Check out Cosmic Panda, a new experimental experience for videos, playlists and channels

With nearly 8 years of video uploaded and 3 billion views logged every day on YouTube, it’s clear you like to watch and share YouTube videos. While you’re watching your favorite or new videos, we at the ‘Tube are obsessing night and day over how those videos are presented. Our team is constantly experimenting, tweaking and playing with new ways to make your experience exactly what you’re looking for.

Today, we’d like to invite you to play along with us by participating in one of our latest TestTube experiments: Cosmic Panda. To take this experiment for a test drive go to http://www.youtube.com/cosmicpanda and click “Try it out!”

Once you're in the experiment, much of YouTube will look different, including videos, playlists and channels.

Here’s what browsing a channel in the experiment looks like:



And here’s what the playlist viewing experience looks like in the experiment:



We’re eager to hear your feedback as it’s a great chance for us to incorporate your ideas into future designs for YouTube. To give us your thoughts, click on the blue flag on the left hand side of the page labeled “Feedback.” We'll be making changes to the experiment regularly, so check back to see if some of your suggestions have made it onto the site or to give us more feedback on the latest updates. You can go back to the older design by returning to Cosmic Panda and selecting to go back to the “older version.” For YouTube Partners, we're especially excited to hear your feedback, so stay engaged throughout these experiments!

We look forward to seeing your feedback and hope you enjoy hanging out with our Cosmic Panda.

Noam Lovinsky, Product Manager, recently watched “Radiohead - Lotus Flower,” and Alex Nicksay, Software Engineer, recently watched “White Arrows - 8050 (Too Fast Too Slow)."

More about → Check out Cosmic Panda, a new experimental experience for videos, playlists and channels

Give YouTube Topics on Search a whirl

We know that sometimes people come to YouTube looking for a specific video, but at other times, they have only a rough idea of the kind of videos they want. We’ve been there too, and have been thinking for a while about this challenge of searching when you don’t yet know exactly what you’re looking for.

Here’s a glimpse inside how we are approaching this challenge:



In coming up with a solution, we wanted to help you specify your search even if you started with something as vague as “funny”. We also wanted to surface varied sets of videos and make it easy for you to explore them further.

To that end, we have a prototype we’d like you to try out. It’s called “YouTube Topics on Search” and you can get to it from TestTube. Here’s a video showing you how it works:



Put simply, we try to identify topics on YouTube and associate videos with them. We use many different sources to find these topics, including frequently used uploader keywords, common search queries, playlist names, and even sources outside of YouTube such as Wikipedia articles.

When you search -- for example, let’s say for “obama” -- we suggest other related topics tied to videos that you might want to explore, such as “michelle obama” or “john mccain.” You can click to get to videos on these topics or you can find videos that contain both topics by clicking on the (+) next to the topic. This is handy for refining. For instance, try searching for “turkey” and you’ll see “thanksgiving” as a refinement option further down the page. We hope topics become a fun way to explore new and interesting corners of YouTube’s video universe.

To start you exploring, we’ve planted topic “Easter eggs,” which we challenge you to find. Here are a couple of hints relating to just some of the topics out there:

• “Whoa, man. Whoa. Whoa! Oh my God! Oh my God! Woohoo! Oh, wow!” What did this person just see?
• They’ve boogied to Beyonce, Brazilian samba and Sugar Hill Gang. Who are they?

For more clues to other topic Easter eggs and for other questions you have, read this article in the Help Center.

Give Topics on Search a test drive and let us know what you think in the YouTube forum.

Palash Nandy, Software Engineer, recently discovered “cheese rolling," and Elizabeth Windram, UX Designer, recently discovered “big wave surfing.”

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Introducing YouTube HTML5 Supported Videos

A while ago, YouTube launched a simple demo of an HTML5-based video player. Recently, we published a blog post on our pre-spring cleaning effort and your number one request was that YouTube do more with HTML5. Today, we're introducing an experimental version of an HTML5-supported player.

HTML5 is a new web standard that is gaining popularity rapidly and adds many new features to your web experience. Most notably for YouTube users, HTML5 includes support for video and audio playback. This means that users with an HTML5 compatible browser, and support for the proper audio and video codecs can watch a video without needing to download a browser plugin.

Our support for HTML5 is an early experiment, and there are some limitations. HTML5 on YouTube doesn't support videos with ads, captions, or annotations and it requires a browser that supports both the video tag and h.264 encoded video (currently that means Chrome, Safari, and ChromeFrame on Internet Explorer). We will be expanding the capabilities of the player in the future, so get ready for new and improved versions in the months to come.

To try it out, go to the HTML5 page via TestTube or visit this page and join the experiment. This will enable HTML5 video for your browser, provided that it's one of the browsers mentioned above and fits in with the parameters we already referenced. (If you've opted in to other experiments, you may not get the HTML5 player.) You can also enable Feather watch (visit http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta) along with HTML5 video for an even simpler, faster YouTube experience.

