Jeremy Piven is best known as the sharp-tongued Ari Gold on HBO’s Entourage, but today he’s taking a break from berating Vince and the boys to give the YouTube community a glimpse of his softer side by signing on as a Video Volunteers curator.

This month, YouTube, Piven and the ONE Campaign are asking you to make videos supporting a nonprofit working on an issue related to global development, such as extreme poverty, access to clean water and sanitation, and preventing disease. With International Women’s Day on March 8 and World Water Day on March 22, it’s an ideal time to tackle some of the problems crippling citizens in developing nations. Piven agrees:



Once you’ve created a video for a nonprofit of your choice dealing with global development, submit it to the gadget at www.youtube.com/videovolunteers. Remember: the video has to be about an organization, not just an issue. Piven and the ONE Campaign will pick their top three videos to go on the YouTube homepage at the end of the month.
Happy filming!

Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism Manager, recently watched “Spread the Word to End the Word.”

Ever encounter an issue on YouTube and wonder whether you're the only one experiencing it? There are two places you can go to find out more about the situation:

1. If you see your issue on the Current Site Issues page, it means that the bug has been reported to YouTube and that our engineers are working on a fix.



2. We also suggest taking a look at the Popular Discussions section of the Help Forum. The team frequently posts bug acknowledgments, new feature information and useful Help Center articles here.



If you don't see your problem reported in either place, you can always visit the Help Forum and chat with other users to find out if they're experiencing a similar issue or know a work-around for the situation.

The User Support Team recently watched "The Famous Chicken Danceoff."

Whether it's utilizing new techniques, telling a story in a novel way or focusing on a groundbreaking subject, filmmaking is a craft in which innovation takes center stage. So it's with great pleasure that we introduce a new round of films in the Screening Room, courtesy of Lexus, celebrating convention-breakers, thought-provokers and envelope-pushers.

To start, we've got four very different films. "Papiroflexia" (Spanish for "origami") is the animated tale of Fred, a chubby man with a passion for paper folding, who wants to change the world with his art. The documentary short "Kung Fu Wang" explores the life of a martial arts master whose real contribution to society is not what you think. In "Little Minx Exquisite Corpse: Cara," a less-than-glamorous actress in Los Angeles might not be exactly what producers are looking for, but why should something like that stand in the way? And in "Windowbreaker," a pair of young siblings build a home-alarm system to protect themselves against a group of neighborhood burglars.

Stay tuned because in two weeks, we'll have a new round of innovative shorts.

Nate Weinstein, Entertainment Marketing Associate, recently watched "Muni Fight."

A video's life on YouTube is just the beginning; embedding gives it a life off of the site. Just look at your favorite blogger and they're likely to be embedding YouTube content in their posts. In fact, almost every popular video on the site is first made famous by embeds on the Web. That number can be as high as 50% of views in the first 48 hours, kicking off a great cycle.

We offer a few size choices when you grab a video's embed code. The default size used to be on the smaller side -- smaller than the size displayed on YouTube.com -- but as of today, we're defaulting to a larger size, one that's the same size of a video on YouTube.com (either 480x385 if 4:3 video, or 640x385 for 16:9 content). These new defaults were selected because they will give the majority of people the best possible viewing experience and because they better match our current video encoding sizes.

When you click on the embed code, the space below it will expand and reveal customization options, like so:




You can choose the following for your embedded player:

• The color and size
• Whether or not to include related videos
• Whether or not to display the player border
• Whether or not to play in HD by default -- triggers video resolutions of 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080p)

When using the "Play in HD" option, it's best to embed the player at a very large size (at least 1280x745) in order to accommodate the large size of the video. If you play HD video in a small player, the user's computer will have to scale down the video to fit within the player, costing the user extra CPU cycles and bandwidth, which may result in choppy playback. It's always best to play the video size that best fits the size of the video player. And if you want even better performance when watching HD content, you can choose to watch it in full-screen.

Geoff Stearns, Senior Web Developer, recently embedded "OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - RGM version."

Tens of millions of people in the U.S. experience some kind of hearing impairment and recent studies have predicted that over 700 million people worldwide will suffer from hearing impairment by 2015. To address a clear need, the broadcast industry began running captions on regular video programming in the early 1970s. Today, closed captions on video are more prevalent than ever. But generating captions today can be a time-consuming and complicated process.

