YouTube Go: YouTube reimagined for the next generation of YouTube viewers
youtube.googleblog.com
youtube.googleblog.com
So I wonder, will I perhaps be able to watch talks and other videos on an airplane now using YouTube Go? Which subset of functionality will work on this soon-to-be-abandoned app? Does it even address any of the issues that content creators, Google and us users have with the platform?
The owners of YouTube do not have it in their best interest to provide you with flexible, no-nonsense tools.
It's more minimal in the interface (basically full-screen with a bunch of kbd shortcuts) but has all the features I need (including playback speed), and even some that are not in VLC--for instance, VLC has a key to advance 1 frame ('e', IIRC) and mpv can step both ways (with ',' and '.').
A few downsides: it doesn't seem to have playlist functionality (not that VLC's playlist UI is that great, but it works). to load a subtitle file, you either need to specify it on the command line or it needs to match the filename exactly, in VLC you can just drag'n'drop any subtitle onto the player to load it or use an Open File dialog. mpv immediately exits when the video is finished playing which is actually nice sometimes, but also can be annoying if you wanted to rewind the last 10 seconds or something or if you seek forward too quickly (maybe mpv has a setting for this though).
On the whole, I use mpv for almost anything. Indeed in combination with youtube-dl, I've made an alias for `youtube-dl <URL> --exec "mpv --fs --fs-screen 1 {} &"`, which starts the player immediately after download, full-screen, on the second (big) monitor. I still use VLC whenever I want to watch multiple short videos in a playlist. And of course VLC on Android because it's really for both video as well as playing music--although I feel there should be a better musicplayer, one that allows me to browse my collection through the file system instead of tags (which VLC does) but has a real smooth UI to manage playlists (which has been clunky in most Android players I've tried).
There is a setting for this called "After Playback". By default it is "close" but you can also "play next" (video in the folder, useful if shows are organized by folder and by episode) and other options, including "do nothing" or "play from beginning".
I'm at work so don't remember exactly where to change this setting.
But I found the relevant mpv config I was thinking of:
--idle=<no|yes|once>
Makes mpv wait idly instead of quitting when there is no file to play. Mostly useful in input
mode, where mpv can be controlled through input commands.> A not too crappy GPU. mpv is not intended to be used with bad GPUs. There are many caveats with drivers or system compositors causing tearing, stutter, etc. On Windows, you might want to make sure the graphics drivers are current, especially OpenGL. In some cases, ancient fallback video output methods can help (such as --vo=xv on Linux), but this use is not recommended or supported. (o)
Whereas VLC has a similar option but it's sort of an afterthought and you have to activate it, from the wiki:
> The VLC media player framework can use your graphic card (a.k.a. GPU) to accelerate decoding of video streams depending on the video codec, graphic card model and operating system.
I was looking for a youtube video downloader a week or two back, but was really struggling to find one that wasn't spamware.
"Download YouTube Videos as MP4" on the other hand has active dev, https://github.com/gantt/downloadyoutube
I paste a Youtube link into one of the hundreds of Google results for "Youtube downloader" and I get a bunch of clear Google video download links in various formats.
I paste a URL into "PWN Youtube" and I get this (buried in a mass of other text I don't care about, hard selling me to spam the site on FB/Twitter/Friends):
Download this video as FLV or MP4 files
Use one of: Peggo | Telecharger(warning) | SaveFrom
9xbuddy(warning) | File2HD (?) | Dirpy(warning)
> This website is not affiliated with YouTube.com "YouTube" is a copyright of YouTube, LLC.
Probably shouldn't be using the word/trademark in its domain name then.
And offline stuff won't happen on the main Youtube app because politics.
I think each of these address a very different problem, and completely disagree with him. Trying to bundle all of these things into one big app will just make the app bloated and development painful. Youtube at this point has many different uses (average length videos, live streams, music/audio) and trying to have a one size fits all app is not necessarily the right way to go.
