Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the squeezing-the-pipes dept.
techmuse writes "YouTube has introduced a new, higher-resolution text mode for video. The new text mode is far more efficient than their previous high-end, high-definition offering, and should bring entirely new levels of realism to streaming web video!"
Re:Really?
by
ottothecow
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Unfortunately, it also looks like they are pushing through the new page design which I am not a huge fan of.
The *glaring* problems have been fixed, but the way things are placed does not seem as smart to me...particularily the video description. It should be to the side of the video...especially on wide screen displays. Often it will have lyrics or something you want to read while the video is playing and you can not do this with a longer block of text (or with any text on a netbook screen).
Didn't you watch the Matrix Text video that youtube put-up as an example? This is no joke. And yes the vid looked just fine. At last I watch youtube on my C=64.
BTW I've decided to quit engineering and join a convent. Maybe then I'll finally get some sisters.
-- "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
No, this is legitimate. If you pause the video you'll see perfectly crisp ANSI chars, and not just an encoded video of ANSI rendering. Same thing with full screen. On my HD monitor it is perfectly crisp while playing. Also, both CPU cores are literally idle playing this video.
Of course Youtube would have to pre-process and "encode" the video into ANSI first - this isn't some video rendering mode of the player, but the actual stream is ANSI. It is very doubtful Youtube will actually go to to the trouble of encoding millions of videos in this way.
Have you seen the jokes/. types come up with (e.g. last year's pink ponies theme, this year the lame chat roulette thing)? We're better off with other people's jokes.
Re:Really?
by
jrmcferren
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Oh Please don't remind me of that, not the OMG Ponies! thing, but the fact that I was stupid on that day. For a while first posts were getting modded up, I decided to start the first post stuff as myself. Later the mods started modding the trolls as trolls and my Karma hit rock bottom. In fact I think I'm still paying for it as I have to wait 10 minutes or more between posts, then again there may have been trolls on using an open WiFi I once had.
Your recent posts have been starting at 1 for me, so your karma must have worked back up to positive by now. Perhaps you can't post more often than every 10 minutes unless you have Good or Excellent karma. If you can get six positive moderations a week for a month, you'll be up to Excellent where you can post reasonably fast and at Score:2.
Unfortunately, it also looks like they are pushing through the new page design which I am not a huge fan of.
I've talked to a dozen people today about the new layout, and not a single person liked it - not the laymen, not the designers, not the programmers, nobody. The words "clusterfuck", "illegible", "wanky piece of shit" and "it's an April Fools' joke, right?" had been uttered.
Judging by how this thing looks and behaves, they probably haven't done any real usability testing, and they've partly left Opera out in the cold (videos now require "click to activate" and vertical centering is off on all "buttons", which is going to piss off tens of millions of people by itself). The comments are extremely hard to read, there are no borders, there is no colour, there is no real element grouping, ratings are binary shit... I'll be monitoring design/usability experts in the next few days to see what they have to say; I'd be extremely surprised if anyone found enough positive things about the new page design.
To be fair, the old design wasn't so perfect, either, but the new one has improved on very few areas.
I think they'll have to roll it back, or redesign the redesign, because the outburst is fairly significant.
Re:Really?
by
ottothecow
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Unfortunately, it is not a new thing.
I had a computer that was stuck in their beta test (until I figured out what combination of logging out/clearing cache and cookies would get rid of it). The layout was similar although they had some even worse features. The search tried to dynamically shrink the currently playing video (to the a small box in the top left) to display the search results next to the recommended videos...this simply did not work for me (firefox on ubuntu). The first search might sort of work but after that I would have to first go to the youtube homepage (search box would become non-responsive otherwise). Also, videos would frequently refuse to load, even if the same video in embedded mode played fine (or played fine on a system not running the new layout). Another hated change was the automatic play of the next video on the right hand side--you could disable it, but only per session...leave youtube and come back and it is back to autoplay.
There were a few posts about it on the youtube blog and the comments mostly seemed to hate it (although in the youtube language of "f this crap you are all idiots who cant design shitzzz"). There was an opt-out link that didn't work (and mention of an opt out link that should be on every single page in the new layout but I could never find it). Looks like they at least fixed SOME of those problems before releasing it into the wild.
