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09 May 10 - 02:41 PM (#2903195) Subject: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Murray MacLeod First of all, they changed the comments format so that now it's impossible to tell when a comment was posted, the latest "improvement" is some kind of graph underneath the video (no idea what that is all about and can't be bothered working it out) , a map showing in what part of the world the video is most popular, and the age group among which it is most popular. WTF ???? Who cares about any of this, I just wish they would bring back the old format, which was as near perfect as possible, and quit introducing all this newfangled malarkey. Rant over. |
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09 May 10 - 02:56 PM (#2903209) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Little Hawk Agreed. |
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09 May 10 - 02:59 PM (#2903213) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Bernard Indubitably!! |
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09 May 10 - 03:08 PM (#2903218) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: McGrath of Harlow Let's be glad that Max doesn't treat the Mudcat that way... |
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09 May 10 - 03:24 PM (#2903233) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Genie Another fairly recent change at YouTube is that apparently you can no longer download the videos that you yourself posted on your channel. When I first started using YT, in addition to a "sharing" site, it also served as backup storage of my videos. I could and did download them if I lost the original (e.g., in a hard drive crash) or if I needed to edit the titles and credits I had put on my videos. But sometime not too long ago they removed that function, with no notice. One good change, though, has to do with the "private" option (sharable with up to 25 people) for the videos you post. It used to be that if you selected "private," the people you wanted to share that video with had to have YT accounts. Now they have a second option, which is to have the video assigned a private URL, which you can send to whomever you want, whether they are YT members or not. The limit is still only 25 people who can access the video via that link, but if, say, you posted the link on Mudcat or sent the link to your 200 closest friends, there might not be more than 25 people who would click it. |
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09 May 10 - 03:45 PM (#2903241) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: McGrath of Harlow You can still download the videos - you just need to hunt around for programs that allow you do do it. |
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09 May 10 - 03:52 PM (#2903247) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: GUEST,999 I recall a Herman cartoon in which he is asking, `Just what IS new, improved lettuce` Right. |
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09 May 10 - 04:28 PM (#2903265) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Artful Codger They've also hidden or removed the ability to get a simple, uncluttered link for a video. They used to have a box with this link in the info section--this was one of the most useful features on their pages. Most of the time, you can copy the link from your browser's URL field, but then you have to edit it down (and most people don't bother--grrr!) However, if you're viewing clips in a viewer's channel, you have to right-click on the clip entry in the one of the lists and copy the link location--if you're viewing the clip, the address is nowhere displayed. Instead, they apparently only want you to "share" links through some silly service like Facebook or by embedding code in a web page! And their search engine is crap. They can have many clips for a song, but they'll only display a few exact or close matches before wandering off into garbage you had no real interest in, given your search keywords. Much of the time, you can include keywords that should get you exactly what you're looking for, and they'll miss it entirely, even though the text exactly matches from the video title and start of the info text. And they've shrunk the amount of info you see without having to expand the info field. And they's added that annoying expansion to the progress bar, while shrinking down it's size (was it really taking up too much space, considering all the other extraneous junk they put on the page??) It's just more glitz-over-content design--the kind of thing that happens when you put web design in the hands of marketing minions and art students. |
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09 May 10 - 05:13 PM (#2903289) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Bill D "...change at YouTube is that apparently you can no longer download the videos that you yourself posted." As McGrath says, there ARE ways to get any video. Sometimes a program will work ok, but if you figure out how to locate things in your browser cache, you can find it, move it and re-name the code word they use to confuse you. They don't want it to be simple, but as far as I know right now, it MUST be on your computer in order to play. |
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09 May 10 - 05:16 PM (#2903292) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: George Papavgeris So life is good. It must be if we can devote energy to complaining about the flaws and unwelcome changes to things that we have for free :-) Don't get me wrong, I am not moralising, I know that I can be prone to this myself. But it's good to stand back once in a while and admire where we got to with the internet since it came to the wider world's attention in the mid- to late nineties. As for YouTube itself, yes, I too dislike some of the changes. But I am also gratful for the amazing times it has given me already, from finding music from my distant past, seeing bands and artists I never saw live, seeing weird and wonderful things from all over the world... Not to mention the opportunity to promote my own music and to be put in touch with some lovely people as a result, from Ireland to Israel and from Greece to Japan. And I owe it all to YouTube being there and the millions of people who put up these videos for us to see. Nah. Life IS good. |
