TEXTp saves YouTube bandwidth, money

It’s great news that there are 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, we support 1080p and HD uploads are rising quickly, but that’s also meant increasing bandwidth costs cutting into our bottom line. And so, in our drive to keep expenses under control, we’ve decided that April 1 is the perfect day to take the important step of offering a new way to experience YouTube: text-only mode, or TEXTp.

TEXTp is the result of months of intense transcoding efforts by our engineers, who toiled for weeks to ensure that a large chunk of videos on the platform could be reduced to their most basic elements. By replacing the images in the video with a series of letters and numbers, the videos are far less taxing on our system -- and have the added benefit of promoting literacy!

To give it a whirl, make sure you have the latest Flash player (10.0) and click here. Or you can select “TEXTp” from the pulldown menu on most videos, as so:

You can also append &textp=fool to most video URLs to test it out.

For every person who selects TEXTp and keeps it on while you watch a video, you save YouTube $1 a second, resulting in potentially billions of dollars of savings for us. So if you care about YouTube, you’ll use TEXTp today.

Patrick Pichette, SVP and Chief Financial Officer, Google

New video page launches for all users

As you may know, we're in the midst of one of the largest redesigns in YouTube's history: we're simplifying the look and functionality of the video page. That's the page you see whenever a video plays, and this redesign is about going "back to basics," focusing attention on the reason why you came to YouTube in the first place -- the video -- and all the ways you engage with content and creators.

We first unveiled the new video page two months ago and checked in four weeks later to tell you about the latest set of changes. Truth is, we've been thinking about this for a long time: what you see is the result of eight months' worth of user research, feedback and data analysis. Now, after a few more additions based on your latest feedback, we are rolling it out to 100% of YouTube users.

Here's what's new about the page:

Overall look and functionality
- It's cleaner, simpler and easier to use.
- Information about a video is now grouped together in one place and there's a consistent way to get more detail when you need it. This way, unless something's truly useful to you, it doesn't clutter up your page.
- We've cleaned up the actions bar; you'll see a streamlined presentation for sharing, flagging, and embedding controls.

Discovery
- The right-hand side of the page is devoted to the next video to watch. We're smarter about suggesting the next videos to watch based on how you found the video you're watching in the first place.
- The channel name and subscribe button are now both on top of the video. We found that you prefer having a quick peek at more videos uploaders have created before deciding whether to subscribe to their channels.

Playlists
- There's a new playlist interface, with the next video in the list appearing consistently in the top right. You can easily expand that list or skip ahead using a new next button in the player controls.
- Saving to playlists is easier, and we've made Favorites the default option.

Ratings
- We've replaced the five-star ratings system with a simpler "likes / dislikes" model and introduced a new "Videos I Liked" list.

Comments
- Comments have a new highlights view which summarizes the best discussions and celebrates when creators communicate with their audiences.

We know this is a big change, but we hope you'll find the new page to be an improvement to your YouTube experience and to be a reflection of what you've told us thus far through your usage of the site and your comments to us. We'll be gathering in a conference room at our San Bruno, CA, headquarters at 6 p.m. PT today and tomorrow, and in London at 9 a.m. GMT tomorrow, to respond in near-real-time to your comments in the forums, on this blog and on Twitter. Of course, we'll be listening at other times, too, but we wanted to make sure we were available when you might have the most questions about these changes.

Igor Kofman, Software Engineer, recently watched "Pantyraid - Beba," and Shiva Rajaraman, Product Manager, recently watched "Chat Roulette Funny Piano Improv #2."

Dan in Real Life

One of the great and terrible things about being a newspaper photographer is the idea that you never know what your day is going to bring.

Sometimes it brings access to cool and interesting people. Sometimes a call from an editor can send you straight into f/64 mode, as far as the pucker factor is concerned. Sometimes it is both.

That's exactly what happened to Austin American-Statesman photographer Jay Janner last year while out on an assignment. He got a call that another shoot had been added to his day -- to go photograph a local photographer named Dan Winters.

