YouTube added a new feature for video creators: annotations. "Video Annotations are a new way for you to add interactive commentary to your videos. Use them to add background information about the video, create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to choose the next scene) or link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video."
You can add annotations by going to the list of uploaded videos and clicking on "Edit annotations" or by visiting one of your videos while you are logged in. There are three types of annotations that can be added while playing the video: speech bubbles, notes and spotlights, as you can see in the screenshot above.
Here's a live example of interactivity that can be added to a YouTube video (also notice the updated embeddable player that looks the same as the player from YouTube's site). The following short video:
can be transformed into a much more engaging content with clickable annotations that point to other videos. For now, only video creators can add annotations, but it would be nice to allow any user to comment on a specific moment from a video (a la Viddler) or to add funny speech bubbles.
@Frederik: Yes, I know. That was the point of embedding the video: to show the difference between the original video and the enhanced version with annotations.
Great new option. Would be even better if you could add links to websites outside YouTube (e.g. deeplinks to products in webshops, lyrics or tabs of songs, links to extended versions that didn't fit in the 10 minute-limit of YouTube...).
There is no point if you can only annotate your own videos. The fun is in annotating others' stuff. That's the whole damn point of all this: interactivity. I can annotate when I create my videos. So, to annotate I have to download a youtube video someone else posted and repost it as my own and then annotate it. SILLY
Actually there are a lot of video groups that are doing "interactive video." YouTube is just dipping their toes in the water. Check out www.veeple.com. They allow you to not only annotate your videos but also add interactive images from your computer, make any object in your video linkable to any outside website and you can move your spot, your link or annotation around the screen in real-time, link to a MySpace or Facebook page, let others annotate your video, and on and on, pretty cool! They are more of a lab where people can come play than a competitor to YouTube (they have very low traffic) but they are doing some neat interactive stuff.
bubbleply.com has a much better annotation tool than youtube that has better functionality and features and works on embeds and let's you do it many languages.
Because I didn't know what it was, I clicked on the screen of a video I uploaded and accidentally put in a temporary box that says 'Enter Text Here'. Now, every time someone watches the video, that comes up and I don't know how to get it off permanently! Anyone have any idea how I can get rid of it?
hello could someone please tell me how to make the option on off on my videos because i did it accidentally and know i don't want people writing crap all over the place thank you very much
