YouTube is normally the first choice for a majority of users when it comes to viewing or sharing videos. Google is always adding features to the service to improve functionality and performance. Here we show you how to get the best out of YouTube and have a little fun too.
GIFs from YouTube videos
It's easy to make an animated GIF from a portion of a YouTube video. Open the YouTube video of your choice and in the address bar of the browser, add the words 'gif' before YouTube (it should read gify outube.com). The site will redirect you to another page where you can select up to a 15 second clip from the video to convert to GIF.
Once you have se lected the animation time, a new page will give you the option to add text effects and stickers. Once done, you can download the GIF to your computer.
Playback from a specific time
You can share a video with playback starting at a set time. When sharing, look out for the 'Start at' box. Check it and enter a time. Or you can just add '?t=2m10s' to the end of a short URL (for playback starting at 2 minutes and 10 seconds, in this example).
Karaoke YouTube
Karaoke YouTube is a great Karaoke companion. There are loads of music videos that come embedded with lyrics as subtitles.
Type a song name followed by Karaoke in the search bar of YouTube to view videos with Karaoke support. To use it as a Karaoke machine, you can connect your phone or laptop to your TV and use a mixer to attach external speakers and a microphone.If the lyrics are not present or not good, get a free browser extension called YouTube Lyrics -it will show you lyrics right next to the video.
Change Caption Styles If you enable subtitlesclosed captions on a video, you can press B on the keyboard to cycle through different colours and styles for better visibility. Tip: you can just tap C on the keyboard to enable captions. Tap the gear icon for more settings (font, colour, size, window colour and opacity).
TV mode
YouTube has a full screen TV mode available if you want to watch videos from a distance (when using a home theatre PC, for instance). It makes things easier when you're sitting 8 or 10 feet away from the screen.
Just type http:www.youtube.comtv in the browser to launch the TV mode. TV mode can easily be controlled using your keyboard and has a dark theme so that it's easy on the eyes in a dim room. You can browse through various categories as well as search for videos.
To go back to the main menu, just hit the Escape key on the key board. And just so that you don't need to remember any keyboard shortcuts, they've provided a handy keyboard icon guide on the right side.
Identify background
Many videos have background music. Have you ever wondered about the music track in a video and wanted more details like the singer or band?
By default, YouTube does not offer this feature. However, if you head to http:www.mooma.sh, you can identify the background track using Mooma's search function. Copy and Paste the YouTube video link on MooMa and it will scan through its database of millions of songs to identify the song in less than a minute.
Magic Actions for YouTube
Magic Actions is one of the most feature-rich browser extensions for YouTube.
Once you add the extension, it opens a settings page where you can enable a lot of handy features including volume control using your mouse scroll wheel, force HD or 4k video playback, hide ads, bypass country restrictions, enable cinema mode as well as a speed booster for faster video loading.
Keyboard shortcuts
While watching video, you can use left, right arrow keys to jump back and forward 5 seconds.
You can use 'K' to pause or play, 'J' and 'L' to rewind and forward by 10 seconds, F for full screen and M to mute. Updown arrows can be used to adjust volume. Number keys 1 to 9 can be used to scrub through the video (where 1 is 10% and 9 is 90%).
Save for offline (app only)
While the desktop browser version does not offer an option of saving videos for offline play back, the YouTube app for iOS and Android has this option.
For any video that you want to save for offline viewing, simply tap on the button that for offline viewing, simply tap on the button that says `Add to Offline' and the video will be downloaded and saved to the My Videos section of the YouTube app. These can be viewed later, even without internet connectivity . Note that some videos are not available for offline viewing.
360-degree videos
Playing a 360 degree on YouTube is simple. Given the availability of cheap VR headsets (like Google Cardboard and derivatives), it's only natural for YouTube to offer 360-degree video.
There are also cameras that record video in 360 (like Ricoh's Theta). However, if you want to upload a 360-degree video, it is not as easy as uploading a normal video.
You first need to download and install the 360 Video Metadata app from http:www.github.comgooglespatial-mediareleases (this is available for Windows and MAC). In the app, open the 360 degree from your computer and check the box that says Spherical.
Save the video to your computer and then upload it to YouTube as you normally do -only then will it appear correctly .