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YouTube Captions Underwhelms August 28, 2008

Posted by Nalts in : YouTube , trackback

In one of its most underwhelming functionality changes in the past decade, YouTube now offers captions.

Qui donne une merde?

You’ll need to look for it by clicking the arrow button and selecting “captions” but it probably won’t exist in your language. That’s because the creator has to use special software and can only translate one language per video. I suppose a summer intern had a little too much free time.

Let’s vote on some additional unecessary YouTube functionality improvements that can join this and the “thumb-up-a-comment” tool:

  1. B&W converter: The ability to turn a video black and white by altering the URL slightly.
  2. Auto inverse technology: flip your video horizontally and make KevJumba say Abmujvek.
  3. Fred shuttle: make your video play 25% faster so everyone sounds like Fred.
  4. Jiggle the JPEG: for those partner banners that don’t rotate as an annoying GIF file, this tool can take an ordinary flat banner and make it wiggle.
  5. Auto off: The video will automatically stop playing when it reaches the creator’s average viewed duration point. All MrSafety videos will stop after 11 seconds.
  6. Unrelated videos: selects videos that are not related to the one you’re viewing.
  7. What’s your vote?

 

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Comments»

1. somecallmejim - August 28, 2008

I’d like to do a write-in vote: video braille - When a visually impared person wants to watch a video, the software will print out an explaination of what’s happening on screen in braille through their printer, which they can use to follow along with the audio and get the whole story.

Otherwise, 5 gets my vote.

A couple weeks ago I was going to create a video about a blind movie critic reviewing YouTube content. I shelved it because I thought it was a hair more politically incorrect than my usual. This makes me want to rethink that.

2. Reubnick - August 28, 2008

Captions now? What’s next? An elephant playing a banjo option?

3. Nalts - August 28, 2008

Do the “blind movie critic” one!

4. jischinger - August 28, 2008

“blind movie critic”

Are you crazy? That’s pure gold! Add a side kick who wears sun glasses and moves like Stevie Wonder and for each review all he says is, “I didn’t see that one.”

5. somecallmejim - August 28, 2008

Now I might produce the video, if nothing else than to see the post titled “When a great video concept fails miserably” appear at willvideoforfood.com

6. MovieguyTed - August 28, 2008

How about an option to compress the sound beyond all reason so that it’s loud enough to startle the viewer but so distorted that nobody can understand what’s being said

Otherwise I’d vote for #2 but with an additional option to rotate the picture 45 degrees.

7. sukatra - August 28, 2008

I don’t like to think. It gives me hives. Oops, there’s one now. And another one. Another one. Another three.

I would write DAMN YOU KEVIN NALTS but I’m too busy scratching to type. Another one. Another one there. There’s six all at once! I had no idea I could fit six hives on that thing! Another one. amptjer pme/ amptjr pme/look what you’ve done to my fingers. i’m typing this with my tongue. ahlalalahhhhhhalllll. thhbbbb.

8. jischinger - August 28, 2008

I’ll add a few additional features.

1. The ability to put on or take hair off any subjects in a video ©

2. A video vocabulary dictionary using popular youtube or webleberties. You piece the words together and send them as a video greeting or response to a video ©

Imagine how popular the guys who get to say the word “you” and the word “sucks” will be…

just more showering of the gold.

9. Marilyn - August 28, 2008

I like #5. I rarely make it past the 11 second mark on Mr. Safety’s videos anyway. And he doesn’t like it when I comment because I am usually rude. Didn’t know that about me did you?

When I get home from vacation I’m going to upload my vacation videos. Prepare to be bored!!

10. damon - August 28, 2008

#6 isn’t already on YouTube? Then what are those videos on the right side of the screen? I can’t tell how they pick those.

11. marquisdejolie - August 28, 2008

^ Hahaha! Me, neither, damon.

12. JimmerSD - August 28, 2008

I vote for “Add a Nalts Center Frame” guaranteed to add 25% to all you views.

13. marquisdejolie - August 28, 2008

Personally, I’d like a feature that automatically takes the viewer to my PayPal donations page (click) as soon as the video ends.

14. marquis - August 28, 2008

Smell-O-vision!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3nFaNXvXwg&fmt=18

15. NutCheese - August 28, 2008

Sukatra smells like poo

16. DahliaK - August 28, 2008

speaking of poo, is it une merde? I would have thought merde was masculine. un merde. Am I wrong?

17. sukatra - August 28, 2008

@ nutcheese

at least i don’t smell like vagina. oh wait, i must smell like vagina. that’s why you’re always hitting on me. Stalker!

18. somecallmejim - August 29, 2008

@14 - I’m pretty sure that you’ve got a video that covers just about every topic out there. From now on I’m not going to wikipedia, I’m just surfing your videos until I find what I need!

