According to YouTube’s blog, 44 percent of its viewers are consuming its video content via off-site embeddable players. The good news today is that they have made some improvements to the experience your audience will have viewing your videos elsewhere around the Web.
The new and improved YouTube embedded player features include:
- High-quality start images (thumbnails) - According to the blog post, now before you press play on embedded YouTube videos, the thumbnails for the video are presented in high-quality. I don’t really think this is a HUGE improvement, but hey, it can’t hurt.
- Integrated video annotations - Back in August, YouTube enabled video content creators to incorporate text information into their videos with YouTube Annotations. The negative side was that the annotated text was only able to be viewed on the YouTube site. Well now, people watching YouTube-hosted videos through embedded players can now join the fun. A definite advantage — especially if you want to add quick textual information or instruction in your videos without having to use editing software to do it!
- Integrated closed captions - The ability to add closed captions to your videos was another nifty feature added to YouTube back in August. However, just like Annotations, the captions only showed up on videos watched while on the YouTube site. That’s also a thing of the past: Closed Captions are now available in embedded videos.
- Search in embeddable player - Ummm, okay. This new feature is pretty LAME. According to the blog, now at the close of an embedded video (or if the user moves the mouse towards the top of the player), a search box will appear.
Hello!? How distracting is THAT?
If it’s not already obvious, the reason this addition of a search box into our embedded vidoes is annoying is because you really don’t want your viewers being distracted by the ability to search MORE content when they’re trying to consume yours!
Ahhh, but have no fear, I have figured out a way to PREVENT this search box from showing up in your embedded players. It’s being added to our tutorials now.
More to come…