Secret Unknown YouTube Tips & Features
YouTube for most people is the the aggregator of fail compilations, the disseminator of cat related humour and a beacon for everything viral. Killing time on YouTube is the most productive way to be unproductive, but there’s so much more to it than salacious thumbnails and unrelated debates about political theory in the comments section, there is also hidden unknown youtube tips and tricks
Aside from a few easter eggs to please medium-core trekkies and Star Wars fans, there are some genuinely useful hacks that can enhance your YouTube viewing experience ten-fold. I mean, if you’re prepared to sign away three hours of your life by watching late-nineties wrestling videos, then you should do it in style, right?
Ever heard of YouTube Leanback? Or how about turning any video into a GIF? No? Then there’s so much more to show you. Here’s a run-down of my top five YouTube hacks:
1. Make any YouTube Video into a GIF
You can turn any video into a GIF by simply adding “gif” just after the “www.” in the URL. For example “www.gifyoutube.com/watchx”
Once you type that in, you’ll be taken to a simple gif making tool page that lets you cut out a section of the video and export it.
Select the point at which you want to start the gif and then select how long it lasts, and you’re done. You’ve made a gif in a matter of minutes.
2. YouTube Disco Your YouTube Videos
You already knew that you can use YouTube to stream music, but did you know it can be a DJ too? YouTube Disco automatically puts together a playlist of songs from your prefered genre or artist.
Go to www.youtube.com/disco and enter any artist, song, or genre and YouTube will populate a playlist of the most watched/popular videos from your search.
You can also set it to play the current top hits and it will tell what videos are most popular at the moment.
3. Slow Motion YouTube Videos
There are a couple of ways to slow down a YouTube video, with the simplest way being to hold down the spacebar during a video. This cause the video to rapidly play and pause, which creates a budget slow motion effect.
If, however, you want some more advanced controls, head to www.youtubeslow.com and enter your video’s URL into the specified field. You can then either speed up, slow down, play on repeat or set a loop.
Wesley Snipe’s “always bet on black” moment in Passenger 57 in slow motion.
4. YouTube Leanback – YouTube and Chill
YouTube Leanback is the friendlier version of YouTube on the big screen. If you’ve ever tried to watch videos on the normal desktop version of YouTube on your TV, you’ll know it’s a pain. Entering characters into the search field with your TV is just not practical, and you need to get right up close to the screen to see what’s going on.
This is where YouTube Leanback comes in. It’s a simplified YouTube UI that only requires use of the arrow keys to control. Also, if you have a smart TV, you can connect your phone or tablet to control what’s on the screen – and you don’t even have to be on the same Wi-Fi connection to do it.
Anyone in the room, providing they’ve gone through the verification process, can connect to the YouTube page and chuck videos into the communal playlist.
All you need to do is go to www.youtube.com/leanback and begin flicking through the availble sub sections of videos. To pair up your phone or tablet, go to www.youtube.com/pair on your mobile device and follow the instructions.
5. Google Video Quality Report
Buffering. Endless, rage inducing, buffering. But whose fault is it? Well, it’s your throttling, lacklustre ISP, according to Google.
Google’s YouTube Video Quality Report was launched earlier this year to help consumers understand why their videos take so long to load and can’t be streamed in the best quality. Some childlike illustrations show you how video makes its way to your screen, but don’t let the welcoming graphics fool you. This is video report is a shaming exercise, designed to embarrass ISPs for providing little bandwidth.
The report, which isn’t available everywhere, will tell you how good your connection is in the area and which ISPs are offering the most YouTube friendly internet speeds. This is done via a verification system, which labels each ISP as either ‘HD verified’ or not.
Check it out here (as I said, it may not be available in your area) and see if your connection can sustain 20 minutes of 1080p footage.
https://www.google.co.uk/get/videoqualityreport/
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