 "Memo shows how YouTube's offline videos will work")
YouTube is taking steps towards bringing its world of videos offline. Users will soon be able to download videos for offline viewing without the need for Internet connection. The feature which was announced this week put on a shroud of secrecy with not much known about how it will end up working.
AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka has managed to catch hold of an email sent across by YouTube to its partners explaining how this feature will work. The mail was sent to YouTube partners, channel owners YouTube has commercial relationships with, letting them know that offline videos will be activated on the YouTube application for all channels by default when it goes live in November. However, the mail was sent to let them know that they can choose to disable this functionality for their channels right away
More details for offline videos emerge
Essentially, this is how the application will work: On the YouTube application users will be able to use the “add to device” functionality to designate content that can be watched by them for up to 48 hours when they’re not connected to the Internet. After that time period has elapsed, users won’t be able to view these videos unless they connect to the Internet at least once. The window will then get refreshed and the video will be available offline again.
As far as the content creators go, the feature can be disabled for their channels. They can filter unavailability according to asset, video and country. YouTube will go on to disable videos across the channel, regardless of whether they are enabled at the asset, video and country level. To ensure all their content is disabled, partners should disable at the content owner or partner level.
It must also be noted that this new functionality will not apply to any movies and TV shows that Google offers for rent or sale. It isn’t clear yet if music videos will be allowed to be seen offline. Considering the fact that users will not be too keen on watching random cat videos when they’re offline, the lack of TV shows and even music videos will cut down on this feature’s potential to a great extent.
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