YouTube launches a new format of short videos: they are the Clips, clippings of videos that are very reminiscent of the homonymous function of Twitch.
It is only a few hours ago the announcement of the implementation of a new feature by YouTube. Recalling the Twitch feature called Clips, in the near future it will be possible to save the highlights of a video in the platform, creating in fact a new short clip to share on the net.
It's a useful and extremely intuitive feature that of the YouTube clips that, as a basic purpose, has the one to put the accent only on the most important moments of an entire video that, in some cases, could also last many hours and therefore be difficult to view in full in a single session. According to the platform itself, the feature would be one of the most requested by the users; for this reason it has been chosen to push on the possibility to exploit it on different platforms, from desktop computers as well as from mobile devices. All feedback received in the coming days, therefore, will help to improve its operation, thus providing a new and useful tool to all users of the site.
YouTube, what are the Clips
The new YouTube feature is dedicated to videos already uploaded to the platform as well as live streaming and allows, as already mentioned, to create highlights lasting between 5 and 60 seconds. Once created, the short movie can be shared, publishing it on one's own social profiles or using the direct link for sending it by email or publishing it on websites and blogs.
The new feature is part of the great trend of short videos, the real fashion of the moment, and it joins the YouTube Shorts format introduced last September by the streaming giant just to keep up with the competition. Also in this case, in fact, the final product is a short video to be "consumed" quickly on social networks.
As stated by YouTube itself, at the moment the feature is in the alpha test phase and is available for all the necessary tests only for a small group of users of the platform. Selected users can test the feature either via desktop browser or via YouTube's Android app.
YouTube Clips, how the feature works
To help its users, YouTube has created a short guide including all the steps to be taken in order to successfully use the new feature. It's just a few steps, very easy to do even if you're not particularly familiar with the role of editor, as well as content viewer on the platform.
To start, just choose the YouTube video you want to extract the highlights from. Below the player, you can click on the scissors icon that allows you to display a box dedicated to the task. Next, you have to select the section of the video you want to "crop", moving the slider and enlarging or shrinking it in order to highlight a section between 5 and 60 seconds.
Once the editing part is over, just choose a name for the video, no longer than 140 characters, and click on the Share button. From the panel that appears, you can select the icons dedicated to social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, the Embed button to generate the code to be implemented within a blog post or on a website, while the Copy button will allow you to store the direct link to share with your contacts, via email or any other mode more convenient for the user.