Video annotations are quite possibly the most annoying thing I have
ever seen. I don't want to watch Pop-Up Video, I want to watch the
video I'm trying to watch. It's an incredible annoyance to have to
turn it off every time I watch a video. Please add an option to turn
them off for all videos.

On Jul 24, 2:36 pm, YouTube Liz wrote:

I like the feature but more colours and maybe the flexibility to put
the notes on an angle would be cool too so we can rotate them

On Jul 24, 11:36 am, YouTube Liz wrote:

Hi,

I'm very confused about the whole "annotation" thing.  I have a series
of questions that I would like answered because I'm worried....

I will first present what I may or may not know about annotations:
(hopefully i know what i'm talking about)

a) I read the youtube information about annotations.  What i got from
it was that the annotations sort of function like "speech bubbles"
that you can insert.  What i also got from reading it was that it is
possible to insert a URL link to it.  The information said that the
URL link can only go to other youtube videos.

b) Lately in videos that I have been watching, random speech bubbles
will come up that say "Click Here!!!!"  To me, this is very
suspicious.  Other videos that i have seen contain annotations that
have text that is utterly bizzare, and looks much like spam.

c)  I am afraid to click on the annotation links due to their
suspicious look.  Is it just me?

d) In your post you say: "Being able to link to offsite pages may be a
possibility."

And now, to my questions:

1)  Are these links on the annotations legit?  According to your
quote: "Being able to link to offsite pages may be a possibility,"
this implies that the link may be able to go to entirely new
websites.  Have people figured out a way around this?  Can these links
possibly lead to pornographic sites, enabling the spread of a virus?

2)  Again, to reiterate why i'm worried....Is it just me?  Do I have
some sort of virus that is haunting the videos i watch with random
"Click Here!!!" links?  It looks very fishy to me.

3)  If it really isn't just me, i want to know....could these
annotations be potentially obnoxious?  The freedom to insert text
anywhere into the video could be a huge distraction to the video
itself.

Quite a long article, I agree, but I need to get to the bottom of
this.  Thank you!
On Jul 24, 2:29 pm, KOHPelord wrote:

The buttons? ( which I'll call [/\] and [7],) pretty much suck.  If [/
\] has only one option-- why am I required to click down a level to
[7] so I can turn annotations on or off?  Because it's eventually
where more menu commands will live?  Okay- but how about giving me an
icon's that's a quotebox, or [abc] instead of [7]?

You are testing a beta feature that <strike>has potential to</strike>
is extremely annoying.  (Seriously, every example I've run into of it
tonight had had the content of "SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE ", over the first 10 seconds of the
video, usually accompanied by another permanently affixed invitation
to "CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE ----- >" pointed at the "secret link" for
the entire duration.)

I didn't know what the hell was going on.  Was this malware?  BECAUSE
IT LOOKS LIKE MALWARE!  And of course the abstract menu controls that
didn't seem to DO anything when i clicked them were no help.
(Tooltips maybe?  If I'm lingering over these things too long,
puzzled, how about a text notice below the movie?  "I see you've
discovered our awesome new annotations feature, wannna know how to use
it, or just shut the damn thing off?")

But hey- when I googled "youtube Annoying Text," and finally found a
blog test telling me how to turn the devil-boxes off-- every time I
play a video.

Listen. To. The. Words. That. Are. Coming. Out. Of. My. Mouth: I want
a permanent flag to hide this "feature" that I can click ONCE, not one
that I have to repeat for every video I view.  I will try this feature
again when it is no longer in beta, people have a handle on how to use
it in a non-obnoxious manner, and it does not suck.  But right NOW?  I
WANT TO NOT SEE IT.

Also?  It took me 15 minutes to sign up for this forum.  The 'join
this group' links I got when clicking "reply" appear to be broken
somehow- insisting that I'm not logged in-- and then sending me to a
login screen that clearly shows I AM logged in.  The workaround turned
out to be clicking 'join' "up" a level, which viewing the main
Community Help Forum page instead of the join link that appears when I
try to reply on THIS page.  (I'm running Firefox 2, though I doubt
that's relevant.)  If the feedback traffic you're getting seems light,
this might be related...

