YouTube Testing 'Choose Your View' Multi-Angle Feature
Nothing beats seeing a concert in person, but YouTube is trying to make the experience as close as possible by experimenting with different camera angles of the same video, which it calls Choose Your View.
YouTube has a video sampling the new feature of a live show by artist Madilyn Bailey performing for YouTube's Music Night. The different camera angles show up on the right side of the video, and users can press the corresponding number of the left and right arrow keys to switch between camera views. The current video showed four different angles of the concert. However, each camera isn't in a fixed position, so the different views are not static.
The effect isn't exactly seamless. Switching to a new angle makes it seem like the singer is stuttering the last half- to one second before the video resumes normal playback. Then again, YouTube is still experimenting with the feature, so there's room for improvement in the future.
Obviously, this type of feature is best suited for concerts, but considering the vast amount of content available on YouTube, the multi-angle feature might be hit-or-miss. Watching your favorite YouTube personality in different angles doesn't improve the experience necessarily, but on the other hand, product reviews or tutorials of any kind could benefit from the new tool.
Those who want to try out the feature for their YouTube channels can sign up for the program and see if it enhances the experience or is an unnecessary feature.
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Rexly Peñaflorida is a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering topics such as computer hardware, video games, and general technology news.
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dstarr3 Seems like a neat idea. To make it seamless would be a bit of a bandwidth challenge, because if you've got four different cameras, you'd have to be buffering (in at least some capacity) four different videos simultaneously.Reply
Conceivably for concerts, you could stream four video feeds, but only one audio feed, and that could prevent audio stutter in transition (which would be the most obvious) since the audio feed then wouldn't change. But saving that audio bandwidth isn't going to mean a lot weighed against four 1080p video streams, I guess. -
silvermorph I'm with you dstarr3, but they probably only need to buffer all streams if they want immediate stream-switching, which doesn't really seem necessary - when is it critical to have a different view *right now*?Reply
They could respond to the user input with a little "switching" notifier, and start buffering the chosen stream while continuing to play the current one. When the new stream is ready to go, make the switch.
Anyway, that doesn't sound as bad as an audio stutter. -
livinindaghetto I could see this working really well for racing sports. Getting different angles from one car would be really cool. If it got to the point that you could switch between the competitor cameras as well, that would be pretty awesome.Reply -
surphninja I mainly want this with sports. NHL gamecenter does this to a degree. Shutting off the commentary from those damn announcers would be nice, too.Reply -
soldier44 Try fixing the above 720p option on YouTube for smartphones option. Note 4 and 1440p here would be nice to view videos natively at that res for a change.Reply