Making video easily accessible is something we're working hard to address at YouTube. One of the first steps we took was the development of a caption feature in 2008. In November of last year we released auto-captioning for a small, select group of partners. Auto-captioning combines some of the speech-to-text algorithms found in Google's Voice Search to automatically generate video captions when requested by a viewer. The video owner can also download the auto-generated captions, improve them, and upload the new version. Viewers can even choose an option to translate those captions into any one of 50 different languages -- all in just a couple of clicks.

Today, we are opening up auto-captions to all YouTube users. There will even be a "request processing" button for un-captioned videos that any video owner can click on if they want to speed up the availability of auto-captions. It will take some time to process all the available video, so here are some things to keep in mind:

• While we plan to broaden the feature to include more languages in the months to come, currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken.
• Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can't be auto-captioned. President Obama's speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions.
• Auto-captions aren't perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they're accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions. But please be patient -- our speech recognition technology gets better every day.
• Auto-captions should be available to everyone who's interested in using them. We're also working to provide auto-captions for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If you're having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit our Help Center: this article is for uploaders and this article is for viewers.

For content owners, the power of auto-captioning is significant. With just a few quick clicks your videos can be accessed by a whole new global audience. And captions can make is easier for users to discover content on YouTube.

Twenty hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Making some of these videos more accessible to people who have hearing disabilities or who speak different languages, not only represents a significant advancement in the democratization of information, it can also help foster greater collaboration and understanding.


Hiroto Tokusei, Product Manager, recently watched "How to Eat Stick Candy Fast."

We have released the next update in our content delivery software and accompanying Web-based portal.

Also released within the CDN portal, is a bandwidth trading virtual marketplace called Fleximart. Here, operators can easily trade bandwidth amongst each other.

To know more about the Fleximart, we have a handy animation over here.

Other than that, release version 2.1 includes the following...

• Content security capabilities (i.e., hotlinking protection or bandwidth hijacking) while adding a new CDN site.

read more

Our curator of the month is TechCrunch, a blog dedicated to "obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies...as well as companies making an impact on the new Web space." They polled their whole crew to come up with a list of favorite videos focusing largely on tech, innovation, start-ups, Silicon Valley and, of course, a few unconventional subjects, like a pogo-ing CEO.

Here, Jason Kincaid explains the thinking behind their selection, which is featured on our homepage today:



You can find the full playlist here.

Mia Quagliarello, Community Manager, recently watched "Life in Quarantine - Fully Sick Rapper."

For the second year in a row, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) asked activists on YouTube to make videos raising awareness about world hunger as part of their "Hungerbytes" competition. And once again, many creative entries came in. Nonprofits looking to run their own YouTube video campaign may want to take note of this effort as it effectively harnessed the imaginative minds of the community to raise awareness of an issue.

A judging panel including Drew Barrymore, actress and WFP Ambassador Against Hunger; Lance Vollard Senior Vice President of Publicity at Warner Brothers Pictures, and Nancy Roman from the WFP selected the finalists. One video used a food fight to show how citizens take meals for granted in the United States; another showed that in the time it takes to cook a microwavable meal (60 seconds) 10 children die of hunger; and this clip used a variety of voices and original music to walk us through our daily food consumption in the U.S. and how it compares to those who starve each day.

But it was filmmakers Carlos Antonio and Michel Sandoval of Mexico who took home the top prize for their film "Dreams," which demonstrates that people in different parts of the world have very different perspectives on hunger. One person's diet is another person's dinner:



Antonio and Sandoval will now travel to Guatemala with WFP to raise awareness for hunger in that country. In addition, 14-year-old John Beck from Rome won the "Under-18" category for his "Dinner Is Served" video, in which a white-gloved waiter dishes up a meal consisting of a compact emergency food ration. The juxtaposition of gourmet restaurant service and an emergency ration is striking:



You can learn more about the United Nations World Food Program, and how you can help, on the WFP's YouTube channel.

Steve Grove, Head of YouTube News & Politics, recently watched "Jerusalem: War in My Land."

Today's world premiere and celebrity playlist is presented by a cartoon created by Blur's Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett. Please welcome Murdoc, the animated bassist for virtual band Gorillaz, as he takes time out of his busy schedule to present the premiere of "Stylo" and also share his favorite videos on YouTube. So what does this fictional musician like to peep on the site? A surprising mix of underwater adventures, Nigerian soul and survivalist tips, along with a few musicians who will also appear on the new Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach.

