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Youtube

YouTube Launches Multi-Angle Video Experiment 62

jones_supa writes YouTube is experimenting with a fun feature already known from DVDs: videos that let you switch between different camera angles while the video is playing. These multi-angle videos are only an experiment right now and there's only one demo video that actually showcases this feature so far. Provided that the user can supply multiple camera streams, YouTube tells that the multiplexing will be automatic, but that the technology is not ready to scale to everyone yet. If you want to give this a try, head over to Madilyn Bailey's channel. The YouTube team took her performance at the most recent YouTube Music Night and set it up as a multi-angle video.
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YouTube Launches Multi-Angle Video Experiment

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  • Basic DVD feature (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xpax666 ( 2625167 ) on Thursday February 05, 2015 @09:01PM (#48994767)
    Wasn't this one of the hyped features of DVDs back in the day? Didn't make a splash then...
    • Re:Basic DVD feature (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Thursday February 05, 2015 @09:17PM (#48994869) Homepage
      Sure was. My DVD remote still has the Angle button. I can't recall a single title that used it.
      • I just tried it out, and the playback skips/repeats a little bit when you change angles. :/

      • Animusic 2 is the only DVD I recall that had the feature. It was kind of cool to watch just one of the nutty instruments playing, but the guided camera standard versions of the songs were probably better.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Porn, that feature is mostly used in porn.

      • Sure was. My DVD remote still has the Angle button. I can't recall a single title that used it.

        That's because it's a useless gimmick. And it requires lot of extra work to produce, with little or no real benefit.

        • Re:Basic DVD feature (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Theaetetus ( 590071 ) <theaetetus@slashdot.gmail@com> on Thursday February 05, 2015 @11:43PM (#48995567) Homepage Journal

          Sure was. My DVD remote still has the Angle button. I can't recall a single title that used it.

          That's because it's a useless gimmick. And it requires lot of extra work to produce, with little or no real benefit.

          On a DVD, sure. On live TV? Particularly sports? It's awesome. One of the stations - NBC or CBS, I think - streamed an NFL game on their website last year and let you select either the broadcast stream or any of the individual cameras, including sideline, overhead, QB close up, etc. That was really fun. I could see the same benefit for anything where different viewers may be interested in different things happening simultaneously - sports or concerts, primarily.

        • I've seen a lot of foreign (non-US) movies on DVD that use the angle in conjunction with the audio track and subtitles. One angle will have English opening and/or closing credits while the other has the native language credits.

        • by dj245 ( 732906 )

          Sure was. My DVD remote still has the Angle button. I can't recall a single title that used it.

          That's because it's a useless gimmick. And it requires lot of extra work to produce, with little or no real benefit.

          It isn't a ton of extra work. If you are doing a multicamera setup anyway, you should just be sure to use a clapperboard [wikipedia.org] so that you can sync the videos up easier. If you are working with multiple cameras anyway, the extra steps in Premiere (Elements or otherwise) to put different angles in Picture in Picture boxes (PIP) is absolutely trivial. For sports and porn the resulting videos are a lot more interesting. I've used it for family videos too- with young children you never know which way they are go

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I have a porno movie in DVD that I found in a DVD drive in a computer lab machine that I was fixing. It allows you to choose multiple angles for a bunch of scenes, but the reality is, there's a reason why the director chose the angle he did...

      • by _merlin ( 160982 )

        The only DVD I have that uses it is Cirque du Soleil's Dralion. On a few of the scenes you can switch between three crops. You're not even choosing different angles as such, just how "zoomed in" the view is.

      • I did find a porn DVD that had multi-angle support...didn't make it better.

        And I find the up-skirt angle a curious omission...

      • The only titles I've ever seen^Wheard of which used multi-angle were porn. It was^Wsounded gimmicky and didn't really add much. Or, so I'm told. ;-)

        The only other places I've seen it used was in some special features on DVDs so you could see the movie, and the original story-boarding side by side, or just one of them. But it was actually a nuisance to use.

        It was one of those things which they added to the spec, and then everybody found themselves doing "OK, we have to use this feature ... but what the he

    • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Thursday February 05, 2015 @09:19PM (#48994887) Journal
      I believe there are advanced lifeforms hovering on just the blind edge of our ability to detect them

      who may reveal themselves tomorrow now that we've passed this incredible technological threshold.