I can still see a few clear formatting bugs (firefox, winxp) but at least the videos actually play...
I know, they selected me as a beta user some time ago, and I happily deleted the cookies responsible for that monstrosity. There have been some improvements since then (most notably, URLs now look like URLs, instead of 524987-character garbage, and not everything is a playlist), but it's still garbage. If you picked a random person from the street, they would probably be able to design the page better and in a more usable way.
I honestly have no idea what they tried to accomplish with this, and why they haven't hired someone knowledgeable to do the design...
They didn't. The april fools joke is not the first video; it's that after clicking on some of the fake related videos you're actually going to believe it:P APRIL FOOLS!:D
There's an even easier way of noticing it's an output filter.
The switch when clicking between your current stream and the text stream, is instant. If you switch from low to high def streams it actually reloads the stream. You can click the TEXTp to normal links as many times as you like and it's instant. They probably did effectively convert aalib to flash in some form (at the very least use the conversion tables).
Could have done it for real...
by
alephnull42
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This technology exists e.g. http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Text_Mode_Doom - would have been way cooler to actually implement the option permanently than just upload this Video
-- Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
Re:Could have done it for real...
by
Deag
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Re:Could have done it for real...
by
quadelirus
·
· Score: 3, Informative
You can also select it from the resolution selection box.
Re:Could have done it for real...
by
Gaygirlie
·
· Score: 1
It's possible to play Quake and Unreal Tournament in text mode also:)
Re:Could have done it for real...
by
byornski
·
· Score: 1
Except that it doesn't work for any videos that they haven't uploaded an ascii version of...... try it on an actual random video and it does nothing.
Re:Could have done it for real...
by
Xzzy
·
· Score: 1
Is there any pattern for why some videos have the textp option, and others don't?
Maybe they only did it for popular videos? Because none of my uploads have the textp option.
Re:Could have done it for real...
by
macshit
·
· Score: 1
Except that it doesn't work for any videos that they haven't uploaded an ascii version of...... try it on an actual random video and it does nothing.
I saw it on some very random videos earlier today (which seem extremely unlikely to be classified as "popular"...), and it was available (through the resolution-selector widget) on every video I looked at subsequently.
It seems more likely that not all servers got it at the same time or something.
-- We live, as we dream -- alone....
Re:Could have done it for real...
by
ender-
·
· Score: 1
That's odd. The videos people link to work, but any other video I try doesn't work. The mode isn't selectable in the selection box, and appending &textp=fool doesn't work. [shrug]
Gotta hand it to them. They usually manage to make their joke something entertaining rather than the boring stuff most other sites tend to come up with.
Apparently Youtube isn't the only one - Slashdot is finally killing off their buggy Web 2.0 interface and supporting real web standards. They'e waiting until tomorrow to announce it by first letting everyone overdose on the stupid flash "roulette chat".
Great! Before I had to download it and open it in VLC to do this. This cuts one step out of my day - productivity increase!
-- I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Also not in all countries...
by
denzacar
·
· Score: 1
It seems that it is USA-only, judging from the comments on the videos and the fact that I also can't see the TEXTp version. I hope that THAT part is the actual joke. Though I doubt that.
-- Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Re:Also not in all countries...
by
Dayze!Confused
·
· Score: 1
I'm currently in Taiwan and enjoying the TEXTp videos.
-- "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
[Thomas Jefferson]
Re:Also not in all countries...
by
fastest+fascist
·
· Score: 1
Not true, I was able to view them just fine from Germany. Some videos didn't have the option to enable TEXTp though.
I am disappointed that so many people on slashdot are posting this comment. You either jumped to this conclusion with no evidence or have horrible observation/problem solving skills. It is in the resolution options for every video. You can also add "&textp=fool" to the url.
"I am disappointed that so many people on slashdot are posting this comment. You either jumped to this conclusion with no evidence or have horrible observation/problem solving skills. It is in the resolution options for every video. You can also add "&textp=fool" to the url."
I'd thank you for the correction, except you had to jump in with the personal insults as well. Personally i checked YouTube right before leaving for work. I loaded several of my favorite videos and none of them were getting the filter effect. Since the last time YouTube did an April Fools joke like this (Rick Rolls) it applied to every video on the site, i thought the effect was not available on those other videos. I guess i did jump to the conclusion a bit, but it wasn't entirely without evidence from YouTube's past behaviour.