Yeah, that Dan Winters... Read more »

Bert Goes All Hollywood on Us

Regular readers of this site are long familiar with Belgian photographer Bert Stephani. His easy-going manner and slightly warped sense of humor always make for fun learning in his behind-the-scenes shoot videos.

For the last several months, Bert (along with partner Peter Van Impe) have been working pretty much nonstop to produce a new lighting tutorial, "Motivational Light."

Hit the jump for a trailer, links and impressions after 3.5 hours of non-stop Bert. Read more »

Got a New Compact or Hybrid-Size Camera? Check That Sync Speed.

Adolfo tweeted to me that he found that his Panasonic LX3 syncs at up to 1/2000th of a second, and it reminded me to remind you that you should always check for this sort of thing. Frequently, the capability is undocumented.

This is a similar deal to the way high sync works on the Canon compact cameras, and the same rules apply for sync speed vs. actual flash pulse duration.

I got to play around with this camera's newer big brother, a 4/3 Lumix GF1, in Dubai, and was very impressed with both the handling and the image quality. I wasn't able to check, but would be curious to know if the 4/3 bodies hi-sync, too. Nope. Shame, too.

If you have found that your new compact (or micro 4/3, etc.) camera can sync up high with external flashes, please hit us in the comments. Always good to know which models do that kind of thing.

UPDATE: Edit fixes incorrect label of LX3 as a micro 4/3. Thanks!

UPDATE2: So far, nothing but bad news in the comments on the 4/3 bodies...

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YouTube community and Hollywood team up to address global development

The facts about the developing world are pretty staggering. Approximately 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment. Almost half the world – 3 billion people – live on less than $2.50 a day.



Earlier this month, Jeremy Piven challenged you to educate others about the issues facing the developing world and the organizations working hard to address these problems, by making a video and submitting it to YouTube's Video Volunteers program.

You responded with fervor. This round of Video Volunteers had one of the highest participation rates so far, and the videos submitted ranged from creative and quirky...

...to beautiful and solemn...

Today, you'll find the top three submissions on the YouTube homepage, alongside a video from Jeremy Piven and members of young Hollywood on behalf of the ONE Campaign .

Later this week, we'll kick off a new climate-change focused round of Video Volunteers with former Vice President and environmental leader Al Gore, so stay tuned for news about that and our special Earth Day homepage spotlight.

Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism Manager, recently watched "Padma Lakshmi Discusses Endometriosis Awareness Month."

A Great Face for Radio

Mohamed Somji and the folks at Gulf Photo Plus have made good on their threat and posted their video of the live shootout between Zack Arias, JoeyL and yours truly.

Two things learned.

First: "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." (But only slightly less well- known is this: "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!")

And second, "Never wear a black shirt into a dark auditorium when you are being interviewed with just one hard light."

The video, and links, inside. Read more »

Release notes: Facebook Connect, real-time sharing, subscriber stats

In addition to some changes to our new video page, which we reported in a separate post, here are some things that have launched recently:

Invitation to Facebook Connect: You've been able to connect your YouTube account to your Facebook account for a while now in order to AutoShare or to find friends to subscribe to. Less known is that the YouTube homepage can show you the YouTube videos your friends are sharing on Facebook; we've kept this under the radar while we've ramped up support. But now, when you log in to your YouTube account, you'll get a prominent invitation in the Recent Activity module (see below) to connect to Facebook, which we highly recommend that you do. In fact, we hope to integrate more social networks with YouTube going forward: knowing which videos your friends are sharing on social platforms is one of the best ways to discover those clips that you, in turn, just might feel compelled to pass along. That's how we found this gem, a lovely virtual choir.

Real-time sharing: AutoShare lets you effortlessly share videos from YouTube to Twitter, Facebook or Google Reader. What you might not have known is that until recently, it took about 10 minutes for those items to get pushed out from YouTube to these platforms. Now these actions happen instantly, in real time.

Partner Program expands again: Exciting! Users in Israel and Mexico can now become members of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). To sign up, click here.