When I check back at this in the morning, will there be a reply
telling me how to completely deactivate this feature?  Because there's
surely no such instructions on Help right now.

Hh.  *presses bridge of nose*
I am being, shall-we-say... "emphatic" to the point that might be
called rude... but really, between how obnoxious I find this feature,
the minimal feedback you have received on it, I'm operating under the
impression that the same join-this-group problems I experienced are
cutting into the feedback you're receiving- otherwise (given that this
feature has been up for a week,) you would have received enough
SIMILAR requests that I wouldn't have to waste my time on emphatic
feedback, I could simply piggyback on the "hide forever," or "hide for
30 days" feature you doubtless would have implemented in response to
the similarly-sentiment'd feedback that you're mysteriously not
receiving.  (On this forum that has signup problems.)
*sigh*  Or maybe not.  Perhaps the spamjockeys just figured out how to
become really obnoxious with this feature in the last 24 hours-
sometimes there is an uptake lag like that.

...

Having BEEN as emphatic as I can be without slipping into outright
"rude," it probably behooves me to gives some actual useful feedback
(beyond, you know, the forum bug report.)

1) The menu controls have to allow us to effect permanents change.
Hiding yeah- but also eventually to our account Preferred Language
settings (buried no more than 2 levels down in the [/\]) menu,
INDEPENDENT of the browser settings.  Hug the World shows the
potential for internationalization of short videos WITHOUT burned-in
text (better from a technical standpoint- but more importantly
removing the need for a video editor,) and you should be able to have
multiple languages in a single file- so people don't have to upload
the same video 10 times.  Even if that's not coming until the future,
start working out the functionality now.
2) I assume Google translate integration is planned- even if only for
the distant future-- and that really excites me.  All anyone has to do
is transcribe simply-phrased subtitles for a video-- even if they /
expect/ most of their audience to be English-speakers... it means that
NON-english-speakers will be able to follow them.  My god- only 25% of
the world speaks English!  This quadruples the potential audience
and-- the IMPLICATIONS!  Auto-translation of text is NOTORIOUSLY
jumbled, often difficult to get more than the gist of words.  But
pidgin-translation, plus visual aids?  Plus TONE?  Plus BODY
LANGUAGE?  VIDEO *PLUS* SUBTITLES?  (Especially for vlogs!)  I can
make my video intelligible to someone who speaks Spanish JUST BY
TRANSCRIBING IT IN ENGLISH!  (In simple sentences, but... you know!)
This-- I will be able to internationalize (in a crap but eminently
serviceable way) my video WITHOUT having to speak a different
language!  This SHATTERESS borders- lowering the barrier to
participation in intranational dialog- opens up a world where... where
the whole WORLD will be able to talk WITH one another instead of AT
one another!  This QUITE LITERALLY changes everything.  Not everything
on youtube, or everything in web-video, or everything on the
internet-- I mean *literally* EV-ERY-THING.  You're going to flatten
the Earth, and that AWES me.

Uh, of course, that's probably, um... 18-24 months out, minimum.
First you've got to get the annotation system working as smoothly as
picture tagging (basic functionality,) and the UI smoothed out.  Then
multiple selectable language streams (and probably data layers- joy,)
maybe an 8 month "windows" as people begin to slowly grock that they
can watch Al Jazeera reports (prepared by an old-fashioned translator
who speaks both languages) until you drop in autotranslation and the
whole *world* will open up!

God... *runs fingers through hair,* I've been too hard on Google.
You're *not* transitioning to Web 2.0- you're quantum-leapfrogging to
Web3!  A total endaround all the problems of voice-recognition-and-
live-autotranslation we expected would be "next"... all because you
won't have to be live!  That's-- you beat them to the future!  (Well,
you /will/ have.)

So... is the translate team working on, like, an English-to-Pidgin
tool?  So I can transcribe my stuff in English, then easily 'drop it
down' into an interlingual interchange format- highlighting all my
ambiguities and asking for clarifications so they can be intelligibly
parsed into non-Romance languages?  That is SO cool.
And I suppose eventually crowdsourced 'proper' translations like
Slashdot-- Google Translate does that on a granular level already with
statistics....  I'm SO EXCITED!  I'm going to be able to piss off
people on seven continents at once!  (They get internet in Antarctica,
right?)  It's a whole new world!