19. marquisdejolie - August 29, 2008

@18
Hahaha! If you don’t find it on my Youtube channel, jim, check my aoluncut channel. I keep my old stuff there.
:)

20. marquisdejolie - August 29, 2008

^ Or Internet Archive. Thousands of my vids there.

21. marquisdejolie - August 29, 2008

Veoh wins lawsuit involving DMCA:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/legal/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210201310

22. Matt (aka talk74) - August 29, 2008

so is there something wrong with me if i immediately read the horizontally flipped kevjumba as ‘a-bum-cheek’?!

23. marquisdejolie - August 29, 2008

I was cleaning out my harddrive tonight and ran across copies of a bunch of emails I sent out to friends while I was living on the streets of Los Angeles. Kinda fun stuff. Here’s one:

Looking For A Grass Skirt

Sorry about all these emails at once, but it’s not that often I can
hijack a phone connection for my powerbook.
So the unemployed actor with the Marilyn Monroe/Messianic complex involving large scissors got to grumbling too much about my body odors and I told him to fuck off and moved back into my car. Then I moseyed on over to the VA Brentwood pychiatric clinic and peed in my pants at the intake station but the clerks just yawned and asked if I had an appointment.
Apparently, the only way into that air conditioned facility is to
don a Mabutu grass skirt and walk in the door with a freshly severed
head, preferably of someone with recognition value….like a TV
personality or VA union steward. I thought about dropping my pants and taking a dump on the freshly waxed floor, but I hadn’t eaten in a few days and just didn’t have the ammo. I’m sorry if this is a little vulgar, Laura.
My Army disability check was finally located and sent to my mailbox ‘residence’. Some anal retentive postal clerk was sitting on it because it didn’t have those last 4 zip code digits (-8833) after the first five (90009).
Is it the Paxil or is the government really out to screw me?

24. MM - August 29, 2008

That’s good stuff, Marquis.

25. marquisdejolie - August 29, 2008

^ Someone get me a book deal before I post them as a video series of street journals for free.

26. Matt - August 29, 2008

Everyone in Maryland is so rude

27. Marilyn - August 29, 2008

@26: You mean the state, or are you jumping on the bandwagon of spelling my name wrong?

28. fu - August 29, 2008

You know what pisses me off about you, Nalts? OK, you got someone like Marquis, who really has had it rough, and then you’re always whining about how you can’t sleep, and you’re depressed, blah, blah, blah. What the fuck do you have to be depressed about? You have a good job that apparently leaves you with loads of time to pursue other interests. You’re always showing us your beautiful kids, wife, house, life, white mini-van, etc., etc. But now your poor back hurts… Yeah, I mean that does suck, but it’s not like you were beaten, or got hit by a car and have no health insurance.

One often gets the sense that you are dissatisfied somehow. With what? What the hell is your problem anyway? A few haters? Golly, life’s rough.

29. jischinger - August 29, 2008

well, gee wiz, golly, even white male oligarchs have feelings too

I bet you have all the answers, don’t cha? What do you think he should do? Tell us all and if you really believe in what you are saying stand up and stop hiding behind the f u

30. fu - August 29, 2008

I don’t have any answers, just opinions.

31. marquis - August 29, 2008

Rosebud

32. JimmerSD - August 29, 2008

Looks like snow…

33. Michelle *Potter* - August 29, 2008

w00t for jiggle the Jpeg,
aaaaaaahhhh nooooooo for any-Fred

34. Marilyn - August 29, 2008

@28: Lay off Nalts. Everyone’s entitled to kvetch once in a while. And get a real name.

35. marquisdejolie - August 29, 2008

@34
My forensic semantics tells me that fu’s real name is Kevin. I could be wrong. I’m just a simple country boy.

36. sukatra - August 29, 2008

@28

If that was you kevin under a pseudonym, you really let me down. Not nearly as funny as it could have been.

Otherwise, fu, you seem angry about something. Sounds like it’s time for some therapy and meds for you! Tool.

37. marquisdejolie - August 30, 2008

^ We all have our Guernicas, sukatra.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2008/07/23/picasso-guernica-scan.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX5Cn7J-h6Y&fmt=18

38. Reubnick - August 30, 2008

Hahahaha at #28. I find it ironic that you are complaining about the fact that Nalts complains sometimes.

39. somecallmejim - August 30, 2008

I think someone needs a hug.

Speaking of that, where’s nutcheese?

40. Matt - August 30, 2008

I like how we’ve trained Marilyn to automatically assume certain words are references to her just misspelled.

41. marquis - August 30, 2008

What? My Pablo Picasso link was cut out of comments? Too political?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKVCov-XFXw

42. marquisdejolie - August 31, 2008

@38
Why, jim? Jonesing for some junior high-level one-liner poddy humor?
:)

43. marquisdejolie - August 31, 2008

^ Correction
Pre-teen arrested development asocial potty humor.

44. Marilyn - August 31, 2008

^ That was one of my favorite TV shows! But it got canceled. Just like everything I love.