Release Notes: Seven new languages, four new countries get partner program, and lots more...

Bits and bobs that’ve gone live since our last Release Notes...

YouTube is now available in...: Arabic, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Slovenian, Ukrainian and Vietnamese!

Four new countries get YouTube Partner Program: The Partner Program continued its expansion this quarter, with launches in Argentina, Sweden, New Zealand and the Czech Republic. That makes 21 countries in which people can make money from their videos. For more information about partnerships, click here.

Crossfades, wipes and slides: The video editor lets you combine and trim your videos right on YouTube.com, without installing any software. Now you can add transitions, like crossfades and wipes, between video clips. Just select the transitions tab in the media picker, drag the transition and drop it between any two videos in the storyboard.

MySpace Autoshare: Automatically share your YouTube activities on your MySpace account (you can already do this on your Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Reader and Orkut accounts). To hook this up, go to Account > ActivitySharing and click “Connect accounts” next to the MySpace logo.

More filtering for charts: YouTube Charts can now be filtered by categories such as Comedy, Gaming and Pets & Animals, in addition to time and popularity "slices." We also show more results (20) per page.


Improved screen reader accessibility for YouTube player: One of our engineering interns spent part of his summer improving video accessibility for visually impaired people. If you use a screen reader that supports Flash, we hope you'll find it easier to enjoy videos on YouTube now. We've also added some more captioning features to the YouTube Data API. You can list tracks, request auto-timing, and download the speech recognition captions for videos that you own.

Shows in France: If you’re a YouTube viewer in France, now you can watch full-length TV shows, like BFMTV: Bourdin Direct and Britain’s Got Talent. Check out the page here.

HD and CC badges on search results page: When you search for a video on YouTube, the search results now show HD and CC (Closed Caption) badges, in addition to the NEW, CHANNEL and PLAYLIST badges that already exist. If you click on the badge, it will filter out results that don’t fall under that category.


“Add-to playlist” widget: The [+] button on video thumbnails in search results now includes a menu that allows you to add the video to any one of your playlists or start a new playlist. Additionally, the "save to" button below the video is being renamed "add to" and will have the same functionality.


Visited video styling on search results and video pages: Browsers help people remember links they have previously clicked on by giving them a different color, the standard generally being that links are in blue and visited links are in purple. Many sites, including YouTube, opt to make all links blue regardless of visited state to give a more consistent look to the site and better reflect its dynamic nature. However, having a visited state is specifically useful when exhaustively exploring search results or related videos, and so we are launching a new style for thumbnails and links to videos in related and search results: the thumbnail for visited videos is slightly grayed, and the link color has changed. This should help you explore the site deeper without going in circles.

The YouTube Team

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."