YouTube is introducing new features for YouTube Shorts to boost creativity and improve the user experience on its short video platform.

Expanding Creativity with YouTube Shorts

YouTube Shorts has rapidly grown in popularity, with over 2 billion logged-in users watching Shorts monthly.

To further encourage creativity and inspire new content, YouTube is unveiling six new capabilities for Shorts to improve the user experience.

1. Remix with Collab: A New Tool for Collaboration

Screenshot from: blog.youtube/news-and-events/, August 2023.

YouTube has launched a new tool called Collab for creating short videos. With Collab, creators can now record Shorts in a split-screen format alongside other YouTube or Shorts videos.

This side-by-side layout provides various options for remixing and incorporating existing content into new Shorts.

The tool allows more creative freedom in repurposing and responding to viral videos and audio.

Collab is being rolled out first to iOS users and will become available on Android over the next few weeks.

2. New Effects and Stickers: Fueling Innovative Content

Screenshot from: blog.youtube/news-and-events/, August 2023.

YouTube Shorts continuously introduces new effects and stickers for creators, giving them more opportunities to connect with their viewers.

An upcoming feature for Shorts is a Q&A sticker that lets creators ask questions and get responses from their audience in the comments.

3. Live Discovery on Shorts: Connecting with Audiences

YouTube is experimenting with a new vertical live-streaming feature optimized for mobile devices. This will allow live streamers to be found directly within the YouTube Shorts feed.

The goal is to give live-streaming creators an innovative way to reach new audiences and grow their communities.

By making live streams more discoverable in a full-screen vertical format, creators can connect with viewers across more parts of YouTube.

4. Creation Suggestions: Encouraging Inspiration

Screenshot from: blog.youtube/news-and-events/, August 2023.

YouTube is implementing a new feature to help creators get inspiration from and build upon the work of their peers.

The feature will automatically package the audio and effects from a Short being remixed, streamlining the process for creators to produce derivative content.

This allows creators to focus on their new creative additions rather than recreating the underlying components.

5. Saving Shorts to Playlists: Curating Personal Inspiration

YouTube has added the capability to save Shorts videos to playlists straight from the Shorts feed.

This new feature allows creators to collect and organize content they enjoy watching conveniently.

Having these curated playlists of liked Shorts readily available provides inspiration creators can easily reference when brainstorming ideas for their new Shorts.

By streamlining the ability to save appealing Shorts into playlists, YouTube makes it simpler for creators to find inspiration from others’ work.

6. Recomposition Tools: Transforming Long-Form Content

YouTube will soon start testing new editing tools that let video creators turn their landscape/horizontal videos into Shorts.

These tools allow creators to reframe, zoom, crop and split their existing long videos into more engaging vertical Shorts.

The new features will allow creators to reuse key sections from their long videos and convert them into Shorts while preserving essential visual elements.

In Summary

YouTube continues to enhance its Shorts platform with new creative tools and capabilities.

As YouTube rolls out collaborative remixing, live streaming integration, suggestion prompts, and more, creators have more options to produce engaging short-form videos.

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