Youtube GO is meant for people who live in areas with poor connectivity. Again, having them download a big 100mb bloated app is not the right solution. On the other hand, people with LTE don't care about the download size and locally sharing videos, so why put that in the same app? Same thing with trying to put Chatting/Livestream notification into the Youtube app, or trying to hack a music player into it.
"YouTube Red isn’t available in your country." Which of course somehow has to mean I'm not allowed to watch non-monetized videos offline.
Plus, the "main" YouTube app still insists on displaying a small video with tons of crap around it, so that I have to hunt for the tiny and easy to miss "full-screen" button. I clicked on the video to, you know, watch video, not read the captions under thumbnails from all the other videos YouTube thinks I might want to watch.
Google on the other hand refuses to even show us Podcasts category on Play music. Podcasts.
A more appropriate comparison would be comparing the iTunes movie and TV store with Google's equivalent (Google Play Movies & TV):
* Both have movie purchases in over 100 countries. Apple has TV purchases in 6 countries [1]. Google has them in 8 [2]
* Both allow offline download of purchased videos. Google also allows downloading purchases to SD cards (less relevant for Apple).
* Google has a web-based player for purchased videos. Apple doesn't, AFAIK.
* Apple has carrier billing in 6 countries [3]. Google has it in 45 [4]. Google also allows you to use PayPal in a number of countries.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204411
[2] https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2843119?hl=en
[3] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205102
[4] https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2651410?hl=en
And Google Play which is Google's equivalent of Apple's iTunes does allow offline downloads and does take your money.
For that matter, since an offline video eliminates the buffering problem, I'd love to have the "playback speed" feature in the mobile app. The web version of YouTube supports changing the playback speed to 1.25x, 1.5x, or 2x, but the mobile version doesn't.
https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.schabi.newpi...
The YouTube-webpage also has an option to export your subscriptions to an OPML-file (which can then be imported into an RSS Reader): Log into your YouTube-account, then go to "Manage Subscriptions", and then at the bottom of that page, there's a button for it.
(This is how it worked a few months ago. I actually don't have a YouTube-account anymore, so I can't check if it still works like that.)
On Android, I personally use SpaRSS [0] with it, which does work quite well, but it being available on F-Droid was pretty much essential to me, so if you don't care about FLOSS, you might be able to find an RSS Reader which integrates even better with this setup...
[0]: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=net.etuldan.spar...
I threw it together (over a few hours) simply because I like watching stuff on youtube at 1.5x speed and the android app does not allow you to do it (whereas if you use VLC to play the downloaded video, you can increaseplayback speed)
It's also available on the play store [2] with youtube downloads disabled by default
[1] https://github.com/zeronickname/VideoDownloader
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.me.gman.get...
For that reason I call it NewPipe/VLC, or as I've recently taken to calling it, NewPipe plus VLC.
However, at least in this case, they're taking a step in the right direction, no matter how small.
Do you think they'll be blocking monetization on that?
No, it's not evidence, but until serious enforcing happens, it's the best I can do, and I think it's a reasonable assumption to make.
Search for rap song Coco. It's about being love with cocaine and violence and it shows me Kia car ads with families before the video. And some semi amateur authors who TALKED about true crime events were banned from the YouTube adsense partnership.
Generally speaking, any startup on this site will give preferential treatment to a $50,000/month customer than to a $5/month customer.
Even your bank will treat you differently if you want to open an account with a deposit of $2 million than if you want to deposit $25.
I don't think "hypocritical" is the right word, since Youtube isn't making a moral judgment. They'd take any money they could if their partners would let them.
The same with Google best the practices on showing content first, ads after, same time their search is covered with ads and the content is below fold.
Another thing you need to realize is that this is all automated, they don't come and manually remove monetization from your video. Yes, the algorithm could potentially be wonky, but again, it's in their best interest for it to be good.
