metacafe, Nalts, Online Video, Revver, YouTube

Top Secret YouTube Tricks & Hacks

24 Comments

Okay maybe “top secret” is an over statement, but most readers of this post will find a few surprises here. I give you some of the lesser known tricks on YouTube to optimize your experience as a viewer or creator…

  1. Find Best Videos on YouTube
    Don’t surf the homepage or most-recently uploaded section if you want to find the best videos. There are two places to go… the “top rated” section and the “most viewed.” I prefer the latter, because the community decides what’s lands there. Note that some creators live on this page because their fans rate them 5 stars without fail, so it’s not all good. There are also a few people that are “gaming the system” by artificially rating themselves 5 stars with sock accounts or autobots (boo, hiss). If you like vloggers, check the “most discussed” section of “People and Blogs.” You can also surf the “most subscribed” creators (by category) and when you find someone good (say, for example, Nalts) be sure to subscribe. Then visit your subscription page first, which is like an RSS for new videos by your favorite creators.
  2. Watch Blocked Videos.
    See previous post on this blog to see how to hack YouTube if a video’s URL is blocked by your ISP.
  3. See “Recently Deleted” Videos.
    Delutube and ReviveTube allow you to find deleted videos if you know the 11-digit URL. Source: ReelPopBlog.
  4. Make Your Videos Upoad Faster.
    Apparently SpeedBit Video VideoAccelorator makes YouTube videos load more quickly. It works for other sites as well (see site details at Accelorator.com).
  5. Upload to YouTube and a Bunch of Other Sites at Once.
    I use TubeMogul whenever I want to upload beyond YouTube on a mess ofwebsites including, currently, Yahoo!, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Revver, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Veoh, Crackle & StupidVideos.
  6. Reference a Video in Comments Section.
    You can post a URL in the comment section of videos, but you can provide the 11-digit alphanumeric code, and then people can post this before it:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
  7. Get More Views on YouTube
    I’ve written a free eBook about how to promote yourself on YouTube (“How to Become Popular on YouTube Without Any Talent“), and there are other books including this 25-pager I haven’t read.
  8. Download YouTube Videos
    This is a post with some tips, but I like VideoBox from tastyapps.com (but it’s Mac only). KeepVid can download videos as FLV files pretty quickly. I’m also using Snapz Pro or Snagit to grab short sections of videos very quickly.
  9. Upload Videos for Best YouTube Quality
    For starters, you gotta export your videos in the best resolution possible — that means making them larger files (mine are 100 megs or more) and ensuring all the specifications are YouTube friendly. Trippy’s blog covers these specs well. Some argue that it’s best to convert it to an FLV per YouTube specifications before uploading, but I don’t like the idea of sending YouTube anything compressed so tightly.
  10. Subscribe to Someone When You Can’t.
    YouTube accounts without videos don’t have a “subscribe” option. To get around this (or to make it easy for people to subscribe to you), use this code, substituting the profile name where I have “Nalts.”
    http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=nalts

What did I miss? I’m updating this!

24 thoughts on “Top Secret YouTube Tricks & Hacks”

  1. I can “unblock” the YouTube, which my school blocks, but they also block streaming videos from 9:00 AM until 3:00 PM to cut down on badwidth traffic. Also, they haven’t installed the latest version on Flash on my computer and I don’t have rights to install ANYTHING (even though I am the computer teacher; go figure!), so I’d have to ask permission to install Flash and the PTB would want to know why. Anyway, I can’t watch any streaming videos from work and it sucks. 🙁

  2. Hey Nalts thanks for the Videobox shoutout!

    We adding some streaming support in the latest version (v2.6), and the ability to grab the high rez versions of youtube vids.

  3. Vixy.net also allows you to download YouTube videos as .avi files, for thos of us who use Windows computers (the majority of the world, BTW)!

  4. To add on #1. I personally check out the Most Discussed for “People and Blogs” only, since the majority of the vids I watch on the tubes are vloggers. You can do this for the other categories too.

    I also use the beta personalized page instead of the main front page so that I’m assured of getting videos relevant to my interests.

  5. anyone notice the latest You Tube upgrade? [click]

    you can shut the community off and do a bunch of other stuff.
    no need for anyone to get offended any more.

