Alex Reid

Last year, I used YouTube’s (beta) AudioSwap program that allows you to swap an uploaded video’s audio with that of YouTube’s selection of artists who have allowed their music to be shared as audio-tracks to (solely) YouTube videos. When the AudioSwap program began, there was limited selection of audio, but now that list has increased. That’s great, but it’s terrible that the features haven’t increased.

I uploaded this otherwise quality scenic video from a plane last year only to have it compromised; YouTube’s video encoding often ruins sweeping scenic views. I suspect I know why, but that’s for another time. In this video from last year, I selected Colin Mutchler’s ‘Destination Non-Specific’ which went very well with the pixelated theme of Thunder Bay.

This video is simply me filming a guy freaking out and yelling in the street. I had to use the video camera to even see what was going on, and I’m still not sure. I think the guy was flipping out on PCP or he was incredibly drunk/stupid. But I used this silhouette video to illustrate the many flaws of the AudioSwap program – even a year after it was rolled out. First, you can not fade in/out of the song, because back to my original frustration, it’s hard to find audio that not only matches the feel of the video, but matches the time. This video was 1:07, but no song I could find was that short. And you can’t adjust the sound volume at all. And then it doesn’t even list the artist or song name with the video after the video has been re-uploaded.

I guess Google isn’t about audio. Which might be for good reason.