Everything that has been spouted so far has been senseless propaganda and none of it is backed by any actual facts.
Yes, it's automated, but there's some degree of oversight. Once again, there's no way they didn't realize that videos uploaded by one of their departments violated their monetization agreements.
And it's not senseless propaganda. It's already starting to happen, or is likely to happen.
Have you been paying attention to the YouTube scene? Like, at all?
> They would gain more advertisers paying them money to advertise with them.
I don't really understand what you're saying here. Why would more advertisers pay them money if less videos had advertisements?
Sounds like a fantastic deal to me, and I don't see why all those other creators should be punished just so that a few can gain money making content that is against the stated rules.
And again, this isn't censorship, if that content is really important to you, it will still be there for everyone to see, just not monetized.
The problem is, it's more than just a few rare cases: everyone from VEVO, to tiny channels, to the biggest channels on youtube, have been breaking these rules for years. And even if they don't think they have been, you can probably find violating content somewhere on the channel if you look hard enough, because the new rules are pretty broad. And the fact that the rules aren't being enforced equally makes it all the more BS, even if it's YouTube's prerogative to do so anyways.
I actually don't think YouTube Red was necessarily a bad idea: People get to skip ads, and play videos offline/with their phone locked. We use that money to pay creators and fund premium content.
To counter, if you want to support the creators, it's better to subscribe via Vessel or Patreon that it is to get a YouTube Red subscription...
Still doesn't explain, though, why they keep making such bad investments...
Google Play Music is awesome
YouTube offline videos
YouTube no ads
Still, hard to beat the value and the mood-based radio stations are awesome.
They will never sell youtube RED to that market. RED is only for the san francisco bubble, where everyone already pay $100 overall for streaming services (hulu, netflix, pandora, spotify, etc, etc).
But for those other markets, they actually still rely on eyeballs and ads. And on those markets, they have to open a few concessions to actually get the eyeballs.
This is just another example of Google doing just enough in order to measure what may happen (throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks).
This was a good while ago, so I don't know, if it's still the case. All I know is that I switched to OsmAnd~, set that up once and since then always reliably had a map in my pocket.
YT would get more views actually if they allowed offline now. It would also help with the puny data allowances wireless carriers are imposing these days. The offline will take the power away (in a small way), from the carriers.
They can provide the same experience as today, ads and all. People can watch YT on flights, while driving and what not. Amazon video allows offline usage today and been for a while.
I believe this is really bad example, as WWE is a "premium content" so you have to pay extra to watch it. Therefore Youtube removes those videos (there is only 2 WWE videos which is from legal accounts).
So it's pretty awkward example just as "the young man in Nagpur wants to watch Game of Thrones with his HBO Go membership but he can't because of he is poor internet connection."
Maybe they are premium content in US but free here.
They seem to like to make new stuff, rather then upgrade their existing stuff. Then every second year they just go through their stack and deprecate 30% of it.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Don't forget the cleanest, best-performing one: the classic "Basic HTML" interface. Which manages to be much faster for most operations than Inbox or the AJAXified normal version despited having to reload the whole page.
JavaScript is great for improving the user experience, but it's often vastly overused and just makes me scream for simpler times such as the classic web app.
JavaScript for dynamic forms and validation, and any responsive design functionality it gives me through the use of Bootstrap/SemanticUI... that's it.
At least 6 apps.
Youtube, Youtube Creator Studio, Youtube Kids, Youtube Music, Youtube Gaming, Youtube Go
YouTube Creator Studio of course is a different app for managing your channel - which is great - I think it's a fantastic separation of concerns. One app for consuming, another for moderation/management.
But then yes, you've got:
* YouTube (proper) * YouTube Kids * YouTube Music * YouTube Gaming * YouTube GO
and I believe more are coming.
Similarly, a kids app is very useful given how many kids are growing up using cheap tablets to stream videos, and I know from watching my nephews that the way they use YouTube is very different from how I use it.
