Graphic overlays soon to be added to YouTube videos

YouTube has been given a feature upgrade which allows for annotations to be added to a user's already uploaded videos.

Listed under the "My Videos" heading, a new button has been added called "Edit Annotations" which allows speech bubbles, subtitles, internal links, and spotlights to be embedded in videos.

The first examples from Google exploiting these new capabilities show a new level of interactivity on YouTube. An interactive card trick, and shell game demonstrate just some of the possibilities these annotations afford. In the card trick video, for example, the user can "pick a card" from six shown on the screen, and a follow-up video is then triggered of his card being revealed.

The effect is actually redolent of many early-90's FMV (full motion video) games that clogged the market in the dawn of the CD-ROM era, with a noticeable click-over when video clips load and change.

Once annotations are added to a video, they are left on by default, but can be turned off while viewing. Since it is still in beta, the annotations also do not yet support full-screen playback, embeds, or languages other than English.