Here Murdoc explains his selections:



Gorillaz join the ranks of acts like U2, Tiesto and OK Go who've chosen YouTube to unleash their video premieres. Murdoc's picks also make for a colorful addition to our Celebrity Playlist channel, currently dominated by Hollywood film stars and celebrity chefs. Enjoy!

Michele Flannery, Music Manager, recently watched "July Flame."

A massive earthquake measuring 8.8 on the richter scale shook Chile at 3:34 a.m. on Saturday morning, waking most people in the middle of the night. Buildings have been destroyed, hundreds were killed, and many remain missing.

Since then, we've seen videos documenting the earthquake and its aftermath pouring onto YouTube. News organizations have been covering the tragedy 24/7, and citizens who experienced the epic natural disaster are sharing their experience with the rest of the world through their own videos.

This video taken during the earthquake gives a sense of what it was like to jump out of bed in the dark as your surroundings shook for more than 90 seconds:



And here you can see some of the structural damage caused by the earthquake, as user edielv surveys his neighborhood the next morning:



To upload your own videos of the earthquake in Chile, visit the Google Crisis Response landing page.

For video updates on what's happening in Chile, be sure to check CitizenTube.

Olivia Ma, News & Politics Manager, recently watched "Quake survivors reunited."

Our Video Volunteers homepage lineup today features videos about nonprofits tackling important health issues: artist Jesse McCartney thanks you for standing up to cancer; themike99 tells a personal story about the tie between mercury poisoning and kidney failure; BangPopLA champions Whole Child LA and their work to help kids with chronic pain; and themattieboosh offers this animated take on the importance of funding leukemia research:



We had a record-breaking number of nonprofits participate in this round of Video Volunteers. Fifty health-oriented organizations signed up to have a member of the YouTube community make a video for them, and while we are only able to showcase a handful on the homepage today, we hope that many more nonprofits will have videos made for them. We'll leave these opportunities from health orgs up for a few more days on the Video Volunteers channel, so if you didn't make a video, but are passionate about helping one of these organizations, please reach out as soon as you can.

Next week, we'll launch our "Global Development" round of Video Volunteers. It's an issue that encompasses a number of different subjects, like poverty, sanitation and the need for infrastructure, and there are a number of nonprofits doing work in this area, like the One Campaign, Plan International, One Million Lights, and the Playing for Change Foundation. We hope you'll make one of them a video.

Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism Manager, recently watched "Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation."

For over seven hours yesterday, the nation's top leaders gathered in Washington for a unique conversation on the future of health care reform. Moderated by President Obama, the health care summit revealed disparate views on current legislation, with Democrats arguing for comprehensive reform and Republicans pressing for a more incremental approach (or for starting over entirely). We streamed the entire summit on CitizenTube, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all agreed to answer some of your top-voted questions from our Google Moderator platform during the event. (We also offered the opportunity to Senator Mitch McConnnell, the Senate Minority Leader, but he was unable to participate due to a scheduling conflict.)

Though it's doubtful many of you were able to tune in to the entire meeting, the fact that it was broadcast online was an important aspect of the discussion. It spoke to one of the top concerns that YouTube users posed to President Obama in our YouTube Interview earlier this month, when they demanded that health care proceedings become more transparent.

We selected three top-voted questions and the two top-voted ideas that you submitted during the summit, and the lawmakers replied with the YouTube videos that we've embedded below, as well as posted on the YouTube homepage. (We didn't ask the top-voted question regarding putting legistlation online, as all the legislation is currently available on the Internet.) Seeing each lawmaker answer the same five questions affords an interesting perspective on where both parties stand with respect to the issues that matter most to the citizens who participated.

Here are the questions and ideas that each leader answered. We'll leave the full list up on CitizenTube for the next few days:

1. What is the explicit reasoning behind mandating the purchase of healthcare services?
- Chris, University of Florida

2. Do you believe that healthcare is a right, or that health insurance is a right?
- Brian, Student

3. Thompson Reuters had performed a study in which they concluded that 40% of healthcare waste was from unnecessary care. Unnecessary care is primarily a result of a fear of being sued, aka malpractice. What is being done to address malpractice?
- JatPat, Chicago, IL

4. Why not quit artificially limiting the market? Stop tying health insurance to employers and increase the market dramatically. Allow insurance providers to sell across state lines and increase it even more. The larger the market the lower the price.
- crodgers1981, Lincoln, NE

5. All people voting on these bills should be required to personally read the entire bill before being allowed to vote on it. It is ridiculous that these bills are thousands of pages long. Bills should be written in clear language.
- Blinn, Illinois
Here are Speaker Pelosi's answers:



Here are Congressman Boehner's:




And here are Senator Reid's replies:




YouTube has become the place where leaders can connect directly with citizens around key events in the political process. That opportunity for meaningful dialogue makes politics feel more personal, more democratic, and opens up Washington in exciting new ways. Stay tuned for more YouTube interviews, and let us know in the comments who you'd like the chance to speak with on this platform.