Subscribers tab in Insight: The number of subscribers you have is an important metric for many YouTube users, as it indicates how many people love your videos so much that they want to be sure never to miss one. (Speaking of which, we commend Nigahiga, who recently hit 2 million subscribers to become YouTube's No. 1 most subscribed channel of all time. But, we digress.) Insight, YouTube's analytics tool, recently added data about the evolution of your subscriber numbers over time, broken down into new subscriptions and unsubscriptions per day. Head over to your account's Insight area to check it out.

Planning our April Fool's Day joke: What joke? :) We just wanted to see if you were reading this far.

The YouTube Team

New video page adds comments highlight view and ratings improvements

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been busy iterating on the new video page design based on your feedback, and we're excited to share some new developments before the page is rolled out to everyone soon. Remember to opt-in here to get a preview of these new features:

Highlights view on comments
Many of you indicated that comments could use an overhaul and hoped that was a part of the redesign. We're happy to say that it is. Today, we're introducing a "highlights view" of comments which summarizes top rated comments, uploader comments, video responses and recent comments in a single "front-page story" that you can drill into for more detail. You can see an example on this video and this one. We're continuing to make the highlights better as we learn how people interact with it, so please let us know what you think in the comments below.

Ratings
We've also made some improvements to the new like/dislike ratings system. When you like a video, we let you know how many people liked it and disliked it. To help you remember the best videos you've encountered, there's a new area housing all the videos that you liked, called (surprise, surprise) "Videos I Liked." In addition, we listened to your feedback and no longer tie 'Liking' something to your Favorites, which you use more for personal saving. Favoriting a video is now the first option when you click "save"; you can continue to save videos to your Favorites in this manner or create another playlist just by typing in the name. Finally, throughout the site, you'll occasionally see a video marked 'Most Liked' to give you an indication that this is a video other people loved, that you may want to check out. We surface popular videos in many ways, and we hope Most Liked becomes a reliable signal that helps you find quality videos to watch.

For quick refresher on the overall video page design, check out this video produced by TheWillofDC:



And if you've opted in but want to go back to the old page, you can opt out here.

UPDATE: After reading your comments, we'd like to note that some of you are opted in permanently to the new page, which means you are part of our current experiment and are unable to opt out. These kinds of experiments help us learn what works on the page and what doesn't, so that we can build the best possible site for you. We've also heard your feedback on Auto-play interrupting your experience and are working on some improvements.

Peter Bradshaw, Software Engineer, recently liked "SOIL & "PIMP" SESSIONS 'Summer Goddess'," and Tyler Morse, Software Engineer, recently liked "Bottle Bank Arcade - TheFunTheory.com - Rolighetsteorin.se." 

And, They're Surprisingly Affordable

Kidding!

You could not even afford the mortgage for one of these Briese parabolic light focusing reflectors!

But they are fun to look at, and you can get most a small amount of the way there for under $100 with a Paul Buff PLM! If they ever get back in stock!

Gratuitous use of one more exclamation mark!

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More courses, more colleges: YouTube EDU turns one

A college education is something many people take for granted, but only about 1% of the world actually gets one. A year ago today, YouTube EDU (youtube.com/edu) launched with a very simple mission: deliver some of the world’s greatest university courses to anyone with an Internet connection and a screen.

Whether it’s Salman Rushdie reading poetry by the last mughal king to Emory University students, or a lecture in electrical engineering at UC Berkeley, YouTube EDU has helped some of the oldest institutions on the planet blaze a trail into the 21st century by opening up a rich and empowering corpus of video content to aspiring students everywhere.

YouTube EDU is now one of the largest online video repositories of higher education content in the world. We have tripled our partner base to over 300 universities and colleges, including University of Cambridge, Yale, Stanford, MIT, University of Chicago and The Indian Institutes of Technology. We have grown to include university courses in seven languages across 10 countries. We now have over 350 full courses, a 75% increase from a year ago and thousands of aspiring students have viewed EDU videos tens of millions of times. And today, the EDU video library stands at over 65,000 videos.

We have also rolled out new products to make this coursework more accessible, including adding automated captions and auto-translation to videos spoken in English. In just a few clicks, you can generate captions and translate courses into one of 50 different languages.

