YouTube is by far the largest platform for online video viewership in the world. But frankly, it wouldn’t be anything without its creators. That’s why in a keynote today at Vidcon, the company announced a wide range of new tools for the people that upload videos to the platform, all in the hopes that it will allow them to be more… creative?
For the creative community, the keynote was largely a preview into the future, as YouTube Director of Product Management for Creators Matthew Glotzbach and VP of Engineering for Creators Oliver Heckmann showcased features that would mostly be considered “coming soon.”
That decision to preview upcoming changes was intentional, as YouTube creators have consistently asked for more transparency around upcoming changes to the platform. After all, even features that are considered good for the overall community can still be disruptive to their workflow if they aren’t ready for them.
At the keynote, which featured new YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki, the key themes were helping creators making videos more awesome, reach a wider audience, and grow their businesses.
Here’s a quick rundown of the new creator tools and how they’ll help:
- YouTube Creator Studio – Available now on Android, coming soon to iOS. The Creator Studio app will give creators the ability to view analytics, manage their videos, and other stuff.
- Audio Library sound effects – Creators now have access to royalty-free sound effects so they don’t have to create their own zombie screams or whatever. Instead, future sound effects on YouTube will all sound the same.
- 60 FPS video – Coming soon, YouTubers will be able to share videos at 60 frames per second, for people who care about that sort of thing.
- Fan Funding – It’s like donations or Kickstarter or Indiegogo for your creative endeavors! But right there on your YouTube. Already in testing.
- Creator Credits – Because everyone on YouTube is collaborating with everyone else, YouTube is now enabling collaborators to name and link to their fellow collaborators in a way that viewers might actually click through. Another “coming soon” feature.
- Fan-submitted subtitles – So that even if viewers don’t speak the same language, they can still watch (and hopefully enjoy) your videos. In the coming months.
- Moving from annotations to cards – YouTube wants to improve the way it displays links on videos. So it’ll at some point replace annotations with cards, which will work across desktop, mobile phones, and tablets.
- More ways to playlist – YouTube will soon give creators more creative ways to create playlists to make their videos more easily discoverable.
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