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09 May 10 - 05:21 PM (#2903295) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Murray MacLeod George, I think everybody agrees, YouTube is wonderful. Even with the changes, it is still wonderful. It's just that if they reversed the changes it would be more wonderful still ... |
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09 May 10 - 06:31 PM (#2903337) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Will Fly YouTube is great - just preferred the old version. |
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09 May 10 - 07:53 PM (#2903391) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: maple_leaf_boy They now have the video info under the screen, instead of beside it. This way you can't watch the video and see the lyrics at the same time. The old way was much better. |
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09 May 10 - 08:47 PM (#2903414) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: TerryFree I have to echo George's sentiment. It astounds me when I hear people whinging about this amazing resource we have to hand. ... AND at no cost! |
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09 May 10 - 09:07 PM (#2903425) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Beer Here here, TerryFree... How the time does fly when your surfing YouTube. And I still can't believe it is free. Beer (adrien) |
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09 May 10 - 09:23 PM (#2903435) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: mousethief I want my money back. |
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10 May 10 - 01:38 AM (#2903507) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Genie Artful, you are so right that the YT search engine is crap. It's ridiculous! I can search for, say, "Hallelujah" and specify "NOT Leonard Cohen" or "NOT Handel," and I'll still get scads of hits for exactly the words or names I've "excluded." Aarrgghh! McGrath -"You can still download the videos - you just need to hunt around for programs that allow you do do it." Ah, but you didn't used to have to use some external program. You'd just click "download" and do it. YT doesn't tell you what those other programs are now, or how safe they are to use. I wish they'd go back to the old way. Fat lot of good it does for downloading to be possible if YT doesn't tell you how to do it. Bill D, no, a video does not have to still be on your 'puter to play on YT. Once you've uploaded it, you can delete it from your hard drive (if you don't want to keep it as a video file). That's perzactly why I'm ticked that I can't download the videos I've posted. E.g., I have one where I made a mistake in the credits I put on the video and I wanted to download it to fix it and re-post it, but I can't. And, George, I agree: YouTube is a wonderful, useful FREE site. I really can't complain much about the things I don't like, because it IS free. I just wish they'd have given more warning about some of the impending changes. |
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10 May 10 - 02:45 AM (#2903520) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: VirginiaTam howzabout sending concerns and comments to youtube admin? |
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10 May 10 - 03:39 AM (#2903537) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Genie Done that already. |
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10 May 10 - 03:56 AM (#2903543) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: treewind "Bill D, no, a video does not have to still be on your 'puter to play on YT. Once you've uploaded it, you can delete it from your hard drive (if you don't want to keep it as a video file)." You misunderstood Bill's point. While you play any YT video, the whole contents of the video must be temporarily stored on your computer somewhere, so if you can find the file created for that purpose you can move it so it's isn't automatically deleted after you've played the video or when the browser cache is cleared. I'm not sure if that's always true; the whole video may not always be stored in one file, especially if it's big. I use a Firefox extension for downloading videos. Works a treat, and it's worth knowing that once you've started it you should stop viewing the video through the browser because it's all getting downloaded twice and that makes the download slow. |
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10 May 10 - 03:56 AM (#2903544) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Will Fly YouTube is free Well, let's be clear - it is free, but there's a certain hidden quid pro quo in the setup. YouTube exists as a commercial entity, deriving its income from companies who pay to post their material on the site - material such as straight advertising, selected commercial TV programme content, etc. Now, if that type of material was all that YouTube had as its content, it wouldn't reach out to the world market that it does at present. In relies on the free uploading from amateurs and semi-pros to fill out the content - so that when you or I upload a video, our friends and subscribers and passing viewers will watch the stuff. They will browse serendipitously and - as someone else has said - you can waste many a precious hour surfing through the Tube. which is what they want. The sheer quantity of free content - free, by the way, from us the uploaders - gives YouTube its huge and fascinating database. Quite apart from straight fees from commercial partners, there's also subsidiary commerce, where YouTube channel owners and harvesters from other sites contact YouTube posters offering deals for the use of the video. These deals may include a fee from the person being offered the deal, or the temptation of revenue from linking up with other video producers. So there's quite a sub-world of commercial activity bubbling away in the YouTube network. None of which could exist without us, the uploaders who happily give our videos for free to create the bulk of the content which attracts the punters. I'm not knocking YouTube - I sell DVDs through it - but let's be clear about the site. And, yes, it's "free" to most folks who browse it. What's fascinating is the hidden outcome from having material on YouTube. If you regular uploaders google your YouTube name, you may find literally thousands of commercial advertising sites where your material has been harvested by the sites' search engines and embedded as fodder for the site subject. So, for example, "My Grandfather's Clock" played on Appalachian dulcimer and guitar, gets picked up by site after site advertising clocks and watches! So YouTube uploaders who provide their content for free are also unwittingly providing free materials for totally unconnected commercial sites. But - true - it's all free! |
