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Google Video Shutting Down*
In case you ever uploaded a video to Google Video and didn’t get the memo that they’re shutting down, here’s a copy of the email from Google yesterday:
Dear Google Video User,
Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide. [*Google Video is shutting down as a content host but will continue as a video search.]
On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)
We encourage you to move to your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already. YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner. To learn more go here.
Here’s how to download your videos:
Go to the Video Status page.
To download a video to your computer, click the Download Video link located on the right side of each of your videos in the Actions column.Once a video has been downloaded, “Already Downloaded” will appear next to the Download Video link.
If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all.
Please note: This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.
Thank you for being a Google Video user.
Sincerely,
The Google Video Team
Google Video was the pioneer in closed-captioning Internet videos. They first introduced closed-captioning for Google Video on September 19, 2006. I was one of the first people in the world to use the technology when I publish my closed-captioned Google Video on October 4, 2006. Google then bought YouTube on October 9, 2006. They later introduced YouTube Captions and Subtitles on September 22, 2008, and I didn’t find out about it until May 7, 2009, when I uploaded my first closed-captioned video on YouTube.
Since then, I went back and closed-captioned all my spoken videos on YouTube and I continue to closed-caption the videos I upload to my YouTube channel.
I Don’t Represent the Deaf Community
I was criticized by a deaf person for posting a one-minute long closed-captioned spoken video on YouTube the other day. The deaf person said that they were disappointed that I didn’t sign my video and that, being a sign language interpreter, I “represent the deaf community.” This is my response, signed and closed-captioned.
Google Video & YouTube Support Closed-Captioning
I created this video on October 3, 2006, and at the time, I was one of the first handful of people in the world to publish a video using Google Video’s new closed-captioning implementation. I just found out that YouTube now supports the same method (which makes sense, since they were bought by Google a couple of years ago). Apparently, though, YouTube has been supporting this closed-captioning method since Fall 2008. Who knew? Anyway, since this method of closed-captioning is now supported here, I’m uploading my old Google Video movie with its accompanying closed-caption file so people can view it via the more popular and extensible YouTube.
Me Singing "I Concentrate on You"
This is me singing Cole Porter’s song “I Concentrate on You.” I used YouTube’s “Captions and Subtitles” feature to upload a subtitle file. I hand-coded the subtitle file in BBEdit using the subtitle (.sub) format. To view the video with captions, click the up-arrow button on the bottom-right corner of the screen and choose CC, English: English captions.
My First Captioned Video on YouTube!
When I signed on to YouTube this morning, I noticed a new feature called Annotations that allows you to add Speech Bubbles, Notes, and Spotlights to your videos. I realized right away that the first two of these types of annotations gave me a way to caption my videos. They don’t allow for “closed” captioning; everyone who views the video sees them by default. There is a mechanism people can use, though, to turn them off while viewing them by clicking on the Menu button at the bottom of the player.
This morning, I captioned a video that I recorded on Mother’s Day. At the time of this writing, it seems that you can only see the captions if you view the video on YouTube. YouTube says that, once they get this feature out of beta, they will support embeds, meaning that the annotations will show up when videos are shared in blogs, on Facebook, and the like.
Although it was time-consuming (it took me about 45 minutes to an hour to caption a one-minute-forty-five-second [1:45] video), the graphical user interface (GUI) was rather intuitive. From my first experience using YouTube’s Annotations, I am certainly willing to use them again. Hooray for an easier way to caption videos!
