Search Results for: youtube

Another day, another arbitrarily-named video service.

Though Vevo is a name that could very easily be lost among the likes of Veoh and TiVo, the soon-to-be launched music video site has backers that are far from forgettable: Google and Vivendi, or, more specifically, YouTube and Universal Music Group.

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In a move which may have forestalled a deal that may have accelerated arch-rival Hulu's "evil plot" to assimilate consumers' brains, YouTube has made an extended deal with Disney Media Networks -- parent company of the American ABC and ESPN channels -- that not only gives ABC its own branded YouTube channel, but enables Disney to manage its own in-stream advertising.

This afternoon, a hastily-produced preview video was posted to ABC's new channel in a format that could not be embedded elsewhere, contrary to the usual YouTube methodology. And a two-and-a-half minute clip from a recent SportsCenter serves as a placeholder for future content on ESPN's new YouTube channel. ESPN already has a full-featured sports news and video highlight service on Disney's own Go Network, its homebase since 2004 after Disney and Microsoft's MSN terminated their deal.

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In YouTube's
blog yesterday, Patrick Walker, Director of Video Partnerships (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), announced that premium music video content would be blocked from view in the UK.

Citing a failure in negotiations with the publishing, composing, and songwriting organization PRS for Music (Performing Rights Society), Walker said, "The costs are simply prohibitive for us -- under PRS's proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback. In addition, PRS is unwilling to tell us what songs are included in the license they can provide so that we can identify those works on YouTube -- that's like asking a consumer to buy an unmarked CD without knowing what musicians are on it."

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So begins a new day for the venerable YouTube, the popular video streaming site is testing downloadable videos which include both a free and a for-pay model.

Thai Tran, Product Manager at YouTube announced today in the site's official blog that YouTube is "going offline." That is to say, it is giving video owners the option to make their videos downloadable under the Creative Commons License. Also, the option to make the videos available through a Google Checkout purchase is being tested.

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Today, Google and YouTube announced the launch of www.youtube.com/vatican, the YouTube channel dedicated to the activities of the Pope and events in the smallest state in the world, Vatican City.

Footage on the channel comes from Centro Televisio Vaticano (CTV) and Vatican Radio (RV), so the primary language is Italian, but there will be information in Spanish, English, and German as well.

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Bringing YouTube to the living room television has been a mostly incomplete mission thus far. Series 3 and HD TiVo DVRs can browse YouTube, and Apple TV has been able to play clips from the site since 2007. Yesterday, YouTube announced youtube.com/tv, a new sub-site dedicated to bringing its content to connected devices, namely the PS3 and Wii.

"Very few...devices today contain a Web browser or provide access to YouTube," reads a YouTube Team blog post yesterday, "Our hope is that this site may help to accelerate an industry evolution towards open television access to Web video. Over time, we plan to add support for additional TV devices that provide Web browsers."

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This morning, Mashable's Stan Schroeder discovered some examples of independently submitted videos to YouTube where the music track has been muted, and a notice given to that effect. Apparently, the system Google has long promised for identifying music tracks by their signatures, is working.

But is it working everywhere? Schroeder's examples include a track of mainly music, with just an accompanying slide, by blues great Albert King, apparently "ripped" off of one of those big, spinning, vinyl things folks used to use for music. People do like to post music to YouTube for some reason, even if it's only accompanying a slide telling you what the music is. We went looking for other examples of copyrighted tracks to test the depth of its detection ability.

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After a two-year relationship, major label Warner Music Group has moved to temporarily terminate its partnership with video sharing site YouTube.

A statement from the record company said, "We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide."

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Google's popular video site YouTube yesterday unveiled a dedicated HD section for US users to watch videos in 720p high definition.

When a video's source upload supports higher resolution, YouTube will have a "watch it in HD" button below the player's lower right hand corner in the space where some videos had the "watch it in high quality" button. Clicking this button expands the standard viewing window to 16 x 9 with a 1280 x 720 resolution.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. - Even though most downloads from YouTube still consist of user-generated content, the service's top priority for 2009 is to acquire more premium content from the likes of NBC and MGM, said the man in charge of putting those deals together.

Jordan Hoffner, YouTube's head of content partnership, spoke this afternoon before attendees of the annual OnScreen Media Summit, produced by Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

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There are some significant and some insignificant aspects of YouTube's adjusted main screen. The service's "embrace" of widescreen today, we discovered, doesn't change much besides what you see on the surface.

A number of videos with 16:9 widescreen ratio have already been featured on YouTube, and long-time users with widescreen monitors know that YouTube already supported that ratio whenever a video is expanded to full screen mode. Movie trailers are among the content that YouTube has supported in their native aspect ratios.

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In teaming up with MySpace this week, is MTV owner Viacom deviating all that much from YouTube around user uploads of TV show clips? Like YouTube partners CBS, EA, and Universal Music, Viacom now stands to make money from online ads.

After starting a highly controversial lawsuit against YouTube last year, and then getting smacked by a boycott from angry YouTube users last summer, MTV owner Viacom is now adopting a new approach to video content through a deal unveiled with the MySpace social network and tech start-up Auditude.

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With its strong condemnation of recent YouTube copyright takedowns of campaign videos incorporating news footage, the EFF might be able to accomplish for fair use what the presidential political campaigns have not.

Earlier this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped into the controversy over the takedowns, which are coming at a crucial time in the political season. (YouTube's DMCA-allowed review process would keep such videos off the service for at least 10-14 days -- in some cases, until after the November 4 election.)

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The irony of John McCain's tussles with YouTube over his campaign's video clips is rich stuff for techies who have been observing the mayhem the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has engendered over the years.

Recapping the uproar, the McCain-Palin campaign on Monday asked YouTube, a Google subsidiary, to stop taking down campaign videos that incorporated clips of news broadcasts. YouTube replied that it was doing so at the request of the broadcasters, who were objecting to use of their copyrighted footage. As per the DMCA, YouTube pulled down the videos and will not allow them to be reposted for at least 10-14 days.

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Though reports early last year said that a deal between CBS and Google for YouTube distribution had fallen by the wayside, the network's content will soon be available in full on the popular video site, complete with commercials.

Announcing on Friday that "Full-Length TV Dinners" would be coming to the Site, YouTube's team blog noted that it will naturally first be a test. Advertisements could be pre-, mid-, or post-roll, but will only appear in the premium full-length content. In our tests -- which, granted, only lasted a few minutes this morning -- we didn't see any overlaid advertising in premium content, though overlay ads do appear in "clips" from CBS shows (including the Evening News), which only last a few minutes.

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