YouTube annotations
YouTube discontinued their video annotations editor on May 2, 2017. Videos that already have annotations will continue to work as before but you can no longer change those annotations or add them to new videos.
I missed the announcement and found out the hard way. This weekend I was updating the last of the Brotherhood flag videos to use annotations and got a rude awakening from YouTube's editor. So now half of our Brotherhood videos have annotations and the others have subtitles generated in my video editor.
In my opinion, The Hidden Blade has made good use of annotations over the years. From speech bubble jokes to highlight boxes around important elements, our annotations enhanced the videos rather than annoying viewers with pop-up links to other videos. When you're creating new videos remember to add all of these elements in editing.
I was lucky enough to have seen the warning on the annotation page and got the Abul Bloopers video made right before the option was removed.
It's too bad because I used annotations to promote THB in my frontpaged videos.
It's too bad because I used annotations to promote THB in my frontpaged videos.
They say you can now use "cards" to do promotions. I haven't looked into them.
There's also end screens, where you can recommend videos. Websites too, although you have to approve the site. Will have to look into that.
There's also end screens, where you can recommend videos. Websites too, although you have to approve the site. Will have to look into that.
I've been using these for my recent videos. Here's a video at the time of the end screen. They're pretty simple, but something that annoys me is that you're required to have a playlist/video card if you want to use them at all.
The card things look like they're only one time uses. At least, from videos I've seen that use them. Usually it's to promote merchandise or links to other videos or something. I haven't used these at all yet.
And if all you want is text popping up momentarily and you don't mind where it is, I guess you could use YouTube's subtitles.
But yeah, a lot of annotation's functionality is going to be lost.
And if all you want is text popping up momentarily and you don't mind where it is, I guess you could use YouTube's subtitles.
It's pretty easy to do this in any video editor (Premiere, Movie Maker, etc). I think it's just as useful as annotations used to be, anyways.
More bad news. On September 20 the Youtube video editor will go away. I had been using that for combining clips instead of an editing program like Movie Maker for a while (with the exception of a few videos such as Eleven Man Blitz 3.0.) It was really convenient to share videos from the PS4 and edit them on Youtube.
Windows Movie Maker isn't what it used to be. Officially it's discontinued and will be replaced by Windows Story Remix later this year. There was one version of Movie Maker (2.1?) that was easy to use and surprisingly capable. I used it for most of my AC videos. Then they released Windows Live Movie Maker which was a piece of junk. Eventually it got to the point where you couldn't downgrade to 2.1 anymore.
That's when I switched to Sony Vegas. It's really powerful but hard to learn. My first Vegas video was Free Fall Assassinations. The only special effect is where the closing credits temporarily blur in sync with the final chord of the music. A better example of Vegas in action is O Brother Where Art Thou?. During the final easter egg "Sex Sounds", Ezio's imagination appears as a soft, circular picture-in-picture. That effect would not have been possible in Movie Maker.
My laptop came with a free version of PowerDirector. Like Sony Vegas it also has the power to overlay videos. As far as I can tell it doesn't have any options for onscreen text, so I usually use good old Paint for that and insert the text picture in the video as an overlay.