At the end of the day, YouTube EDU is about using the democratic nature of the Internet and the power of video to make higher learning accessible to all. We’ve heard from thousands of users like trainerstone, who writes: “Thank you so much for your videos. I live in provincial Philippines and have very little access to the arts and academic stimulus.” But perhaps one user put it best: “This is what the Internet was created for.”

Here’s to another great year of great educational content on YouTube. Until then, keep watching and keep learning.

Obadiah Greenberg, Strategic Partner Manager, recently watched “Khan Academy on PBS NewsHour.”

The Most Powerful Light In Your Bag

Last year I photographed Michael Stebbins for Rep Stage, which is how I got to know him for the Glass Menagerie photos.

The Smith Theater, where I shot him, is big and dark. In fact, I had shot someone else there about twenty years earlier for a magazine assignment -- and the Smith Theater had kicked my butt.

I brought every light I had (many, many watt-seconds worth) but I still did not have what I really needed -- the understanding required to work in a big, dark setting.

I even had with me the exact of piece of gear I needed. It was just that I just didn't know how to use it. Read more »

Broadcast Yourself

Around the globe, YouTube has become a metaphor for the democratizing power of the Internet and information. YouTube gives unknown performers, filmmakers, and artists new ways to promote their work to a global audience and rise to worldwide fame; makes it possible for political candidates and elected officials to interact with the public in new ways; enables first-hand reporting from war zones and from inside repressive regimes; and lets students of all ages and backgrounds audit classes at leading universities.

Yet YouTube and sites like it will cease to exist in their current form if Viacom and others have their way in their lawsuits against YouTube.

In their opening briefs in the Viacom vs. YouTube lawsuit (which have been made public today), Viacom and plaintiffs claim that YouTube doesn't do enough to keep their copyrighted material off the site. We ask the judge to rule that the safe harbors in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA") protect YouTube from the plaintiffs' claims. Congress enacted the DMCA to benefit the public by permitting open platforms like YouTube to flourish on the Web. It gives online services protection from copyright liability if they remove unauthorized content once they’re on notice of its existence on the site.

With some minor exceptions, all videos are automatically copyrighted from the moment they are created, regardless of who creates them. This means all videos on YouTube are copyrighted -- from "Charlie Bit My Finger" to the video of your cat playing the piano and the video you took at your cousin’s wedding. The issue in this lawsuit is not whether a video is copyrighted, but whether it's authorized to be on the site. The DMCA (and common sense) recognizes that content owners, not service providers like YouTube, are in the best position to know whether a specific video is authorized to be on an Internet hosting service.

Because content owners large and small use YouTube in so many different ways, determining a particular copyright holder’s preference or a particular uploader’s authority over a given video on YouTube is difficult at best. And in this case, it was made even harder by Viacom’s own practices.

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Given Viacom’s own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.

Viacom’s brief misconstrues isolated lines from a handful of emails produced in this case to try to show that YouTube was founded with bad intentions, and asks the judge to believe that, even though Viacom tried repeatedly to buy YouTube, YouTube is like Napster or Grokster.

Nothing could be further from the truth. YouTube has long been a leader in providing media companies with 21st century tools to control, distribute, and make money from their content online. Working in cooperation with rights holders, our Content ID system scans over 100 years worth of video every day and lets rights holders choose whether to block, leave up, or monetize those videos. Over 1,000 media companies are now using Content ID -- including every major U.S. network broadcaster, movie studio, and record label -- and the majority of those companies choose to make money from user uploaded clips rather than block them. This is a true win-win that reflects our long-standing commitment to working with rights holders to give them the choices they want, while advancing YouTube as a platform for creativity.

We look forward to defending YouTube, and upholding the balance that Congress struck in the DMCA to protect the rights of copyright holders, the progress of technological innovation, and the public interest in free expression.

Update: The site containing the declarations and supporting exhibits filed by YouTube in support of its motion for summary judgment is here.

Zahavah Levine, Chief Counsel, YouTube

Light Fare: The "Jarvie Window"

Here's a new use for your ring flash.

Salt Lake City-based photographer Scott Jarvie made a unique set of portraits using a Ray Flash ring flash adapter and an 8mm fisheye lens.