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10 May 10 - 04:15 AM (#2903553) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Genie "if you can find the file created for that purpose you can move it so it's isn't automatically deleted after you've played the video or when the browser cache is cleared." Treewind, I'm not sure I understand your point. The whole reason I WANT to download a video that I've uploaded to YT is that it's no longer on my hard drive or any backup disk. |
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10 May 10 - 04:42 AM (#2903562) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: nickp The bit that irritates me is that they keep saying my browser isn't supported and I should go to IE8 (or Firefox which I also use anyway). But I am already on IE8 and have even resistalled it twice, cleared down cache, temp etc etc etc. But still they can't recognise it. Grrr! |
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10 May 10 - 11:03 AM (#2903722) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Bill D Genie...Treewind's point...and mine... is that IF you want to keep a video, whether one YOU originally uploaded, or just one you'd like to keep, you have to use one of several tactics....BECAUSE...it is played from a temporary file in your browser cache, and will be deleted when the browser is closed (and sometimes as soon as you move away from that video and to another page). This means you must either have a separate program (such AS Firefox download helper or several othere) which will sort out the coded address and put the YT video where you want it OR you must go to where that temporary storage file is and move it before you close your browser. I have used a couple of the download programs, but since video sites often rewrite the code to try to defeat them, I have learned where the cache is in my various browsers and how to identify the video files. As the videos are about finished, I 'pause' them and use a 'file manager' (like Explorer, only better) program to locate them by date, time & size, rename them, and move them to a place that is safe from automatic deletion. I'm sure YT has their reasons for wanting us to view stuff ONLY while on their pages, but we have our reasons for wanting control over how & when they are played...(for example, being able to page thru a video one frame at a time and be able to capture a single frame.) |
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10 May 10 - 03:42 PM (#2903948) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Artful Codger Yes, what Will said. And just because a site is "free", it is not above criticism in how it implements features. If YouTube were a site developed by only a single person or small group, for a small coterie of users, we should be more content to take what we can get without complaint. But it's clear they have a sufficiently large staff that such poor design should not exist, nor should such deficiencies be tolerated passively by users. From a wider perspective, I see a general trend in user interfaces to crap up the screen with extraneous, seldom used features while previously simple, useful and mainstream features become more difficult to use or are dropped. One has to wonder where these folks are picking up their guidance on good human interface design. |
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10 May 10 - 04:14 PM (#2903986) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Genie Bill D, I used to be able to download my own YT videos just by finding the video on my channel and clicking "Download" (right next to the "Edit" button). And that was when no copy of the file was in my browser cache - e.g., when I lost the entire hard drive to a crash or when I was downloading onto someone else's computer when mine was totally turned off. Heck, being able to retrieve the file from my YT channel WITHOUT any trace of it being on my hard drive, that was the whole POINT. If I could have found any form of it on my hard drive I wouldn't have needed to download it. The process of identifying and finding those coded cache files seems both complicated and cumbersome. Wouldn't it be easier just to make a backup copy on a DVD or external hard drive? |
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10 May 10 - 04:37 PM (#2904014) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Bill D Easier? Sure...if you plan ahead. I agree that it is tedious that they have made it so....tedious....If the only one that has a copy now is YT, you gotta jump thru the hoops. IF anyone wants the crash course in hoop-jumping, I have posted 'most' of the tricks before, and can find & edit them at some point....even with pictures of what it looks like in the cache.. |
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10 May 10 - 05:07 PM (#2904032) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: gnu Yeah, I don't care for a lot of the "new" in yer face advertising, but it's still free. |
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10 May 10 - 05:09 PM (#2904034) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Bonzo3legs Another fairly recent change at YouTube is that apparently you can no longer download the videos that you yourself posted on your channel If you have Real Player, you simply right click the video in YouTube and save to the designated folder!! |
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10 May 10 - 05:31 PM (#2904054) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Genie Bill, of course it's worth dealing with the complexity and tedium if you have to, but you seem to be saying you can't download your own YT videos unless there's some encoded file in your cache. If I'm reading you right, how can you download it if you didn't save the original or if your computer's crashed (or stolen)? In any case, yeah, if you can repost those instructions of a link to them, that would be much appreciated. Genie Bonzo, I use Mac with a trackpad, so there's no "right click," but for dowloadable audio files, the equivalent is to hold down the "control" key while clicking on the file and then scrolling down to the "Save File as" part of the menu. I'll try that with one of my YT files. Maybe it will work. Thanks for the suggestion. |
