YouTube dropping support for community contributions

[Erasmus Roterodamnsus]

YouTube is dropping support for anybody to manually submit captions for videos.  Full effect will take place by the end of September.

 

Uh... That's pretty much it I guess.

[ekket]

That's terrible – especially for the foreign YouTubers who relied on it, their audiences no doubt being crippled by this. YouTube’s tools weren’t very good, but they were better than nothing. At least it’s a good thing this forum exists (YouTube can’t take that away from us).

 

YouTube appears to be promoting Amara as an alternative for community subtitles (source):

Quote

We are working with Amara to offer YouTube Creators a comprehensive alternative to our Community Contribution feature, which enables crowd sourced captions. 

 

Amara has extensive experience working with creators to crowd-source captions and translations for their content and has built a streamlined integration with the YouTube platform that enables real-time updates to creator videos.

 

YouTube will be covering the cost of a 6 month subscription of Amara Community for all creators who have used the Community Contribution feature for at least 3 videos in the last 60 days (more details coming soon). We hope this helps support Creators during this transition, as well as benefit those who have been contributing captions (as this is a crowd sourced option). Creators who don’t qualify for the subsidy are still able and encouraged to use Amara’s tools, including their free subtitle editor.

(The privilege of having community subtitles now appears to cost the creator $12 per month.)

 

Really, it shouldn’t be too hard just to let another user other than the creator upload subtitles. Unfortunately, that’s impossible, so here we are. It might be possible to use the API for that purpose, though that might just be too much effort. Do let me know if that is possible in any way.

 

Edited July 31, 2020 by ekket
i still don't want an emoji here (see edit history)

[ThatOneDraffan]

On 7/31/2020 at 8:29 AM, ekket said:

(The privilege of having community subtitles now appears to cost the creator $12 per month.)

This doesn't seem too surprising given who owns YouTube, but we also haven't had a true statement from Alphabet regarding whether or not YouTube is actually a profitable business since 2015, which it wasn't at the time (Wall Street Journal, Daily Mail [Sources WSJ]). We do know that YouTube generated $15 billion in ad revenue in 2019 (Verge, Business Insider), but how much is it costing them to host all the content posted to the site?

 

Additionally, we do know that so far this year, there earnings per share (EPS) have on average, been higher than estimated, with a ~5% overestimation for the first quarter of 2020 (Q1), but a 20% underestimation for Q2, so overall they're doing ~15% better than they thought they would be. We'll get an update for Q3 in October (NASDAQ).

 

However, my assumption would be that Google isn't really worried about the profit anymore, at least in regards to community captioning, because, as stated in the article shared by ekket (Orig. Post),  "YouTube is not monetizing any transactions that occur on the Amara platform" (Google Support Thread).

 

EDIT: Messed up my contractions.

Edited September 23, 2020 by ThatOneDraffan (see edit history)

[Ross Scott]

I'll promote the subtitle forums here again on the next videochat with fans, so people can still submit them somewhere.  As long as my account can still upload them, the results will be similar, just more delayed.

[themadprogramer]

Just spreading this info around the internet, please don't mind that this of all things is my first post on here!

 

YouTube has hastily hidden all the menus, but it's still possible to get community captions to work, for now. Obtuse, but possible. The contributor and video uploader need to access the editor URL directly, click here for a tutorial. 

 

Again, it works, for now.

On 7/31/2020 at 4:29 PM, ekket said:

The privilege of having community subtitles* appears to cost the creator $12 per month.

* freely available for 12 months, to eligible channels

A more long term solution is likely the http://youtubexternalcc.netlify.app/ project, which aims to host captions externally for free. Downside is that they don't automatically show up on YouTube, but neither do Amara's captions, requiring the uploader to add the files themselves.

 

As it so happens, I am compiling a more thorough list of resources called the "YouTube Captioner's Toolkit" where you can find out more. Spread the word!

Edited October 19, 2020 by themadprogramer
typo: "time" for "term" (see edit history)

[ekket]

5 hours ago, themadprogramer said:

A more long term solution is likely the http://youtubexternalcc.netlify.app/ project, which aims to host captions externally for free. Downside is that they don't automatically show up on YouTube, but neither do Amara's captions, requiring the uploader to add the files themselves.

 

As it so happens, I am compiling a more thorough list of resources called the "YouTube Captioner's Toolkit" where you can find out more. Spread the word!