Steve Grove, YouTube News and Politics, recently watched "White House Health Care Summit Part I."

The video page overhaul that's underway now is one of the biggest redesigns in YouTube history. It's been a month since we offered a sneak peek of the new look and functionality, and in that time we've been gathering your feedback, looking at data, and tweaking elements to ensure that the page is as clean and useful as it can be. Here's what's changed since our last post on the topic:

New playlist interface: We've introduced a new playlist design and introduced an AutoPlay On/Off switch that controls whether you automatically go to the next video or not. When we have a robust set of videos for you to watch next, we'll default you into AutoPlay mode but you can turn it off easily.


Queue comes to search: When you search from the video page, you can now add videos to your queue. Many of you have indicated you enjoy watching and programming your 'next up' experience, so we've made it easier.

Integrated comments: The comments section now lists both text and video responses, bringing together the whole spectrum of conversation going on around a video. We'll be touching this up quite a bit in the coming weeks so keep an eye on this area and give us feedback.

We've got a bit more work to do before we'll roll this out more widely; right now, only a small percentage of users are testing the page. Until then, keep the suggestions coming by dropping a comment on this blog post or popping by our forum topic on the matter.

As always, you can opt-in to the watch page by clicking on this link. (To revert back to the old video page, use the opt-out link at the top of the new video page or opt out here.)

Shiva Rajaraman, Product Manager, recently watched "TIK TOK KESHA Parody: Glitter Puke - Key of Awe$ome #13."

While some people are calling it the most important political event of the year and others deem it political theater, one thing is clear: today's health care summit, featuring President Obama and top legislators from both bodies of Congress, will be a fascinating look into the inner workings of Washington. Democratic and Republican party leaders will engage in direct dialogue on an issue that has consumed the political landscape for the past year, and we'll be streaming the summit live on CitizenTube (youtube.com/citizentube), so you'll be able to watch the conversation unfold in its entirety.

What's more, top legislators have agreed to address your questions and ideas on health care after the summit, exclusively on YouTube. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have all agreed to answer a selection of your top-voted questions about health care, the summit, and current legislation, which you can submit via our Google Moderator platform on CitizenTube during the event. The three lawmakers will upload video responses to your questions, and we'll feature those videos on the YouTube homepage on Friday.
The summit starts at 10 a.m ET today at the Blair House (located just across the street from the White House), so head to CitizenTube to submit your questions as you watch the proceedings. Be sure to ask your questions and vote during the event, since we'll close down the Moderator platform at the conclusion of the summit, which is slated to end around 4 p.m. ET.

This promises to be one of the most transparent moments in recent Washington history, so get your health care questions ready.


Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, recently watched "Stage Set for Obama's Health Care Summit."

By now, you might have heard about the ruling in Italy, whereby three Google employees were convicted of violating Italian privacy laws for a video posted to Google Video in 2006. Because this is an issue of critical importance to all of us here at Google, particularly at YouTube, we wanted to direct readers of this blog to the Official Google Blog post on the matter: "Serious threat to Web in Italy."

The YouTube Team

If you subscribe to the YouTube channel, you may have noticed a slew of new videos uploaded recently. They're part of an initiative called "YouTube 101," a series that explains basic features to new users. With hundreds of thousands of people creating new YouTube channels every day, there are a lot of folks out there who may not know that they can share a video privately, customize their channel or even how to upload a video -- in full HD, no less.

Each video has a unique flavor and you may even recognize some familiar faces helping us out (Happy Tree Friends, anyone?):



These tutorials will be embedded in our Help Center, the Creator's Corner, and other places where you're most likely to need quick, entertaining tutorials on how to use YouTube.

Let us know what you think in the comments below, particularly if there's a feature you find mysterious and think deserves the 101 treatment.

Mia Quagliarello, Community Manager, recently watched "A Pluto Song."