Gimmicky? Perhaps. Fun and creative? Yup.

Cue the flood of imitators on Flickr in 3, 2, 1…

(Thanks much to Ben for the tip via the comments section.)

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Submit questions for YouTube user's interview with James Cameron

If you've got a question for the director of Avatar, now's your chance to ask it. The famous director is opening himself up to the YouTube community, allowing our own DaveyBoyz to interview him based on the questions you submit via the Official Avatar Channel on YouTube.

Questions will be organized into the following categories — the environment, technology, the military-industrial complex, vision of the future, and imagining a society — and you'll have until 11:59 p.m. ET on March 21 to submit and vote on them. DaveyBoyz, who already has experience talking to the cast at the film's London premiere, will pose the 10 most popular questions to the director in an exclusive interview in L.A. on March 23. The interview will be uploaded to YouTube during the week of April 19, so stay tuned to see how it went.

Nate Weinstein, Entertainment Marketing Associate, just watched "Acting for the Camera."

Oops Pow Surprise...24 hours of video all up in your eyes!

In May of last year, we announced 20 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. We then challenged you to keep the uploads coming to see whether or not we could get a day’s worth of video – 24 hours – uploaded in the same brief time span.

Today, we’re announcing that you’ve done it! In just 60 quick ticks of the second hand, more than a full, action-packed day in Jack Bauer’s life is now uploaded to YouTube. To put this into context, imagine how much stuff happens in 24 hours:

• The earth rotates 360 degrees as it orbits the sun
• The second hand on your bedside clock ticks 86,400 times
• The most skilled climber reaches Mount Everest’s summit
• 2.5 days go by on Jupiter

A day’s worth of content uploaded to YouTube every minute is a big achievement for our community and speaks to the role video plays in connecting and changing the world one upload at a time. So what’s next? 30 hours? 36 hours? Tell us in the comments below what you think the next big YouTube upload milestone should be.

Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, recently favorited “The LXD: In the Internet age, dance evolves...”

Your interview with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

[Cross-posted from the Google Public Policy Blog]

It’s not every day that you get to ask your country’s leader questions about issues you care about. But that’s exactly what Canadians did this afternoon when Prime Minister Stephen Harper sat down with YouTube.

Roughly 170,000 votes were cast through Google Moderator for nearly 1,800 questions -- giving voice to thousands of Canadians. And don’t think that these were softball questions. Canadians asked their Prime Minister questions on a wide variety of important topics: from the deficit to Canada’s role in Afgahistan, from child care to protecting pensions. We tried to select questions that represented the most popular topics and would solicit conversation. (We also minimized duplicate questions so we could cover a range of issues.) Neither the Prime Minister nor his office knew in advance which questions he’d be asked.

You can see the Prime Minister respond to your questions in this video:



Prime Minister Harper is the second world leader to answer your questions in a YouTube Interview. It’s your appetite for political discussion on YouTube that creates these opportunities to access public leaders in this format, and we look forward to conducting more YouTube Interviews soon.

Posted by Jacob Glick, Google Canada Policy Counsel

OK Go, BBQ and Musicians Wanted at SXSW

Right up there with our love of award-winning Texas BBQ is our love of independent music and the people who create it. That’s why the indie-centric SXSW Music Conference in Austin is the perfect place to launch the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) for musicians, aka Musicians Wanted. It's just the latest step in the YPP's continual expansion.

This time, we’re inviting thousands of artists who made the trek to Texas -- and the rest of you accomplished musicians at home -- to apply today. If accepted, you'll join stars like ukulele songstress Julia Nunes, singer-songwriter David Choi and many others who, as partners, are able to make some money from their YouTube videos. Here's multi-instrumentalist and YouTube musician extraordinaire Jack Conte and songstress Nataly Dawn (aka Pomplamoose) to tell you more:

We've also got a few words from our most recent YPP Music partner. You may have heard of them – they're a little band with a viral hit or two and recently made headlines by starting their own indie label. As OK Go's Damian Kulash puts it "YouTube has always been a great match for OK Go - creativity flourishes and we can connect directly with our fans. So when we heard about Musicians Wanted, it was a no-brainer: it sounds great for us. We're honored and excited to be the first applicants. We can't wait to get new videos up on our channel."