We are very excited about HTML5 as an open standard and want to be part of moving HTML5 forward on the web.

Kevin Carle, Engineer, recently watched "Paranormal Cativity," and Chris Zacharias, Engineer, recently watched "Amsterdam Acoustics - Erlend Øye."

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YouTube's Top 10 Launches of 2009

Didyou know that we released more features in 2009 than in 2007 and 2008combined? This made it the busiest year on record for the YouTubeproduct and engineering teams. Some of these launches, like support for1080p, made sizable splashes, while others, like "trending topics" appearing at the bottom of the browse page,went out with less fanfare. With so much going on, we wanted to pausebefore the new year begins to review the things that hopefully made thebiggest impact on your overall YouTube experience:

• Auto-Share - As part of our wider effort to integrate YouTube into the social and communication platforms you use every day, AutoShare automatically syndicates your YouTube activity to Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader.
  
  
  
• 1080p - In November, we unveiled support for videos in 1080p (aka "full HD"). Want to test it out? Check out this video.
  
  
• Auto-Speech Recognition - Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, coupled with YouTube's captioning system, makes videos more accessible to the deaf and hearing impaired. This same speech recognition technology can create machine-generated captions, which can then be translated into 51 languages.
  

• Mobile Website for Smartphones - Watching videos on -- and uploading videos from -- cell phones is more popular than ever. To meet this demand, we launched a new mobile website designed to make using YouTube on smartphones like the iPhone, G1 and Palm Pre a lot easier.
  

• YouTube XL - YouTube XLoptimizes YouTube for large screens. In addition to offering largertext and simplified navigation, XL has a continuous play feature,allowing you to search for a topic, hit "play" and then kick back foran uninterrupted viewing experience.
  

• VEVO - VEVO.comis a partnership that blends Google and YouTube's technology with musicvideos from a broad catalog of artists from Universal Music Group, SonyMusic and EMI. The site hopes to redefine the way people watch andengage with music online, as well as change the way the digital andmusic industries do business with each other.
  
  
• Feather - Featheris a stripped-down version of the page on which any video plays.Without all but the basic features, the page loads more quickly andvideos play back faster. Give it a whirl in TestTube or click here.
  
  
  
• 3D - In July, one of our engineers used his free time to implement easier viewing options for 3D videos on YouTube. Here's a brief overview video.
  

• Real-Time Comment Search - In October, we released the ability to search YouTube comments in real-time.The comment appears on a continuously updated results page, and"trending topics" indicates the hottest topics of conversation onYouTube at that particular moment.

• Shows & Movies - In April, we rolled out a destination sporting hundreds of movies and thousands of full-length TV episodes. Offerings have included film classics like Taxi Driver, Ghostbusters and the Spaghetti Western Trilogy, as well as current TV shows from broadcasters like C4 and Channel 5 in the UK.

Whichof these features is your favorite? Please use the poll in the topright corner of this blog to let us know what you've found to be mostuseful in '09, or leave a comment below if there's another feature thathad an important impact on your YouTube life.

Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, and John Harding, Engineering Manager

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Introducing Feather: A Lighter Way to Browse Videos

One of our priorities is ensuring that videos always load and playback quickly. However, a consequence of rolling out higher quality video, HD and, more recently, 1080p, is that playbacks might suffer if bandwidth or computer processing power is low. There are also a few countries where bandwidth is at a premium and videos can take several seconds to start playing.

Let's face it: in this age of instant gratification, even several seconds of loading time can feel like an eternity.

With all of this in mind, "Feather," an ultra light watch page, launches today in TestTube, our ideas incubator where we test out new products. As you can see by the below screenshot, the player still features prominently, but will default to standard quality. Related videos, comments and other familiar features from the current watch page are kept to a minimum. All of this results in a user experience that aims to keep things simple and the videos loading and playing quickly. If we see adoption go up along with improvements in latency, we'll look to roll this out of TestTube and make it more widely available.

Take Feather for a test drive here.

Chris Zacharias, Engineer, recently watched "TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB - I Can Talk."

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Search Comments on YouTube in Real-Time

Today, Comments Search moves into Test Tube, the place where our engineers and developers test out new features and gather data and feedback before pushing them out to a wider audience. This feature allows you to search the comments people are making on YouTube in real time. The full comment will appear on a continuously updated results page, and "trending topics" indicates the hottest topics of conversation on YouTube at that particular moment. Comments Search is a way you can find out what YouTube users are saying about everything from the news stories of the day (below, see results when we typed in "balloon boy") to your individual channel or brand.

So try it out, enter your feedback here or comment below, and help us get this feature ready for the masses. We're always working on new ways to enhance search across YouTube and give quick and easy access to the information people are looking for.

Jamie Davidson, Product Manager, recently watched "Strange Cloud Over Moscow Oct 2009."

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