shorts

YouTube Shorts can now include 60 seconds of music or sounds, up from 15 seconds before • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Apps, Creators, Media & Entertainment, Music, shorts, Videos, YouTubeNo Comments

YouTube today is addressing one of creators’ chief complaints with filming videos for its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts: to date, the music and sounds added to videos could only be 15 seconds in length, even though Shorts themselves can be as long as 60 seconds. Now, thanks to revised licensing deals, YouTube says the majority of music on Shorts will be available in durations of up to 60 seconds. In addition, creators can “remix,” or sample, up to 60 seconds of sounds from other videos, instead of only 15 seconds, as before. Over the next few weeks, YouTube creators will begin to see the expanded options for adding music to their videos when using the audio picker in the YouTube app for iOS and Android. In some cases, the songs will only be 30 seconds in length, due to continued licensing restrictions, YouTube notes. The company, like TikTok and others, negotiates with songs’ rights holders, including the music label or distributor and publisher, before including the track in YouTube Shorts. While YouTube won’t comment on the state of its deals with its music industry partners, it says that most songs in its audio library will now have a maximum duration of up to 60 seconds. The update aims to make YouTube Shorts more competitive with its rivals, including TikTok and Instagram Reels, at a time when the length of what’s considered a “short-form” video is also changing. To access the longer music tracks, creators will need to tap the “+” icon to enter the Shorts camera in the mobile app then pick an audio track from the library. When choosing the sound in the audio picker, you’ll be able to see the duration time which indicates how much audio you can use from the specific track. Creators will also need to change their video recording duration in the Shorts camera in order to use more than 15 seconds of audio, YouTube notes. Similarly, the company is also expanding the length of audio that can be clipped and re-used from other videos. In April, YouTube announced the launch of a remix feature that allows Shorts creators to sample clips from existing YouTube videos that have been posted publicly on the platform — unless the video’s owner had opted out. Many creators see this functionality as a way to bring more visitors to their channel or to introduce their content to a younger generation of users who may have only discovered their videos through Shorts. Before, creators could only sample 15-second segments of original audio from eligible Shorts and video-on-demand content. Now, they can sample up to 60 seconds. While the length of music is being expanded, the maximum length of a YouTube Shorts video itself is not — it will remain 60 seconds. The new feature will roll out to YouTube users globally on iOS and Android. Currently, YouTube Shorts are being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month and garner over 30 billion views per day, the company claims. Unrelated to music expansions, YouTube also today confirmed the launch of Shopping on YouTube Shorts — a new feature being piloted with U.S. creators that lets them tag products from their own stores. The move follows the launch of TikTok’s own of e-commerce features. Currently, viewers in the U.S., India, Brazil, Canada, and Australia can view and interact with these tags for the time being, and the feature will expand to more creators next year.

YouTube begins rolling out Shorts on TV globally starting today • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 7, 2022Posted in Apps, Media & Entertainment, short-form video, shorts, TikTok, Video, YouTube TVNo Comments

YouTube is expanding the reach of its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts, with today’s announcement that it will begin rolling out Shorts on TV to its global users. The company’s updated smart TV app will now allow users to view the popular vertical videos in an optimized experience that’s designed to feel more consistent with what users see on mobile, YouTube explains. This was a challenge given that YouTube Shorts, like TikTok, were largely meant to be watched on smaller smartphone screens. The new Shorts-watching feature will require a smart TV from 2019 or later, a newer gaming console or a streaming device, YouTube says. The videos themselves can be found on new Shorts shelf on the homepage of the YouTube app or on a creator’s channel page. In a blog post, the company detailed the different design experiments it researched in coming up with the final concept for Shorts on TV. It found Shorts videos didn’t look great in the YouTube app’s conventional video player, which had too much black space on either side of the vertical video. It also considered a “jukebox” style format which would line up three Shorts side-by-side to take full advantage of the TV’s screen without leaving any additional space on the sides. But this experience was not only cluttered, it also deviated from how Shorts are meant to be viewed — one-by-one. The design YouTube landed on is a customized option that attempts to better fill in the sides of the video with a color-sampled blurred background and an outline around the video that resembles a smartphone’s screen. It then further iterated on this format to add more functionality off to the side of the video, including information about the creator, the sound used in the video, and thumbs-up and down buttons. This information can be displayed by clicking the right button on your remote. In this initial rollout, viewers can subscribe to a creator’s channel in addition to liking or disliking the video after viewing. The company plans to introduce more community features over time, it says. When watching Shorts, you can also use the remote to start or stop the video from playing by clicking directly on the short or by using the Play and Pause buttons on the remote control itself. The Short will continue to play until you advance to the next Short using your remote. You can use the up and down buttons on the remote to move to the next video or return to a prior Short, YouTube says. The company noted it was unusual for consumers to prefer to use the remote control to move through the Shorts videos, as typically watching videos on TV is more of a lean-back experience. But in this case, it found that viewers wanted to manually control which Short played or which they skipped, as they would on mobile. While today YouTube Shorts are watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month, there hasn’t been a way to watch them on the big screen until now as the YouTube app hasn’t allowed users to cast Shorts to their TV and the main TV app didn’t support Shorts viewing. The expansion of Shorts to TV will help YouTube to better challenge TikTok, which had also rolled out its own TV app to various platforms last year, including Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Android TV OS and select LG and Samsung Smart TVs in North America. TikTok had also offered a TV app for Google TV and Android TV in the U.K., France and Germany, and on Samsung TVs in the U.K. But unlike TikTok’s TV app, YouTube’s TV app has the advantage of being pre-installed on many smart TV platforms. And its rollout is global. However, users won’t necessarily gain immediate access to the feature today as these sorts of rollouts take time. The company says all users should gain the ability to view Shorts in the “coming weeks.”

YouTube redesign gives long-form videos, Shorts and Live videos their own tabs on channel pages • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Creators, Media & Entertainment, shorts, Videos, YouTube, YouTube ShortsNo Comments

YouTube is rolling out a change impacting how videos appear on its platform. The company today announced a redesign that now splits video content into three different tabs on all channel pages — one for YouTube’s traditional long-form content, another for YouTube Shorts only, and a third for Live videos, including past, current and upcoming live streams. The changes will allow users to more easily access the types of YouTube videos they want to watch — a move YouTube says it made based on user feedback. In an announcement, the company said it heard from viewers they wanted to be able to navigate to the kinds of content they were most interested in when exploring a creator’s channel page, leading to this makeover. The update also means that Shorts content and Live streams will no longer be found in the main Videos tab on the channel page — something that could appeal to longtime YouTube viewers who haven’t appreciated the infiltration of YouTube’s short-form content into their favorite channel’s video feed in recent months. However, for those who do like watching Shorts, the redesign gives YouTube a way to direct them to more short-form videos. Now, when users are watching Shorts videos in the Shorts feed in the main YouTube app, then navigate to the creator’s channel, they’ll be sent directly into this new Shorts tab to watch even more Shorts content. This could help YouTube boost its views for Shorts as those users will no longer be immediately lost to the creator’s long-form content, as before. Initial feedback from users on Twitter responding to YouTube’s post about the changes has been positive, as users are expressing their appreciation for giving each type of content its own separate category. The redesign follows another major update to YouTube this month which introduced, at long last, YouTube handles in the @username format. These usernames will now allow creators to identify their channel and interact with their viewers across YouTube Shorts, channel pages, in video descriptions, in comments and more. YouTube says the tabbed redesign is rolling out starting today and will be available to all users across all devices in the weeks ahead.