YouTube is useful in so many ways but not all of us use it to its full potential. There are constantly new features being added to help improve experience and ease of use. Some of the features are especially handy to know if you’re a content creator or developer. Save yourself some precious time by taking a look at these 5 YouTube features you may not have known about!

Turn a YouTube Video into a GIF

GIFs are growing in popularity on the internet but creating them still remains a mystery to some. Luckily for us, YouTube has an easy trick to turn any video into a GIF!

All you have to do to make a GIF from a video on YouTube is edit the URL a tiny bit. Simply add the word ‘gif’ before the domain name and you’ll be sent to Gifs.com where you can edit the length, crop the frame, add captions, stickers, and much more! Here’s an example of what your URL should look like: ‘www.gifyoutube.com/your-video-tag’.

Gif.com is perfect for creating custom GIFs for social media platforms but keep in mind that to download and use offline you must sign-up.

Create & Share YouTube Video Playlists

If you haven’t already been using the power of YouTube playlists, you’re missing out! Collect, group, and share your favourite videos privately or publicly with custom made playlists. Do you have some go-to tutorials that you’d like to share? Create a playlist as specific or broad as you want and show it to others to help them out. Make yourself a private music playlist to use while you work or just store inspiring clips for you to draw content from later. Playlists can be a powerful tool in the online world! Start making playlists on Youtube now.

Download Free Music & Sounds from the Youtube Audio Library

Do you need some music to add to your video before you upload it? YouTube has you covered! Browse through a library full of royalty-free audio tracks and sound effects to find the perfect fit.

Add sound effects or music to your video by opening the YouTube Audio Library in your YouTube Creator Studio (found by clicking your user icon in the top right). Search through sounds effects or music simply using the search bar, favourite them for later or download them to use. Remember, always read the specific rules and regulations for using audio before adding it into your video! You can find more royalty-free audio resources from one of our previous blog posts!

View a YouTube Video’s Written Transcript

Are you tired of being a stenographer of YouTube videos? Constantly rewinding and listening for the exact points you want to grab. Well, you shouldn’t be doing that anymore because YouTube automatically generates a written transcript for every video! This feature is useful for a bunch of reasons and it’s available on basically every video (unless the uploader manually hides it, but who would do such a thing).

To look at the written transcript of a Youtube video, click the ‘...’ or ‘More’ button under the video title and choose ‘open transcript’. You’ll receive a auto-generated transcript on the right side of your video, complete with time stamps so you can easily find points in the video.

YouTube Help Channel

Audio isn’t the only thing bound by rules and regulations when it comes to use and re-use. Video and other digital media are another form of content that usually has restrictions about use. This can all be super confusing stuff, thankfully YouTube created this entertaining explanation about YouTube copyright basics that includes puppets to keep our attention.

If you’re looking to find out more about usable features and what’s changing on YouTube you should check out the official Youtube Help channel. The channel is full of great information and keeps you quite up-to-date with new features and their applications.

Filed in // Content Development