YouTube is working on a clip feature that will allow creators and viewers to extract short segments of videos and live streams to share on the Internet, the company announced on Thursday.
YouTube is currently testing clips at an “alpha limited” stage, the company said on its support website, making the feature available to “a small group of creators” while collecting feedback from users, according to Jensen, YouTube community manager . At the moment, it is only possible to create clips through the YouTube app for Android or on the desktop site, although Jensen said support for the iOS app is “coming soon”.
Although currently limited, clipping on YouTube works perfectly. Viewers can select a “clip” button – represented by a scissors icon – next to the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons below a given video. Players can then scroll through a video to select a section and adjust their clip via a panel to the right of the video. The clips can last five seconds or 60 and the playback will be repeated indefinitely. Hopeful YouTube clippers can use the ad video as a test for all their clipping skills.
The most obvious uses of the feature come from game content. But Ryan Wyatt, head of games and commerce at YouTube, said Polygon that “ultimately, all products are made available to everyone”, so that clips are not limited to game or video streams.
After making the clip, viewers or creators can share it on a variety of social sites or with a direct link. This feature arrives extremely late for YouTube compared to its biggest competition, Twitch, which released clips for all users in July 2016. Even Mixer, which was released in 2016 and ended last summer, started allowing users create clips in 2018.