YouTube provides several powerful tools for users to customize their channel and videos, including: 1. Allowing users to upload videos, add descriptions and metadata, and allow others to subscribe to their channel. 2. Providing options to customize individual video settings like privacy, thumbnail, license, and annotations. 3. Offering ways to share and embed videos on other sites by generating embed codes and links that can be customized.

1. Jeff McNear
plasterdog.com
jeff@plasterdog.com
@plasterdog
847/849-7060
A basic overview of
What you can do with
YouTube tools

2. There are some pretty powerful tools available with a standard YouTube account:
• Establish your own channel of uploaded videos
• Attach descriptions and controls to each individual video
• Allow users to subscribe to your channel
• Embed videos directly in a webpage
• And more …

3. When initially uploading a video to
your account you are presented with
a screen (at the default tab “Info &
Settings”) that will allow you to:
• Name the video
• Attach a description (complete
with an outbound link – remember
to include the leading http://)
• Include meta-tag information
• Associate the piece with a
YouTube category

4. Additional parameters can be set,
including:
• Privacy
• Video Thumbnail
• License
• Comments
• Comment Voting

5. You can also:
• Allow ratings
• Allow embedding
• Allow syndication

6. The annotations tab allows you to
insert 5 different types of annotations
into a video:
• Speech bubble
• Note
• Title
• Spotlight
• Title
Any type of text can be inserted,
including links to other YouTube
hosted videos
Only commercial and Not-for-Profit
accounts have the ability to insert an
external link inside of an annotation

7. A speech bubble annotation is what you might expect. You can control the position
size and content of the text area, and the “tail” can be positioned by dragging the
end point to your desired location on the screen.

8. The starting point and ending point of an annotation is set in the two “timing”
fields, and you can control the size & color of the text - as well as the background
color of the text field

9. Titles are fairly similar to notes & speech bubbles, except for the fact that the
default font size is larger and that a title cannot have a link in it

10. A spotlight annotation highlights an area on the screen and will show a message on
rollover of the highlighted area. The highlight and text areas have separate controls

11. A pause is inserted at a specific point in the video, and the length of the
pause can be specified

12. After an annotation has been inserted, it can be edited by selecting it via the
“edit existing annotation” drop-down

13. You find the unique link for the
video and the embed code via the
“share” icon (located below the
actual video display).
Unless your privacy settings dis-
allow it, anyone who found your
video would be able to access this
sharing information

14. You can customize the embed
code to control the default size of
the video display. Other code can
be appended to the end of the
video URL to fine tune the display:
• To hide search on hover:
&showsearch=0
• To start video 30 seconds from
the beginning:
#t=30s
• To hide related videos:
&rel=0

15. YouTube also has some resident video editing tools available via the “edit video” link

16. On the default tab you can trim the video’s length, rotate the video itself, and
adjust the fill, contrast, saturation and temperature of the picture. The image
adjustments are universal across the entire video

17. The same applies to the image controls found on the effects tab

18. If desired, you can replace the audio track of the video with an alternative file
via the audio tab

19. A valid subscription link for any YouTube
user would be:
http://youtube.com/”username”/video.rss
However Google has developed a widget
to embed a subscription display in a
website here:
http://www.gmodules.com/ig/creator?synd=
open&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
%2Fig%2Fmodules%2Fyoutube.xml&lang=en
This widget will show a revolving display
of a channel’s videos, and allows for size
control, border color control, and the
widget “name”

20. Additional links of note:
• Technically the embed code from YouTube isn’t valid XHTML, go here to get
valid embed coding: http://www.tools4noobs.com/online_tools/youtube_xhtml/
• While you cannot include an external link in an annotation for a video being
played directly playing via YouTube, this site will insert links that will work on
embedded videos: http://www.linkedtube.com/
• If you don’t want to trim your video, but would only like to embed part of that
video on a site follow this link: http://www.tubechop.com/
• YouTube animation tools: http://www.youtube.com/create
• More editing tools: http://www.youtube.com/t/creators_corner
• Downloading YouTube videos (append video identifier to either of the following):
http://www.kickyoutube.com/
http://www.kissyoutube.com
• To download only the audio portion of a video (MP3 format):
http://listentoyoutube.com