YouTube now has a dedicated editor built in to the site giving all users the opportunity to edit video they have previously uploaded. The range of options has even been expanded to include Instagram-style effects.

YouTube Editor

Google first rolled out a video editor on YouTube last year with a simple affair offering the chance to trim, drag and drop, add metadata, and add music made available through TestTube. But a team has been quiet beavering away on improving the offering for the past 12 months.

The new YouTube Editor has now gone live, and it’s a vast improvement over the last effort. It allows for the editing of all videos which haven’t yet managed to gain 1,000 views, which is the vast majority. Those which have become popular will be left intact, with a new post-edit video uploaded alongside it.

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YouTube is clean, legal, and above board these days, with Google having done all it can to rid the site of copyrighted content. But is it enough or have some canny users found a way to sneak pirated movies back on to the site?

Content ID System

YouTube was absolutely awash with pirated movies and TV shows at one point, very early in its life. This is the reason various companies, most-notably Viacom, sued YouTube for a fortune. But Google voraciously cleaned YouTube up, and most media companies are now on board.

The Content ID system, which automatically detects the presence of copyrighted content when its digital fingerprint is provided, has helped immensely. But it’s not perfect, and some piracy is still occurring on the world’s most-popular online video destination.

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Google+ may have just received a phenomenal boost from another Google property. That being YouTube, obviously. If lots of people actually want to watch videos together and chat about them. Do they? Really?

Google+ Hangouts

Google+ is the search giant’s latest foray into the world of social networking. And it’s already doing a lot better than their other attempts to enter the territory currently dominated by Facebook and Twitter.

One of the core features of Google+, and the reason Facebook fought hard for Skype integration itself, is Hangouts. This is group video chat with up to 10 people able to share a video chat together about anything and everything. Or more likely, nothing whatsoever.

Google+ Hangouts has had some YouTube integration from the beginning, but it has just been improved a great deal.

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YouTube is no longer the piracy-ridden stain on society it once was, with Google having cleaned up the site until it’s as clean and innocent as a newborn baby. Which has led to old foes becoming new friends.

NMPA Boards YouTube Gravy Train

Unfortunately we’re not talking about Viacom here, which is continuing the fight against a YouTube which no longer effectively no longer exists. This despite the media giant having lost its case this time last year.

Instead, the foe which has become a friend is the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and its subsidiary Harry Fox Agency (HFA). These companies, along with a host of other small music publishers, joined a class action lawsuit against Google which claimed that youTube encouraged the uploading of copyrighted content.

The NMPA, which represents hundreds of songwriters, has now backed down after four long years of litigation, and according to the YouTube Blog has signed a deal with Google which suits both parties.

Full details of the settlement haven’t been disclosed but when a clip is found to contain music owned by the NMPA (using YouTube’s Content ID system), rather than being taken offline the relevant parties will be offered the chance to run ads alongside the video and earn royalties every time it is viewed.

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Movieclips was good, now it’s great. And the fact that its range of movie clips (as the name implies) will now be seen on YouTube means it’s about to go mainstream in a big way.

Movieclips

I first covered Movieclips almost two years ago when it first launched in the U.S. with a healthy 12,000 clips. There were a few issues, such as a clunky user interface and slow loading-times, but ultimately the site showed a lot of promise.

Much has happened since then. First off, the number of clips has risen to 20,000. The site has also been improved beyond reproach and the ways and means of searching for the clip you want to see via the added meta-data have been expanded.

Unfortunately Disney is still not on board, which means Movieclips is still missing content from one of the major studios. Still, six out of seven isn’t bad. There’s also the little matter of a new round of funding worth $7 million and some even bigger news…

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Users of Google+ Hangouts, the live group video chat component of the fledgling social network, can now watch live streaming YouTube video as well as pre-recorded video. And the level of integration is set to grow from here on in.

Social Video Viewing

Social video viewing is a relatively new concept which is becoming standard. The idea is that rather than watching a video online by yourself, you watch it with others who can then discuss it or simply enjoy it with you. Think of it as a giant Web-shaped sofa in front of a TV.

Many video sites now integrate with Facebook and/or Twitter to allow people to carry on the conversation about what they’re watching simply and speedily. But YouTube has a new weapon in its arsenal. Google+ (Google Plus).

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YouTube is testing out a new design codenamed Cosmic Panda. Personally, however, I’d rather see the current performance issues of constant buffering and play fails fixed before any changes to the layout were implemented.

YouTube Design

Some websites look great, some look terrible, it has always been that way right from the early days of the Web. But some are just there, functional, doing what needs to be done in an unobtrusive, non-assuming manner. Which is the category I’d place YouTube in.

YouTube hasn’t really changed much in terms of design since launch, with the logo and basic layout surviving the acquisition by Google and still going strong to this day. And even though it’s a site many of us visit on a daily basis, few of us probably ever notice the dearth of changes.

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