So why are you even trying to be "nice" and help others out if you have such a low view of all us idiots? Or did you forget to set your "&mood=civil" flag while loading your opinion?
Actually, you can to this easily with VLC, since it supports ASCII streaming of video files. Take a look at the available video outputs.
Quite an amusing april fools prank, but a better one would have been switching back to '90s realvideo (H.263) with the soul-crushing, endless pre-buffering.
If YouTube wasn't so slow(in the past 8 months), I would chuckle. But when I'm at home(Comcast) the loading of videos is dialup-level slow. I can no longer realtime-stream videos, and Youtube's code doesn't handle stalled loading well, where you can't pause it.
It seemed a bit faster last night with the new GUI though, for how ugly it is.
Yeah, I realize this is a joke, but...
by
Antony-Kyre
·
· Score: 1
I believe VLC (VideoLan) had a textmode. No kidding. I have the old version, but choose Settings/Video/Output Modules/Color ASCII art video output. And no, I'm not kidding.
Re:Yeah, I realize this is a joke, but...
by
Laser_iCE
·
· Score: 1
Are you KIDDING ?!
Re:Yeah, I realize this is a joke, but...
by
Antony-Kyre
·
· Score: 1
Beat me to the punch!!!
by
seandiggity
·
· Score: 1
A few months ago I was working on a PHPmotion site that utilized libcaca and aalib, which both mplayer and vlc use to achieve this effect. I've been stalling on it to work on other, more important projects, but maybe I'll revive it now, since this might become popular...
-- Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Re:Beat me to the punch!!!
by
seandiggity
·
· Score: 1
Actually, everyone should check out ASCIImeo...he beat YouTube to the punch:P You can watch anything on Vimeo in ASCII on that site.
-- Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
caca-lib not aa-lib
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
FYI: The caca library outputs in full color text mode. The aa filter only outputs in gray scale text mode.
-- from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
blargh
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Not only the interface is worse, the performance too. On Athlon64 3000+ 720p videos do stutter muchly. It is the fault of the new look because it's still OK on channel pages.
Cool encoding
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I hope they keep this option available in the future. It's fun to play with and show people.
perhaps they chose today to break it...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
because then they could say it was just an AFJ if no one liked it, and yank it without anyone getting an eggy face?
For those interested in the actual "feature", apparently the ASCIIization is apparently done locally on your CPU within the Flash player.
You can tell because you can turn it on and off without restarting the stream, and also because it loads your CPU.
Re:Done on CPU, apparently
by
clone53421
·
· Score: 1
Yes, and the.flv stream that’s downloading is the same regular.flv video that you’d usually be streaming.
-- Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Anyone ever see a TROLL dance? See Clone do so!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
-- There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Too bad certain countries are excluded...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I've been trying to find a single video with textp implemented, and I haven't gotten a single one at all. NOT ONE. I've watched videos ranging from The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings, to Starcraft 2 and Supreme Commander, to Lady GaGa and Megan Fox, and haven't found it used at all. That's despite appending the fool URL to all of them. Bleh. I want to see what Neo sees, after all, we are living in a "Matrix"
Is 10pm still not the same day? Some of us don't get to read./ during the day.
---What the hell is wrong with./? It won't let me post cause it says that I have to wait a bit to prove myself (moving a comment to the right page). Do I really have to wait more than a minute?
Slashdot Mirror
this is actually cool. i hope its not one of /.s April fools jokes
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
No more flash needed!
april fool i'm way too late
There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and nine other kinds of people.
you heard me.
Oh come on why not do it properly and port aalib to flash.
0x or or snor perron?!
This technology exists e.g. http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Text_Mode_Doom - would have been way cooler to actually implement the option permanently than just upload this Video
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
YoutTube's TEXTp Saves You Bandwidth and Money">
apparently it will save Youtube lots of money AND allow them to do streaming 1080p videotext.
OMG! Ponies!
Too bad thier new layout sucks on the main site
I pulled up a few random videos and text mode only seems to be enabled for a select few.
Curse the corporate firewall/proxy!
what kind of company policy blocks youtube but lets facebook pass anyway?
i'll have to check this out at home tonight
People, what a bunch of bastards
Gotta hand it to them.
