of the people.”
YouTube commenters have raised an important question, Why would Anonymous want to crash Facebook, after the site came out against SOPA and PIPA?
The video essentially equates the privately-owned company with the U.S. government, with no explanation for the linkage. CNET postulates that Zuckerberg took too long to voice his opposition, landing his social network a spot on the potential targets list.
We’ve heard this threat before from the global network of hactivists, who promised to shut down the site Nov. 5, 2011, over user privacy concerns. Ultimately, no attack was executed and the loosely-connected hacker network called the threat the work of peripheral members.

09:13 by Robert dawne · 0