YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog

Our YouTube Blog has been on Blogger for the past 15 years, so this past August, we figured it was time to completely change things up. We created an entirely new site and redesign. 

Following our announcement in May, we'll be abbreviating subscriber counts across YouTube, starting the week of September 2; and the public YouTube Data API Service, starting the week of September 9. Read more about what this means for the public YouTube Data API Service in this updated Help Community post.

We are excited to launch a large-scale dataset of public user-generated content (UGC) videos uploaded to YouTube under a Creative Commons license. This dataset is intended to aid the advancement of research on video compression and quality evaluation.

We created this dataset to help baseline research efforts, as well as foster algorithmic development. We hope that this dataset will help the industry better comprehend UGC quality and tackle UGC challenges at scale.

What is UGC?

We introduced a new feature which allows YouTube creators to mix together spatial audio with stereo audio content, like music and/or narration, when they work on VR experiences. Viewers can already enjoy this feature on YouTube mobile apps as well as desktop web browsers.

Ever since we launched 360° videos in 2015, we've been exploring ways to unleash the full potential of this new video format, including Cardboard mode, 360° live streams, and improved video quality. We are excited to share with you some new APIs for controlling 360° videos in embedded videos.

The Spherical Video Control API gives developers full control over the user’s perspective when using the YouTube IFrame Player SDK. Developers can get and set the view’s current yaw, pitch, roll, and field-of-view. Читать дальше...

YouTube works hard to provide the best looking video at the lowest bandwidth. One way we're doing that is by optimizing videos with bandwidth in mind. We recently made videos stream better -- giving you higher-quality video by improving our videos so they are more likely to fit into your available bandwidth.

When you watch a video the YouTube player measures the bandwidth on the client and adaptively chooses chunks of video that can be downloaded fast enough, up to the limits of the device’s viewport... Читать дальше...

Cross-posted from the VR Blog

Posted by Eric Mauskopf, Product Manager
As humans, we rely on sound to guide us through our environment, help us communicate with others and connect us with what's happening around us. Whether walking along a busy city street or attending a packed music concert, we're able to hear hundreds of sounds coming from different directions. So when it comes to AR, VR, games and even 360 video, you need rich sound to create an engaging immersive experience that makes you feel like you're really there. Читать дальше...

Variable speed playback was launched on the web several years ago and is one of our most highly requested features on mobile. Now, it’s here! You can speed up or slow down videos in the YouTube app on iOS and on Android devices running Android 5.0+. Playback speed can be adjusted from 0.25x (quarter speed) to 2x (double speed) in the overflow menu of the player controls.

The most commonly used speed setting on the web is 1.25x, closely followed by 1.5x. Speed watching is the new speed listening which was the new speed reading... Читать дальше...

In 2012 we launched face blurring as a visual anonymity feature, allowing creators to obscure all faces in their video. Last February we followed up with custom blurring to let creators blur any objects in their video, even as they move. Since then we’ve been hard at work improving our face blurring tool.

Today we’re launching a new and improved version of Blur Faces, allowing creators to easily and accurately blur specific faces in their videos. The tool now displays images of the faces in the video... Читать дальше...

At YouTube, we understand the power of video to tell stories, move people, and leave a lasting impression. One part of storytelling that many people take for granted is sound, yet sound adds color to the world around us. Just imagine not being able to hear music, the joy of a baby laughing, or the roar of a crowd. But this is often a reality for the 360 million people around the world who are deaf and hard of hearing. Over the last decade, we have been working to change that.

The first step... Читать дальше...