    • I don't think I have any DVDs that have that feature - but last time I saw it demonstrated, there was no feedback for the various angles in the current view. Couple that with the delay before it would start showing that angle, and it was just not very impressive.

      The YouTube demo seems a lot better (minor skipping aside) because it puts the various views on the screen so you can see what's happening on other views, and decide to change the view if you so desire.

      I also think the subject matter works for this

    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      Because the DVD's director and editor are a better director and editor than you are. Even if they are pretty bad. This feature sounded neat when it was first talked about. It's not a very good idea in practice though.

    • by enjar ( 249223 )

      Didn't make a splash then...

      Not true. It was widely used in pr0n DVDs, I'd say it did make a few splashes.

    • Didn't make a splash then...

      You could see the wide shot, his face, her face, the hotel-PPV version, or the real naughty bits. I had an Apex [wikipedia.org] DVD player that would flash a little 'angle' indicator onscreen whenever a multi-angle scene was available and the remote had an 'angle change' button.

      It was pretty much useless.

      Editors know how to do their job. Having five cameramen increases costs by quite a bit but doesn't increase profits at all, even in niche markets. One of the benefits of editing is that y

      • It was pretty much useless.

        The place I can see it being genuinely useful is in car videos, and this would be useful for them on youtube right now. Some of the car video guys are now doing one takes and if you could select camera angles, that would be nifty.

    • The U2 Elevation [amazon.com] DVD used multi-angle really well - you could switch between different views of the concert, from the control room to BonoCam (yes really, even before Google Glass there were cameras in glasses) and general wide angle views. The control room view was especially fun.

      I have to admit it never caught on generally but there are some select subjects where it can be really great - personally I think it could really flourish on a place like YouTube with and endless array of specialized subjects and

    • Just because it wasn't delivered properly back then doesn't mean it can't be re-imagined today. Think about easily being able to play director and sharing your cut of the performance / event easily online or on your youtube channel. There is a lot of room for innovation there.
    • Agreed, may be this feature isn't useful watching movies, but just think about when you watching a football live stream and you can switch camera angles yourself. That is going to be epic.
    • Re:Basic DVD feature (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Zaatxe ( 939368 ) on Friday February 06, 2015 @06:24AM (#48996527)
      Sometimes it was used and you didn't even notice. One notable example is Toy Story's DVD from region 4. It had dubbing and subtitles for english, spanish and portuguese, and since Pixar had the trouble to translate some in-scene texts (like the text in Buzz's box/spaceship), the DVD changed the "angle" for the right language and match the language you picked at the start of the movie.
    • by AAWood ( 918613 )
      Depending on how it's implemented/used, I can definitely see use use for it nowadays. Example: Their are gaming communities who upload videos where a bunch of people play the same game at once, either through co-op or just racing through the same single player game separately. Currently, they either just jam all the videos in little boxes on one screen at the same time, (usually with the individual games' sounds removed), which can get very crowded, or switch perspective between players, which means you po
  • "Look, our toddler's in The Matrix!" [swish swish swish]

  • Just after she's introduced to sing I hit left twice just to test it out, and it was of her rear which works up to her head. I LOL'd

  • "Is this the drone you've been looking for?"
  • Now we can change angles just like a DVD!

  • Watch the game from a bunch of different angles. Put several different TVs in a sports bar with all the different angles, get way more customers. Then mic up all the players and choose the channel you want to listen to. It'd lead to famous trash talk segments when video with sound are linked on forums.
  • I tried to watch the sample video thing. Terrible issues with audio-continuity between the views. Seeing that dude's fanny pack was a great example of why nobody needs \ wants this. I might have had some degree of respect for the guy despite his annoying voice if I hadn't switched to the view that showed the bejeweled fanny-pack. Editing exists for a reason, just like elected political representatives. This is like those people that show you their completely unedited vacation photos- all 568 of them. I

  • One of my favorite DVDs, not movies, has got to be Beastie Boys Video Anthology. It's one of the most feature rich DVDs that I own and if a group were to release a collection of videos this is how it should be done. Some of the video not only include multiple angles, but multiple remixes on the language tracks.
  • Nicki Minaj from an angle other than the one with the camera pointing at her butt?

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