YouTube rolls out new chat replay, automatic captions & more for live streaming videos

After taking away a demographic data from creators last week, YouTube is giving something back and expanding its list of features for creators who film live stream videos.

According to an announcement on the YouTube blog, live streaming will now include chat replay, automatic English captions, location tags, and IFTTT (If This Then That) technology integrated into the Super Chat monetizing tool.

With the newly launched chat replay, live chats that happened during a broadcast will show up alongside replays of the video exactly as they appeared.

Also, in the coming weeks, live stream videos will have the option to include automatic English captions powered by live automatic speech recognition technology.

“When professionally provided captions aren’t available, our new live automatic captions provide creators a quick and inexpensive way to make live streams accessible to more people,” writes Kurt Wilms, YouTube’s live video product lead. Wilms added that creators will get captions with error rates and latency approaching industry standards.

Along with the chat replay and caption updates, creators can also add location tags to their mobile lives streams, as well as explore other videos with the same location tag by clicking on it. For Super Chat — a monetizing feature that lets viewers pay money to have their video comments highlighted in the chat stream — YouTube is integrating IFTTT technology.

“Over 600 internet-connected services and devices (like lights, pet feeders and confetti cannons!) can be connected to Super Chat,” writes Wilms. Already available on desktop and Android devices, YouTube says it is rolling out support for Super Chat on iOS devices today.

YouTube’s live streaming was made available last February to creators with 10,000 subscribers. In April of last year, the sited dropped that number to 1,000, opening up live stream to more of its creator-base.

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Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues was a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.