They usually manage to make their joke something entertaining rather than the boring stuff most other sites tend to come up with.
It makes Flash video faster on the Mac. No skipping!
Apparently Youtube isn't the only one - Slashdot is finally killing off their buggy Web 2.0 interface and supporting real web standards. They'e waiting until tomorrow to announce it by first letting everyone overdose on the stupid flash "roulette chat".
Great! Before I had to download it and open it in VLC to do this. This cuts one step out of my day - productivity increase!
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
It seems that it is USA-only, judging from the comments on the videos and the fact that I also can't see the TEXTp version.
I hope that THAT part is the actual joke. Though I doubt that.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Now I can watch YouTube at work! Sigh...
Wow what a great useless setting, can't wait to get drunk and watch text based video.
I'm actually kind of disappointed that you can't actually watch all (or even most of) the YouTube videos that way, it's a pretty cool effect!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Actually, you can to this easily with VLC, since it supports ASCII streaming of video files. Take a look at the available video outputs. Quite an amusing april fools prank, but a better one would have been switching back to '90s realvideo (H.263) with the soul-crushing, endless pre-buffering.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
If YouTube wasn't so slow(in the past 8 months), I would chuckle. But when I'm at home(Comcast) the loading of videos is dialup-level slow. I can no longer realtime-stream videos, and Youtube's code doesn't handle stalled loading well, where you can't pause it.
It seemed a bit faster last night with the new GUI though, for how ugly it is.
I believe VLC (VideoLan) had a textmode. No kidding. I have the old version, but choose Settings/Video/Output Modules/Color ASCII art video output. And no, I'm not kidding.
A few months ago I was working on a PHPmotion site that utilized libcaca and aalib, which both mplayer and vlc use to achieve this effect. I've been stalling on it to work on other, more important projects, but maybe I'll revive it now, since this might become popular...
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
FYI: The caca library outputs in full color text mode. The aa filter only outputs in gray scale text mode.
I'd watch youtube in ASCII all day every day! I hope it doesn't go away after the 1st >..
Finally, YouTube for us Lynx users.
Are the ASCII images 7-bit clean?
Not all of us can afford 14.28% additional bits, you insensitive clods!
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Still doesn't work in links/lynx :(
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
Not only the interface is worse, the performance too. On Athlon64 3000+ 720p videos do stutter muchly. It is the fault of the new look because it's still OK on channel pages.
I hope they keep this option available in the future. It's fun to play with and show people.
because then they could say it was just an AFJ if no one liked it, and yank it without anyone getting an eggy face?
For those interested in the actual "feature", apparently the ASCIIization is apparently done locally on your CPU within the Flash player.
You can tell because you can turn it on and off without restarting the stream, and also because it loads your CPU.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31703134
Utterly hilarious - Clone opened up his piehole & now he can't back up his pure b.s.!
See subject, and then see Clone do so -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31703134
Utterly hilarious - Clone opened up his piehole & now he can't back up his pure b.s.!
See subject, and then see Clone do so here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31703134
Utterly hilarious - Clone opened up his piehole there in the url above, & now he can't back up his pure b.s.!
See subject, and then see Clone do so, right here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31703134
Utterly hilarious - Clone opened up his piehole & now he can't back up his pure b.s.!
See subject, and see Clone do so -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31703134
Utterly hilarious - Clone opened up his piehole & now he can't back up his pure b.s.!
See subject, & see Clone do so -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31703134
Utterly hilarious - Clone opened up his piehole & now he can't back up his pure b.s.!
They should have debuted their TEXTp with this video instead:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
I've been trying to find a single video with textp implemented, and I haven't gotten a single one at all. NOT ONE. I've watched videos ranging from The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings, to Starcraft 2 and Supreme Commander, to Lady GaGa and Megan Fox, and haven't found it used at all. That's despite appending the fool URL to all of them. Bleh. I want to see what Neo sees, after all, we are living in a "Matrix"
http://www.asciimation.co.nz/
Table-ized A.I.
Is 10pm still not the same day? Some of us don't get to read ./ during the day.
---What the hell is wrong with ./? It won't let me post cause it says that I have to wait a bit to prove myself (moving a comment to the right page). Do I really have to wait more than a minute?