Amid growing competition from TikTok and Reels, YouTube on Thursday unveiled a series of new features aimed at boosting the appeal of its short-form video service, YouTube Shorts. In a video update for creators, YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Vorich introduced six new tools to help creators create short videos, including one that automatically converts longer videos into shorts, as well as tools to inspire creativity, such as “Add Yours” stickers that encourage others to share their own content related to a creator's video.
“One of the things I love about it is that anyone can make a short video. Even I can make a short video. Because we have all of the tools in place that give you a very accessible way to be a creator,” Voolich said ahead of the launch of the new tools and features.
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The two services focus on how to present the audio and speech in your videos: for example, one can create auto-generated captions that you can edit and customize with different fonts and colors, while the other lets you choose from four different voices to narrate or read the text.
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In addition to the “Add Yours” stickers, creators will have access to two new effects celebrating the 15th anniversary of the hit game Minecraft. The first, Minecraft Spring, lets you film videos in the Minecraft world, and the other, Minecraft Rush, adds a new mini-game that can be played within the Shorts player. The goal of the latter is to record yourself tapping to clear blocks as quickly as possible, then share the video with others to see who can do it faster.
Of particular interest, however, are new tools that allow YouTube to leverage its vast existing collection of public videos.
Coming soon, a new Auto Layout tool will make it easier for creators to turn regular videos into shorts. Building on the tools released last year to create shorts from longer-form content, the new Auto Layout feature, available first on Android, will automatically track the subject of your video as it turns it into a short. YouTube says this means it will automatically and dynamically pan, zoom, and crop your video.
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The other tool lets creators remix remixes, which are short videos that incorporate video segments from other users' YouTube videos or short videos, as long as the video is public and the creator hasn't opted out of having their content reused in this way. YouTube already offers a range of tools for remixing videos, but this new tool will enable creators to create remixes from other long and short videos, as well as existing remixes.
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Vorich said it may be concerning that short video views are currently reaching 70 billion per day, the same figure YouTube announced last September. He also suggested YouTube may test short videos longer than 60 seconds.
“Some people want their shorts shorter, some people want them longer, so we're trying to figure out what's the appropriate cutoff,” Vorich said.
Some of the new features are newly available and are still rolling out, while others will be released “coming soon,” YouTube said.