There are many things you can do on YouTube that the average user isn't aware of. We have picked our top 9 additional features... how many were you aware of?
1. Savings videos to view offline.
While the YouTube desktop browser version doesn'tt offer an option of saving videos for offline play, the app on both iOS and Android has this option.
For any video that you want to save for offline viewing, simply tap on the button that for offline viewing, simply tap on the button that says `Add to Offline' and the video will be downloaded and saved to the My Videos section of the YouTube app. These can be viewed later, even without internet connectivity . Note that some videos are not available for offline viewing.
2. Video editing and adding audio
Want to start making your own video training montage? You don't need to start downloading fancy editing software - YouTube has its own simple video uploader tool that allows you to edit videos on the fly.
Head to www.youtube.com/editor, and from here you'll be able to weave together multiple video sources from your computer, and add music from a library of approved tracks.
3. Play panoramic videos
YouTube can now support panoramic, 360 degree and VR videos.
You can either watch them with VR headsets, such as the free Google Cardboard, or navigate them from the desktop page by dragging the camera view around with your mouse, or with the AWSD keyboard keys.
Check out a series of examples shot with a GoPro Spherical camera here.
4. Keyboard shortcuts
While watching video, you can use left, right arrow keys to jump back and forward 5 seconds.
You can use 'K' to pause or play, 'J' and 'L' to rewind and forward by 10 seconds, F for full screen and M to mute. Updown arrows can be used to adjust volume. Number keys 1 to 9 can be used to scrub through the video (where 1 is 10% and 9 is 90%).
5. Karoke YouTube
Karaoke YouTube is a great Karaoke companion. There are loads of music videos that come embedded with lyrics as subtitles.
Type a song name followed by Karaoke in the search bar of YouTube to view videos with Karaoke support. To use it as a Karaoke machine, you can connect your phone or laptop to your TV and use a mixer to attach external speakers and a microphone.If the lyrics are not present or not good, get a free browser extension called YouTube Lyrics -it will show you lyrics right next to the video.
Change Caption Styles If you enable subtitlesclosed captions on a video, you can press B on the keyboard to cycle through different colours and styles for better visibility. Tip: you can just tap C on the keyboard to enable captions. Tap the gear icon for more settings (font, colour, size, window colour and opacity).
6. Make GIFs from YouTube videos
It's easy to make an animated GIF from a portion of a YouTube video. Open the YouTube video of your choice and in the address bar of the browser, add the words 'gif' before YouTube (it should read gify outube.com). The site will redirect you to another page where you can select up to a 15 second clip from the video to convert to GIF.
Once you have se lected the animation time, a new page will give you the option to add text effects and stickers. Once done, you can download the GIF to your computer.
7. Playback at a specific time
You can share a video with playback starting at a set time. When sharing, look out for the 'Start at' box.
Check it and enter a time. Or you can just add '?t=2m10s' to the end of a short URL (for playback starting at 2 minutes and 10 seconds, in this example).
8. Play with subtitles
Sure, you knew YouTube had a subtitles feature - but did you know you can tweak a whole host of features such as font and shading to best suit your viewing?
You can turn on the captions wherever you see the 'CC' button at the bottom right of the play window. Once turned on, hit the settings cog and head to the 'Subtitles' bit. From here, click 'Options'.
You can change font, colour and size in addition to backgrounds and opacity settings.
For some neat shortcuts, with subtitles turned on hitting 'B' will change the colour of the background, while '+' and '-' can help adjust the size of the font.
9. Download (not entirely legal)
There are several programs that you can use (a quick SE search will find these) where you can download the videos as MP4 or MP3 audio files... but Blue Shark Digital didn't tell you this!!