Its a ground-up rewrite of the app with a very different experience focus and for a different audience. It wouldn't make much sense as a feature of the existing app.
>It wouldn't make much sense as a feature of the existing app.
Why?
Because the UX focus is different, the assumed technical infrastructure context is different, and, well, basically everything except the backend service consumed is different. Youtube Go is more distinct in role from the core Youtube app than the other break out apps (which mostly are distinguished by content focus on UX tweaks around the focal content) like Youtube Kids, Youtube Music, and Youtube Gaming.
Neither do I, but the change here isn't "adding a button or two".
None of these changes seem to be fundamental to me. They seem like trivial changes you expect in an incremental version update.
Do you know what those are or did you just assume that because its Google and so "there must be reason"?
> I can only assume given your comments you've never worked on problems like this.
You may assume it. The alternative explanation is I don't think its all that hard because its not all that hard.
> There's so many benefits you can get from writing an app specifically for low-end Android devices with poor data connectivity.
IMO, all that should be part of the base app. If your app can't handle different workloads (especially as basic as intermittent network connectivity for a video streaming application), its pretty much a huge design fail there.
Also I don't get where the "undoubtedly", "fundamental change", "going to be easier to X" comes from. What is your basis for those statements?
A ground-up rewrite wouldn't surprise me at all for such a change.
I don't think it's a technical issue at all, but a "people pay for this feature wherever YouTube Red is available" issue.
From the screenshots, it looks to be trivial functionality that could be baked into the existing app. Besides the ability to download and play files is not something I consider to be a "HUGE" architectural change.
But I’m also a little disappointed it’s a separate app, and country specific from what I can determine. It would be great to see this rolled into the current app without restriction.
This "YouTube Go" MIGHT be a media player. It MIGHT operate on files. It MIGHT be possible to share a video via some mechanism other than bluetooth.
The other day I was trying to convince to a user that she should want to own her content, rather than rent it... when I suddenly realized that he doesn't know what a file is. Moreover, he doesn't realize what it is good for...
Once you have a (DRM free) file, it's yours. You physically possess it. That means you can copy it, share it, back it up, print it, pipe the raw ones and zeros to your PC speaker, whatever. The next generation might not get that...
The fact of the matter is that until I was college-aged, nobody taught me more about computers than Microsoft did. I read every .txt file and .hlp file that existed on my C:\ drive. Not to mention the physical manuals... Then I went on to Linux, etc.
So I KNOW what a file is. You and I can have a conversation about mtimes. We can rattle off a list of traits that each file must possess to BE a file.
What the heck is Google teaching this next generation?
AFAIK no real equivalent to this exists in the video streaming world yet. Plex is starting to come close though: https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/26/plex-cloud-online-server...
It's hard to find a can opener that will last a long time. Food is made as cheaply as possible. Movies are carefully crafted to maximize profit, not to tell stories. Advertisements lie.
If you deconstruct it all down as far as you can go, you land on money. Well, I do. She says its "human nature". Whatever that is.
Or on fast connections but with data caps. So outside of wifi, Youtube is unusable. I'll watch two-three videos and I'll hit my monthly cap.
Almost every single issue India users experience is a problem everywhere else. Every solution they came up with would be useful for users everywhere else. It feels like Google engineers live in the SV bubble where unlimited always-on connectivity is a fact of life. So thanks Google.
&player=html5
[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/27/youtube-goes-html5-flash-i...
This is only feasible on a subscription basis (no one has a good microtransaction model with actual payments) and so Google and the music industry limited the feature to only subscription based.
I mean, if I can minimize a tab running YouTube on my PC, I don't see why I can't do that on my phone.
This is especially also the case, as Google could abuse some sentence in the YouTube API ToS, which prohibits the separation of audio and video, to get rid of third-party YouTube apps which offered this functionality for free before YouTube Red became a thing. If those had been around, they couldn't really have charged money for it.