So whether you make hip-hop, folk, noise-rock, jazz or a genre of your own invention, we are looking for all types of original music video content. One thing to keep in mind is that right now this program only supports video content by U.S.-based artists, though there are plans to roll out the program more widely in the future.

We'll leave you with a final call to apply now to join our Musicians Wanted campaign and perhaps you, too, will find yourself autographing CDs, reporting from the road and collaborating with other amazing musicians on the site.

Michele Flannery, Music Manager, recently watched "Bulldozer."

You and the FCC Chairman discuss the Future of the Internet

Earlier today, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Julius Genachowski sat down for an exclusive YouTube Interview, right on the heels of the FCC’s announcement of a National Broadband Plan -- the agency’s strategy to deliver high-speed Internet to more Americans across the country. You might be surprised to learn that -- even though the Interent was invented in the U.S. -- broadband penetration in the states is considerably lower than many other developed nations. Chairman Genachowski’s YouTube Interview is part of a series of conversations we’re having with public figures in which citizens submit and vote on their favorite video and text questions on CitizenTube. Earlier this year we spoke with President Obama in the White House, and engaged with leaders of Congress after the bipartisan health care summit.

You can see the entire interview posted below. Chairman Genachowski answered Brooklyn-ite Elizabeth Stark’s question on cost by saying the FCC needs to eliminate all barriers to competition so more Interent providers can compete and drive down prices. When Evslin in Vermont asked about rural broadband access, the Chairman said the FCC will take funding currently allotted for rural phone lines and instead use it to provide broadband to rural communities. And when Michael Tapp asked if broadband should be considered government infrastructure or a commercial service, the Chairman shied away from calling the Internet a fundmental right -- but he did say that all Americans “need to have access to this critical infrastructure.”

All in all, the Chairman took 17 questions, including two lightning rounds of “F-C-Caesar,” in which the Chairman gave a thumbs up or thumbs down to more straightforward “yes” or “no” questions posed by users. 

You can submit your feedback to the National Broadband Plan on Broadband.gov, or feel free to leave a comment about the interview on the YouTube video itself.

More and more world leaders are coming to YouTube to speak directly with citizens about important events, so stay tuned for more interviews in the future. We’d love to know you who’d like to hear from next.

Steve Grove, head of News and Politics, recently watched, “Announcing the National Broadband Plan.”

Something Fun While You Do Your Brackets

For those of you not in the US, please excuse us while our collective attention turns toward "March Madness," AKA the always exciting, single-elimination NCAA college basketball championship tournament. Our productivity plummets to zero as we spend our workday filling out our brackets and trying to pick the winner in the office pool.

What does this have to do with lighting, you ask? Nothing, except for this:

I think it is safe to say that, with the airing of the above commercial, Buffalo Wild Wings has just become the Official Chicken Wing of Strobist.com. You gotta love the Frankenflash thing they made as a prop, too.

Good luck to everyone with their tourney picks. My Florida Gators drew BYU for their first game, which does not look promising. But then, we're just happy to be here this year.

And make my Buffalo Wild WIngs extra hot, please.

(Thanks to Steve for the tip.)

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BBQ and Movies

Today marks the last day of the SXSW Film Festival (stay tuned for a "BBQ and Music" blog as the music portion of SXSW kicks off tomorrow), where we continued to roll out our Filmmakers Wanted campaign, launched back at Sundance, to educate filmmakers about opportunities to distribute and make money from their work on YouTube, especially through YouTube's new Rentals program.

Here's a shot of some of our handiwork for those of you who couldn't make it to Austin this year...

But for any filmmakers out there who want more than just my amateur photo of a poster, visit our Filmmakers Wanted channel for information on Rentals and how to become a partner.

As much as we've enjoyed our stay here in Austin, it's never a party unless we get to celebrate with all of you. So we've put together a kickin' collection of music documentaries to transport you to that artistic otherworld where music and film coexist in beautiful harmony (and if this virtual otherworld doesn't do it for you, try to get to Austin next year -- the BBQ's really good, too).