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10 May 10 - 05:38 PM (#2904060) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Genie Update: Tried that trick, Bonzo, but I couldn't download the video, just the link. (Sigh.) |
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10 May 10 - 05:42 PM (#2904062) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Bill D Oh...no.. all *I* know is about downloading ANY video. I never knew the difference between those one owns and just general ones. ALL my tricks involve just getting any video. 'Encoded files' (sorry if I was dense) mean those you have just watched. Which mean you must allow even your own to play thru in order to get a new copy in the cache. I'm off to a meeting tonight... will sort out techniques tomorrow. (Or, if you're in a real hurry, a search might find earlier threads) |
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10 May 10 - 07:22 PM (#2904129) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Genie OK, that's good to know. Sometimes I'd like to download someone else's YT video, but I can understand why YT (and maybe whoever posted the video) might not want you to be able to. Just saying I'm sad that YT took away that little "Download" option they used to have for the videos you yourself had posted on your channel. |
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11 May 10 - 04:38 AM (#2904318) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: buddhuu Youtube's newly decorated interface is crap. The old one was fine. It's free insofar as any Google-owned service is free. It is supported by advertising. It is not supplied to us out of kindness. Don't get me wrong - I'm a fan of Google and of Youtube, but it is what it is. The better and more popular the interface, the more users will use it and the better Google's ad-supported business model will work for them. By giving quality control feedback we are not whinging, we are doing Google/YT a favour. If the Realplayer download facility doesn't work for you (and it fails on quite a few Youtube vids) then you may have better luck with Firefox and a extension called Video Downloadhelper. I've been using it for years and it's never yet failed to grab a Youtube vid. There are loads of good .FLV players - VLC Player is one of the best. There are also free FLV to AVI converters for people who insist on using Windows Media Player. |
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11 May 10 - 11:27 AM (#2904496) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Bill D VLC player IS about the strongest player out there..(plays more files and formats), but "The KMPlayer" has an easier interface and plays 'almost-almost' as much and does more handy tricks while playing. For I.E. and Firefox there is http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/video_cache_view.html For Opera there is http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/opera_cache_view.html For looking at your files, (IF you want to mess with the cache directly)and to help you moving & renaming them, I recommend http://www.freecommander.com/ Here's a screencapture of my Opera 9.64 cache in Freecommander, showing files sorted by size.....the one at the top at 1.88MB is probably some video file from several days ago. If I wanted, I could rename it, then click the red arrow in the center (blue is for 'copy') and move it to my 'songs' area in the bottom window. (After doing it once or twice it seems easy)(at the top, I have several tabs for the locations of various browser caches 'locked' for easy access, as they are in arcane locations.) there is also this for Firefox, and a search on "cache viewer" will get you most of the above links. |
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11 May 10 - 11:37 AM (#2904501) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: The Fooles Troupe "One has to wonder where these folks are picking up their guidance on good human interface design. " I suspect it has to do with those tinfoil hats... |
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11 May 10 - 03:18 PM (#2904663) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Tootler Like a lot of commercial websites, it's the triumph of form over function. On the previous setup, when you went into You Tube you got a portal which would take you either to your own page or to the wider site. Now you get a whole load of links to videos you "might like to watch" and none of which you actually do want to watch. At least the search box, for all its faults is still pretty much where it was. |
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11 May 10 - 05:10 PM (#2904726) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: GUEST,leeneia I've been watching a few YouTube videos in the last two days, and YouTube seems the same as always. No graphs, maps, or age groups. |
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27 May 10 - 05:47 PM (#2915568) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Little Hawk Adolf Hitler is also infuriated over the changes recently made to YouTube. Check this out... Hitler in a rage over YouTube layout changes... |
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28 May 10 - 08:12 AM (#2915918) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Simon G @genie, the YouTube search engine uses the same syntax as 99% of all the search engines on the internet. try searching for hallelujah -cohen -handel. Click Search Options and then Additional Search Options see if that helps. Simon |
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28 May 10 - 08:17 AM (#2915920) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: olddude hate the changes, went to sign on and it said ... nope, now I have to use my gmail account instead of what I used for years cause they linked it to gmail ... why? cause ! they are nuts |
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28 May 10 - 10:19 AM (#2915975) Subject: RE: YouTube have gone down the tube From: Weasel Genie, Have you nanaged to download your video yet? I know that ideally you want to do it yourself, but couldn't someone (me if no-one else can) download it for you and email it on to you in this instance? Weasel |