That's great news! When I posted that, I was actually considering creating something like youtubexternalcc, but real life got in the way. I'm glad people have put in the effort for supporting community contributions, and I'll definitely be spreading the word.

Edited October 19, 2020 by ekket (see edit history)

[ekket]

28 minutes ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

idk, beyond the fact that, the link alone screams, SHADY MALWARE SCAM, you have two big problems with this approach

 

1. nobody is going to use an external service just to watch closed captions, unless they are desperate, or deaf

2. that website is going to die one day, so bye bye captions, again

The website isn't exactly the best design-wise, I admit. I'd actually like to see it be open sourced, too. As you said, some contingency plan is definitely needed, such as publishing archives of their database (I'll ask them about that and if it could be open sourced). Anyway, all of your criticism is valid, but I do have hope in the project being improved on.

Edited October 19, 2020 by ekket
words×2 (see edit history)

[themadprogramer]

10 hours ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

i just don't see anybody using this in the long term, or hell, i don't see this service being even alive in the long term, i have mixed feelings about it

10 hours ago, ekket said:

The website isn't exactly the best design-wise, I admit. I'd actually like to see it be open sourced, too.

Regarding externalCC, it started off as a project for J-Pop fans by J-Pop fans and that has been the main audience it has been catering to up until this point. People just wanted somewhere to share translations, not really an audience to be concerned with malware/privacy since it mostly spread by word of mouth. I've heard the developer is planing on open-sourcing it for more "mature" development in the future, so let's see what will come of that.

 

That being said, getting people to come over to another website instead of YouTube is, as you can imagine, not something that will happen overnight (Given that you also have to consider deaf, international audiences etc. who haven't even heard of the removal yet). It's still possible to directly upload/accept from YouTube, although it's very tedious 

15 hours ago, themadprogramer said:

YouTube has hastily hidden all the menus, but it's still possible to get community captions to work, for now. Obtuse, but possible. The contributor and video uploader need to access the editor URL directly, click here for a tutorial. 

 

Again, it works, for now.

But that probably won't last forever, I predict it will die the moment YouTube kills the old captions editor for good, which might take a few weeks seeing as the new version is kind of buggy.

 

In the long term I hope that externalCC and some of the other projects listed on YT Captioner's Toolkit, are integrated into open-source YouTube front-ends like Invidious. Both in terms of survivability and also easier accessibility. But that requires them to start somewhere...

 

And that's why I'm here to tell you about all these awesome projects, to bring you hope and to show that we can take matters into our own hands instead of whimpering about Google/YouTube's shortcomings to no avail. 

[danielsangeo]

If someone can find a solution which makes it easy to upload captions to the videos, that'd be awesome.

 

I was thinking of something like an open-source proxy.  Like you enter in the URL to the YouTube video and it'll play the video with adverts or whatever so the uploader can get the advertising revenue, but will intercept the video and add subtitles to it between YouTube and the viewer.

Don't ask me how to make something like that--I have no clue!

[themadprogramer]

4 hours ago, danielsangeo said:

Like you enter in the URL to the YouTube video and it'll play the video with adverts or whatever so the uploader can get the advertising revenue, but will intercept the video and add subtitles to it between YouTube and the viewer

I hear someone is working on a browser extension, but it might be difficult to bring it over to mobile.

[Erasmus Roterodamnsus]

Wow, so this blew up. Figured I'd add something that's been handy for me recently.

 

It's a browser program not dissimilar to YouTube's subtitle editor that can add captions to embedded videos, but you can also upload/download your own subtitles as well, making it relatively versatile. Then again, I don't know what others want out of community contributions, but for me, it was a pleasant surprise I figured I'd share:

 

https://www.captionfy.io/home

Edited October 23, 2020 by Erasmus Roterodamnsus (see edit history)

[themadprogramer]

Wow, this seems new, definitely adding it to my list!

[woodseleanor]

As a content creator, I prefer to add subtitles rather than leave this to Youtube. I watched what subtitles they create; they are horrible. But I'm glad that more and more applications are appearing to make it easier for content creators. I also use the captioanfy application for subtitles and https://loader.to to download Youtube content and integrate it into my content. Of course, these are just short videos referring to the source from which I downloaded them.

Edited November 17, 2021 by woodseleanor (see edit history)