    I think the design looks a little fat. but who cares! you can move 8 myspace girls beating up another myspace girl from your You Tube directly to your myspace page.

    I love technology!

  7. To grab a video from IE’s cache (after playing it all the way through), goto the temporary internet files folder, then add “\Content.IE5” (the bit inside the quotes) onto the path to get to the hidden cache folder. In there will be four more folders with encrypted names. Simply look in those in file size order to find the most likely file (the biggest with the right timestamp), probably called “get_video[1]” …
    Drag it into the folder where you want to keep it, and rename it whatever.flv – you’ll find it plays fine in Media Player Classic.

    Incidentally, you can delete those 4 folders when IE is closed, to clear your cache. Deleting index.dat (the log of all your surfing!) is trickier, but can be done from a command prompt as follows :
    select start..shutdown.. ctrl-alt-shift + cancel (will close explorer)
    this leaves only the command prompt on screen, with Windows file-in-use stuff released. Delete index.dat from the command line, then ctrl-alt-delete and login again / shutdown / reboot.
    A fresh new index.dat and 4 more cache folders will appear next time you use IE.

  11. Vidmetrix now uploads to nine sites. I totally agree with you about Tubemogul’s support – FAST! On the reporting/measurement side of things, I really like Vidmetrix’s layout and design, though it seems to only provide reports for individual videos. Tubemogul on the other hand does a great job of providing aggregate numbers for each video hosting account.

  12. Gee Marilyn 9-3 sound like work hours. Maybe you should be teaching instead of watching shitty flash movies.

    1. Marilyn – April 9, 2008

    I can “unblock” the YouTube, which my school blocks, but they also block streaming videos from 9:00 AM until 3:00 PM to cut down on badwidth traffic. Also, they haven’t installed the latest version on Flash on my computer and I don’t have rights to install ANYTHING (even though I am the computer teacher; go figure!), so I’d have to ask permission to install Flash and the PTB would want to know why. Anyway, I can’t watch any streaming videos from work and it sucks. 🙁

  13. Marilyn is a computer teacher, Justin. Where will our future Youtube viewers come from if she can’t teach them how to watch Youtube at their future jobs?

  14. damn right, mdj! These kids need to know about YT. How else will they know how to waste time at work?

  15. Nalts, you missed “How do I contact YouTube when my account is “permanently suspended”? Yep – they’ve knifed my “Wallyworld” channel again – after 1200 subs/340 vids/7.5 Million views. This time for a News clip on U.S. soldiers liberating some retarded Iraqi kids they found tied to their beds in a so-called “home”. The video had been up for months and had 55k views. But I’m a “repeat offender” doncha know, so they canned me again. With no redress. I’ve written to one of the Editors and to Damien Whatisface but haven’t heard back from either. Meanwhile I’ve posted videos on my alternate channel Halitosis of Nalts but the Nazi censors of YouRube have followed me across to there as well. I’ve just been notified that my 60 year old clip of an early Marlboro Man infringes copyright of Philip Morris and has been removed. Funny that. I got it from the Internet Archive where it’s listed as “Public Domain”. And again there is no redress. Unless I want to go down this route – ”
    Identify the specific URLs of material that YouTube has removed or to which YouTube has disabled access.
    Provide your full name, address, telephone number, and email address, and the username of your YouTube account.
    Provide a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which your address is located (or San Francisco County, California if your address is outside of the United States), and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.
    Include the following statement: “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.”
    Sign the notice. If you are providing notice by e-mail, a scanned physical signature or a valid electronic signature will be accepted.” and send it to YouTube.

  16. “Secret” #6 should read “You canNOT post a URL in the comment section”. Don’t you people ever read what you type? That’s just retarded.

  21. Pingback: How to add YouTube videos to blog/website

  22. well i found a bit of a secret where when a video is buffering you can play a game of snake but with the buffer circles if you press an arrow key when buffering… try it yourself

  23. ‎1.go to youtube
    2.select any video
    3.Pause the video at 0:00.
    4.Go full screen
    5.Press the LEFT arrow key, while also pressing the UP arrow key [So you’re pressing them both at the same time]
    6. Let go
    7.Then tap both of them at the same time.
    8. Enjoy your game of SNAKE

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