There are still a few of those apps available on non-Play-Store-stores, as Google would have had to deal with legal entities to get rid of those (and would have probably lost), but most people never use alternative stores, so that's not really a problem for Google.
One of those apps is NewPipe, if you want it for free: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.schabi.newpi...
Maybe it has something to do with them not being able to show you ads when you video ads when your screen is minimized. Or maybe it is to prevent people from using youtube as an alternative to paying for google music.
Regardless, I posted my original comment because it seems a bit disingenuous to say that this feature isn't available when it is (at least in the US). You just have to pay for it.
Let it play, minimize the video, switch tab or app or whatever, pull up the bottom controls and click play.
Like how long does a single person care about a video? Vlogs are pretty "read once"
Why not just make this the norm? Websites do not need to be 6 MB per page (and that's with an adblocker). Google is one of the worst offenders when it comes to website bloat, including their once-famously incredibly simple search page which is now jam packed with tons of features, both requested and the majority not requested by anyone.
The notion that an HTML 5 web page requires so much extra fluff to accomplish something as simple as streaming video with recommended links and a comments section is maddening.
Just because some of us have bigger, faster phones with more bandwidth doesn't mean you need to make things more complicated.
I'm excited to use this new app but the older one should be deletable.
Google is mostly going in the opposite direction and allowing you to uninstall any apps you don't use [1] -- admittedly, the Youtube app is not one of them on my 6P. But, I can disable it so it's not visible in the app drawer. In fact I can disable all the google apps and have always been able to do so (the only exceptions are non-Google, "system" apps).
Doesn't help if you buy a Samsung phone though....
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=nexus+uninstall+google+apps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...
This article is about rethinking and developing a new youtube app with "offline first" in mind. It was created after researching how YouTube is consumed in India to offer a more user friendly experience.
Has 0 to do with snapchat
My comparison was criticizing (as a YouTube Creator myself) the focus YouTube had in recent years regarding innovation of the platform itself.
YouTube heavily focused on things like: 360° videos, Offline (mentioned in the article), interface, comments, trends.
There is 0 innovation from a creator perspective. Platforms like Snapchat make it insanely (!!!) easy to create content on a regular basis. Sure the Snapchat platform is not at all as full-fledged as YouTube but I think it is dangerously close for quite some (YouTube)genres like Vlogging and could easily be extended.
EDIT to elaborate on Snapchat (for user @lucb1e): Snapchat is per se not interesting for a content-creator with a big following just to send self-destructing messages.
They introduced a feature called „Stories“ a while ago which let's you take multiple clips during the day and then combines them to a „story“. Within 24 hours the viewer/subscriber can play your story and see your whole day.
So you basically have a full video without ever touching Adobe-Premiere or Final-Cut. Importing, editing, exporting, uploading even for the most basic videos on YouTube takes (a lot of) time.
From an analytics perspective you can check views, screenshots, etc of each individual story-element and interact with the viewers (e.g. screenshot to vote for an option).
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13071128/sundar-pichai-goo...
"Reimagined" probably means "more ad slots".
The point I'm trying to make is that YouTube Go offers a significantly different UX that seems to be about making YouTube more accessible on slower connections. Your speculation about ads in the UI is baseless, IMO.
I don't know if they're paid for, but the "you should watch this" and "follow that" and "omg this is so hip in your region right now" are driving me crazy.
> No, that is just my knowledge from using YouTube and my experience with ad trafficking.
Never change, HackerNews comments.
This was referring to the fact that the main features that the article discussed were about previewing videos and peer to peer video sharing, which are tangible UX improvements that have nothing to do with showing the user more ads.
Can I clear anything else up for you?
Being able to download at different quality, being able to preview, and being able to share over Bluetooth are just straight up usability improvements for people in the targeted region (and probably elsewhere too).
What makes you think he'd display ads if he had an app like that after he made clear what he thinks of that concept?