Over the past years, YouTube has made some big leaps in the way it delivers its content to the masses. It has changed its look. It has integrated ads on a large majority of its video. And, it has opened the door to virtually every Tom, Dick, and Harry out there with a video camera or a DVR to post a video regardless of any copyright restrictions. In the last couple of months, however, YouTube has evolved its video player to make it look sleek and classy, much like the experience of watching a video on Apple’s iMovie app. Yes, it seems that Google is now trying to channel Apple. Is it working? Well, that is for you to judge.
The new YouTube video player has now incorporated the feature that iMovie has had for years, the ability to generate thumbnails of the different segments of the video one is watching. It is laid out so that you really get the feel of Apple’s iMovie, which kind of allows you to edit the clip. However, YouTube merely allows you to preview and locate a particular frame in the video clip. According to Nundu Janakiram, YouTube’s product manager, they integrated the feature because of the need of many of its loyal viewers to pinpoint and jump to a specific moment in a video.
How does it work? Well, while watching a video, all you will need to do is to hover your pointer anywhere on the red strip that signifies where you are in the video and a thumbnail will pop up showing that particular frame. Since YouTube has lifted the limit on video uploading size, there has been a surge of videos that are above the 90-minute time frame. For those larger and longer videos, there will be a secondary strip that will appear once you hover over the red strip that will provide you more control, accuracy, and precision when choosing a particular frame to preview and jump to.