Oh, um...
3) If I have the annotations turned off- I think it'd be interesting
to see a NUMBER or something telling me HOW MANY annotations there
are.  If it's just 1 or 2 I can probably assume it's a name and
location I'm not interested in.  But if it's 17...?  Gosh, maybe I'll
enable 'em again to see what all this extra info is!  Heck- how about
letting us mouseover the corner button and SHOW the annotations (just
when moused over) without actually turning them on-- like
"peeking."  (Well, don't use that button, that'd be terrible
functionality... bu you get the point.)  Tics in the progress bar to
show me where the added non-video data appears in the timeline so I
know when to peek?  (I feel like the clickable frames around the
smaller videos in 'Hug The World' shouldn't count toward that
somehow...)

Did I mention the current menu icons were extremely anti-intuitive?
*looks*  Yes I did.  Hrm.  Well... that's pretty much all the
feeedback I have then.  Good luck changing the world!

(See, I can be nice when I want to.)

And tell me how to turn the damn thing off until it's ready.

It's a good feature, but I think it is abused too often.

I would like the option to have Annotations disabled by default.

Just the issues I have at the moment.

1) Like the others said, an off/on button is sorely needed. Also
neater would be a brief tag just below this button to tell the users
what's the annonations about (eg. documentary commentary, ads, etc
etc.)

2) When laying down the time frame for the annonations, they should
follow the timings of the video itself. I found inconsistencies with
the time codes I typed down and the actual imaging.

3) My greatest displeasure is the stability of the annonations. In my
case, it crashed quite a bit, but thanks for the auto-save feature.

Overall, this feature could be your most favourite or hated. But the
on/off button will solve that.
Keep innovating!

ummm...hi^^
this was not about anontations, it's about video.
i m just wondering...when we r watching videos (eg animes)
y is it divided into 3parts??
cant it be a full version??
pls reply.
just wanna know y^_^
have a nice day X D

On Jul 25, 2:36 am, YouTube Liz wrote:

I'm not able to get any audio on YouTube nor MySpace but I've got
audio everywhere else on the internet. Whats the problem? I've tried
everything and all I see is B.S. for answers from the community. I'd
like the truth now. What is really the problem? I'll delete my account
if thats what youtube really wants. Reply to my youtube account or
[email address]    I'm deleting my membership to youtube community
discussions because this has been worthless and a waste of my time.
Thank You.

On Jul 24, 2:36 pm, YouTube Liz wrote:

I've been waiting for this!  It is a really cool tool that will have
incredible implications in education and learning.  In my area (music)
I've done a test run for how it might be used at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4uH1Av9njY
Annotations appearing in videos embedded outside YouTube would be
great please!  And some more options with fonts and slides.  Thanks!

Thank you very much for your help, much appreciated.

On Jul 29, 9:06 pm, quicksite wrote:

My idea is that if a video has annotations in it and you roll your
mouse over the annotation it will automatically pause the video. While
your watching the original video you see an annotation you want to
click on but when you do it opens a new window and you lose your place
in the video as it keeps playing in the background. If the video would
pause when you rollover the annotation you could not only have time to
read that annotation but you can unpause the video when you come back
to it to finish watching it from where you left off.

This video was allowed to stay Live by the Copyright owner. I added
the annotations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpstyFKZETs

On Jul 24, 2:36 pm, YouTube Liz wrote:

I meant to say it should pause and open a new window so you don't lose
your place in the video. And stays paused in the background.

On Aug 8, 8:01 pm, webwriter3000 wrote:

I love the annotations, I even uploaded a tutorial on how to use
them.  They are a great way for the hearing impared to interact with
YouTube.

On Jul 24, 1:36 pm, YouTube Liz wrote:

Yes, it is a cool feature. It is pretty easy to use and the only way
to improve upon it is to allow the user to customize the color and
font of the text.