Below are descriptions of the films, which are available for rent, and trailers to help you decide what to watch.

The Socalled Movie

Socalled is a Canadian klezmer/hip hop artist and part-time magician with millions of views on YouTube (and he also happens to be performing at tonight's SXSW Film Closing Party if you're here in Austin!). Find out what drives this eccentric rapper as he blasts through the boundaries that separate music from different cultures, eras and generations in "The Socalled Movie."

loudQUIETloud

In the late 80's and early 90's, The Pixies took the indie rock world by storm until internal strife tore them apart. This rockumentary takes you behind the scenes of their 2004 reunion tour and explores some of the band's darker demons.

DiG!

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, "DiG!" recounts the friendship and rivalry between the American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols.

Air Guitar Nation

In "Air Guitar Nation," a cadre of the nation's greatest would-be guitar heroes - including C-Diddy, Jam Toast and The Shred - converge on the first-ever U.S. Air Guitar Championships, before moving onto the world finals in Finland.

Sara Pollack, Entertainment Marketing Manager, recently watched "Socalled - (Rock the) Belz"

Worth a Sub: Michael Grecco's New YouTube Channel

Celebrity / Nekkid People photographer Michael Grecco has created a YouTube page to display his many excellent behind-the-scenes videos.

Some of you may not know that he started out as a photojournalist, and began pushing the lighting envelope way back in the very beginning of his career.

The Will Farrell shoot (c. Blades of Glory) embedded above is a great example of why I always enjoy Grecco's time-lapse BTS vids. There's a lot to learn in a minute and change. Not only is he showing you the whole set build, shoot and tear, but there are several cool lighting info nuggets to be had.

Hit the jump for a some of the things you can learn from this video, a second vid and links to more.
__________ Read more »

Indian Premier League bowls wicked googly* to the world on YouTube

When the first ball of this year’s Indian Premier League cricket season is bowled, fans across the planet will have a front row seat in the world’s biggest online sports stadium. Tonight the Deccan Chargers and Kolkata Knight Riders will face off in Mumbai at 8 p.m. IST, and the YouTube global community will be able to tune in to the IPL’s YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/ipl) for streaming and on-demand access to witness the start of what promises to be one of the most widely-distributed sporting events in history. Fans can watch matches, highlight videos, player interviews and much more all on the IPL’s YouTube Channel.


Named by Forbes as the "hottest sports league in the world" with revenues comparable to the world’s most popular leagues, the IPL season is a 60-match, 43-day tournament that features some of the best talent in cricket today. You can come to YouTube and keep up with the action any time, anywhere, and connect with fans across the globe. Watch as the match happens, or if you missed a match, tune in later to see what happened. The entire season will be streamed around the world on YouTube, except in the U.S., where matches will be time-delayed and made available 15 minutes after the match ends.

On the IPL Channel, you’ll see three tabs:

• Today’s Matches: This is where you can watch streamed matches as they happen. (Note that the stream will be delayed by a few minutes.) Click through at any time to see the match scorecard.
• Recent Matches: Catch up any time on the full action of matches that have already happened. Watch Sachin cream the ball through the covers, Warney taking his latest wicket and more.
• Highlights: If you’re short on time, check in here for short videos of player interviews, match highlights, greatest plays, and more.

And for all of you who want to cheer or commiserate with others, check out our Twitter gadget on the channel page to be part of the conversation. You can keep up with the discussion on Twitter with the YouTube IPL hashtag (#youtube_ipl). Share, rate and comment on videos throughout the channel, or upload your own video responses to the action. There's also a link so you can join the Official DLF IPL community on Orkut (www.orkut.com/ipl).

We'll be watching the donkey drops, the five-fers, the flippers and floaters, the half-yorkers and slow sweeps — and cheering alongside you!

Amit Agrawal, Strategic Partner Development Manager

* A googly is a kind of pitch similar to a baseball pitch or a bowling throw in the game cricket; a wicked googly would be a really good pitch.

Recognizing courage, securing online freedom

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog 

More than ever, governments around the world are threatening online free expression. Forty countries have taken measures to limit this freedom, up from only a handful a few years ago. YouTube services are or have been blocked in 25 of those nations.

