SOME RANDOM DUDE

Say what you want about Google, they are the gargantuan multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, but the news from YouTube to radically open its platform has Google written all over it. With the features they have opened up, developers can (almost) essentially use YouTube as a free video hosting/serving solution. As expected, the videos will also be viewable on YouTube, but for people with little wallets and big ideas, this does not seem like a bad tradeoff. Services like Brightcove are going to no doubt lose some clients with less hefty pocketbooks.

The features offered up are more than what is needed to create a decent video site. Here are the features straight from the YouTube announcement:

• Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
• Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
• Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
• Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
• Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software

I, myself, cannot wait to dig into the YouTube API to start playing with the video playback API. There are two remaining hurdles however - which is why I mentioned that developers could almost use YouTube as a free video/hosting solution. First, the Flash API they offer seems to only support Actionscript 2 at this time. Secondly, which is more disappointing, the FLV still is not accessible through the API. That being said, there are tools out there for constructing the URL for the actual video file. With minimal work, one can get a YouTube-served FLV running inside an Actionscript 3 player in no time. Of course, that still violates YouTube’s terms of service, but they need to understand that this will be all but expected from the developer community. If you are going to take it this far, why not just take that final step.

A feature which will really excite the standards community is the rich API offered to allow people to make the video playback UI in HTML/CSS. This example, while raw, shows the potential to use Flash merely as the media display engine, with all UI elements in a potentially more accessible, flexible format. I really agree with the philosophy of building web applications like this - which we did for the Viewpoints project, I just have yet to see any strong execution of a Flash video player with a HTML/CSS UI.

Putting the two problem-issues aside, I am extremely excited about what this could bring to video on the web. With a free, open playing field, I expect all sorts of unorthodox video experiments and mashups in the months to come. I have a feeling we could see ideas that may not make good business sense but are reasonable to give a shot in this free environment. I expect to see a glut of interesting work coming out in the weeks to come - which I hope to be a part of. I just hope YouTube will take the leap and give us our FLVs.

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