On Jul 24, 1:36 pm, YouTube Liz wrote:

Annotations are fun, I've created an interactive video game with them!
I would like to suggest some features for annotations.

1. The ability to "click" and arrive at a "certain point in time"
within a video.
2. More Shapes & ability to make the areas smaller than the current
area. (maybe even be able to draw a shape around something.)

well, that's it! stop by and play my game! :)

I just noticed the annotations (none of the videos I've watched used
them) and gave them a try on a video I just put up.  It was a
wonderful addition to that particular video.  Overall, I really like
them.  I can see how they could be abused, but it seems like anything
that can be used can also be abused and will be by some inconsiderate
folks.

As repeatedly pointed out, it's still a bit buggy, especially in the
preview mode, and most of the ones I've encountered have already been
mentioned.  The big one I haven't seen yet is this: when first putting
up an annotation, the box around it is tight and fits perfectly.  Then
when I go to reshape the box, a big gray area forms below the box.
The circle for moving it works, but only to a certain point.  It still
leaves a bunch of gray below the annotation I'd like to get rid of.

Keep up the good work!  I'm looking forward to seeing it get developed
into an even better tool.

I'm shocked that after over 2 weeks and 41 comments, you haven't
replied once.  *Terrible* customer interaction.

I'm doing a project with 60 video artists using annotations.  They all
want their videos to be played in high quality.  please - it wouldn't
take much to allow us to paste &fmt=18 into the link box in
annotations.  at the moment it strips it out.   you don't even have to
announce it as a big thing.  it will make this huge project about 100
times better.

not that i have much hope of hearing back from you, or much hope that
you're even reading the posts on this forum. but thanks if you are.

On Jul 24, 11:36 am, YouTube Liz wrote:

Hi Liz,
sorry for my english. Thank you for this forum. About new releases in
youtube and suggestions from youtubers there is no discussion about
"selected frame": this is the reason why I write to you to advance a
trial (may be I was wrong to ask to you, please, sorry ...).
Can You ask to youtube developers to give youtubers the possibility to
choose a video thumbnail from whole video? At the moment, as you know,
we have just three frames available.
Thank you
Fabian

On Jul 24, 8:36 pm, YouTube Liz wrote:

...
We’re always excited to hear your thoughts about new

Greetings!
I love the Annotations Feature! When I posted my video the website I
was promoting was not clear. I was able to use the Annotations Feature
to clearly add my website directly onto my video for a brief moment
which was awesome!! Now I have been getting lots of referrals. I love
YouTube and I love the Annotations Feature in TestTube! Try it folks!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYHQDmNaQhY

please add the option to disable annotations by default.

thanks

On Jul 24, 12:36 pm, YouTube Liz wrote:

Hey Liz,
the option to get the annotations shown on the featured channel video
is gone since yesterday !!! For what reason? I love it. No matter if
it's on the video or channel page ;-)

Take care, Fab
http://www.youtube.com/fabthegap

On Jul 24, 8:36 pm, YouTube Liz wrote:

I'm sure someone has said something about this already, but when i
switch from standard to high quality streaming, the annotations
disappear.

On Jul 24, 11:36 am, YouTube Liz wrote:

High Quality videos don't support annotations (just yet).

I also noted that someone actually commented on something that I said
here, so I'll answer that question:

Annotations currently can only link to other pages on YouTube.  I
would like it if they could link to pages outside of YouTube, but the
possibility of linking to malicious or offensive sites will most
likely occur if that was to happen.

I would guess that if YouTube allowed offsite linking in annotations,
they should take you to a page that asks you if you really want to
continue to that page, and show the link

This feature`s ready. It`s soooooooooo ready. It`s awesome, and will
probably get me 100 views on my first vid! Thanks for mixing this one
up.

On Jul 24, 2:36 pm, YouTube Liz wrote:

I love this tool, but I'm having trouble with it. Earlier on, maybe a
couple of days ago, I added some annotations to my (only) video.
Today, I see that they are gone, and that I can't edit them because I
can't connect to the server. Everything else works fine. Any idea
what's going on?

@Liz: You should really reply ot this topic, your lack of interest for
your own topic is worrying... And a little stupid...