On Thursday night in Paris, we took an important step to highlight this crucial issue by sponsoring the first Netizen Prize (or more elegantly, Le Prix du "net-citoyen") awarded by the Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. And on Friday, March 12, we’ll be helping highlight the fight for Internet freedom by marking the group’s World Day Against Cyber Censorship on YouTube.

Fittingly, Reporters Without Borders chose to give the first Netizen Prize to the Iranian creators of the website Change for Equality, first established in 2006 to fight for changes in laws in Tehran that discriminate against women. That site has since become a well-known source of information on women’s rights in Iran, documenting arrests of women activists and becoming a rallying point for opponents of the regime.

Over the past year those leaders in Tehran have distinguished themselves — and earned the opprobrium of people all over the world — for their brutal crackdown on the rights of its critics to question their rule. Last year's killing of unarmed Neda Agha-Soltan during post-election protests in Tehran, seen around the world on amateur video, has become a symbol of the regime's ferocity — and the power of the Internet to reveal what governments do not want the world to see.

At the award ceremony in our Paris office, Google's Senior Vice President David Drummond said that we are at a critical point in the future of the Internet: "All of us have a choice. We can allow repressive policies to take flight and spread across the globe, or we can work together against such challenges and uphold the fundamental human right to free expression.”

David went on to praise the role of NGOs like Reporters Without Borders, the Obama Administration’s commitment to the promotion of Internet freedom and the efforts of all groups that have joined the Global Network Initiative. Under the initiative, major U.S. Internet companies, human rights group, socially responsive investors and academic institutions agreed to guidelines promoting free expression and protecting the privacy of their users around the world. “In the spirit of the undiplomatic American come to European shores," he said, "let me make a plea for European governments, companies and groups to rise to the occasion. Any effort that is limited to the United States is bound to fall far short of its global potential.”

Robert Boorstin, Director of Public Policy, Google, recently watched “Tiananmen: 20 Years.”

Q&A: How to Use Your Nikon SB-900 in Optical Slave Mode

As most of you know, the discontinued Nikon SB-800 speedlight has an awesome -- yet, oddly undocumented -- built-in slave. But given the questions I have gotten recently, many people who own the newer SB-900s are not aware that their flash has the same capability.

A walk-thru on how to access and use the built-in slave in your Nikon SB-900 speedlight, and how to get better results from any slave outdoors, inside. Read more »

Speedlights at Twenty Paces

UPDATE: We got video now, at the bottom of the post.
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DUBAI, UAE, MARCH 08, 2010 -- Wrapping up in Dubai and getting ready to head over to Muscat in Oman for some much-anticipated R&R.

Those of you who follow Strobist on Twitter knew that Saturday was a big day for me. After teaching at Gulf Photo Plus all week, Saturday night was the big shootout against Zack "OneLight" Arias and Joey "Not That Guy from Blossom" Lawrence.

My shootout results, and what it's like to walk into the belly of hell, inside. Read more »

QOTD: Do You Co-op Gear?

I am gonna turn it around to you guys with a question today: Is anyone participating in a formal (or informal) gear co-op program?

It seems like a logical choice as a compromise for gear you cannot rationalize owning.

Obviously, renting is an option for those who live in NYC or LA (and, increasingly, secondary markets). But it seems to me that the idea could easily be applicable to lighting gear. For instance, a group of weekend enthusiasts or a camera club could pool money for a monobloc kit.

There have always been informal arrangements between photogs in a given local area for spotting each other little-used gear. It's a lifesaver -- especially on assignments that require extra equipment. And some photographers even rent the stuff to other shooters, the cost of which is usually passed onto the client.

Personally, I have been jonesing for a Phase One back on a medium format body. But I cannot rationalize the cost.

Okay, let me rephrase that. I cannot rationalize the cost to my wife. I can rationalize anything to myself.

At The Sun, we had a pool of gear that was available to be used when needed by the staffers. Just seems to me that there must be civilian versions of this. And I'll bet someone reading this site has done it.

Hit us in the comments.

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