The deadline is quickly approaching in the first round of Project: Report 2010, a journalism contest done in partnership with the Pulitzer Center for non-professional, aspiring journalists to tell stories in their community that might not otherwise be be told.
The assignment for Round 1 is to document a single day in the life of a compelling person the world should meet and showcase how that person is making a positive impact in his or her community. All videos must be three minutes or less, and the deadline for submissions is this Sunday, February 28, 2010.
Ten finalists will be chosen from the pool of Round 1 submissions by a panel of judges at the Pulitzer Center. Each finalist for Project: Report -- which is made possible by Sony and Intel -- will receive a Sony VAIO notebook with the new 2010 Intel Core i7 processor and a Sony HD video camera and proceed to the second and final round, where they will compete for five $10,000 travel fellowships to work with the Pulitzer Center on an international reporting project.
All five winners will also receive invitations to Washington, D.C., for a public screening of their work and the chance to participate in a special workshop with Pulitzer Center journalists.
You still have time to put together your Day in the Life piece if you get going today -- so find that person, tell their story, and submit your video on youtube.com/projectreport by Sunday.
We look forward to seeing your entries.
Olivia Ma, News & Politics Manager, recently watched "Arturo's Jerusalem Vlog: Episode One."

Over the past year, we've been surprised, entertained and inspired by the videos that nonprofit organizations have uploaded to YouTube; content featuring everything from unemployed porcupines to hospital workers shimmying in pink gloves. Some videos have urged the community to donate through call-to-action overlays (we've seen some nonprofits generate tens of thousands of dollars in a day), while others have "scared" citizens into doing good.

Today, we're teaming up with See3 Communications to present the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards and recognize those organizations that have used video to the greatest effect to create lasting social change in the past year:

One winner will be selected in each of the following categories: Best Small Organization Video, Best Medium Organization Video, Best Large Organization Video and Best Innovation in Video. A judging panel comprised of social media and nonprofit experts will narrow down the finalists, and public voting will determine the ultimate victors.
These winners will be recognized at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Atlanta and on YouTube. In addition, each winning organization will receive a $2,500 grant from the Case Foundation and a custom Flip camera.
To enter, organizations must be a member of the YouTube Nonprofit Program, a program that offers free benefits to nonprofits in the United States, the United Kingdom, and, as of today, in Canada and Australia. To apply to the YouTube Nonprofit Program, please click here.
Nonprofits, you have until March 12 to enter. Visit the Nonprofit Video Awards channel now to get started!

Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism Manager, recently watched "Australia Non-profit Program"

News from the YouTube universe...  
Nonprofit program launches in Australia and Canada: Like their American and British cohorts, nonprofits in Australia and Canada can now apply to become part of the YouTube Nonprofit Program. Members receive free branded channels, custom thumbnails, longer video uploads, and call-to-action overlays. For more information, and to apply, please go to www.youtube.com/nonprofits.

Easier private video sharing: You no longer need to be friends with someone in order to share a private video with them. You can either generate a special URL that up to 25 people can click on, or select the "Private share with YouTube users" option on the video's details page and write in the username(s), separated by a comma, with whom you'd like to share (see screenshot below). After you click "send," the recipient will see the video in his or her inbox.  


Streams retired: Streams was an experimental product launched in TestTube, our ideas incubator, three years ago. We know some of you enjoyed watching videos while chatting with other users, but we've not been able to give Streams the time and attention needed to make it a more mainstream offering. Thus, we've decided to retire it for now as part of our pre-spring cleaning effort, though we hope to build other features that make it easier for you to share and talk about videos with friends.  

Spotlight enhancements: The homepage spotlight is a periodic module featuring thematic or timely content selected by YouTube. (If you don't see it on your homepage, add it here.) Used to be we *had* to feature four videos and a channel in the module. But now we have a lot more flexibility: we can spotlight just one video, as we might in a breaking news situation, or multiple videos rotating randomly every time the page refreshes, as we might for a guest curatorship or spotlight featuring many contest entries. This might be hardly noticeable to you, but we're excited about the programming possibilities this change brings.  

The YouTube Team

Tiger Woods will emerge from his silence tomorrow morning, speaking publicly for the first time since December 2009, when he admitted to marital infidelity -- a scandal that tarnished his squeaky clean image and stymied his golf career.

Many sports fans are eager to hear if and when he'll return to competition. Woods should address this tomorrow at a small press conference in Florida, which we'll be live streaming on youtube.com/citizentube beginning at 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET. (You'll also be able to access the press conference via our homepage spotlight at www.youtube.com.) Be sure to tune in immediately because the conference isn't likely to last that long.

Here's a peek of what to expect, from the Associated Press:



The YouTube Team