YouTube choice playlists

Can youtube do this? Yes, provided your user sticks to the client that enables all of the youtube features the best, and you do some duplication, editing, and uploading of "choice" (and other) videos yourself.

Youtube has the concept of static playlists, of course, so you could just gather up (or cut and upload your own copies of) all the content you'd ever need, and sequence it into a playlist or sets of playlists. You could update them after the fact, but they wouldn't be interactive, other than the viewer getting to navigate inside the playlist. Moving from one video to another in a playlist is pretty seamless, except for the occasional unfortunate ad revenue interruptions for videos you didn't upload (and opt-out of advertising) yourself.

There's also the concept of Clips of other already-uploaded videos, but as these can't be sequenced into playlists or given any interactive overlays, they don't work well for this idea.

There are two interactive/navigation customizations you can add to videos you've uploaded called End Screens and Info Cards. There's a sensible duration requirement for End Screens where your video needs to be longer than 25 seconds so a viewer has a chance to choose what to click on, if anything. These can be used to navigate to another video or another playlist (regardless of who created either). You can have up to 5 info cards and 4 end screens on a given video.

How do these interactive elements work if they're part of a video that is playing in a playlist? They still function, and the default action of doing nothing takes you to the next item in a playlist. If the interactive element takes you to a single video, then you're no longer in the playlist interface, and at the end of that video, the user would just sit there. Might therefore make more sense to make the interactive elements only link to other playlists you control.

A series of branching playlists, connected by "way-station" or "choice" videos, could work. One major drawback is that you cannot link to a specific video in a playlist (you can only link to the whole playlist, starting it from the first video), nor can you link to a specific timecode in another video (linked videos start at their beginning). This means you'd need a playlist for every choice. It also means you'd need properly truncated videos for every segment in every branch. These playlists would mostly end in a custom video you upload, with interactive elements added to them. Some would end with the final video per usual in a mixtape (BERL).

How much work would it be to have "properly truncated videos for every segment in every branch"? Provided you have access to good enough quality video of the originating mixtapes themselves, you could probably edit one long video per segment (with its choices added at the end), and then maybe they don't need to be individual playlists at all. You would want at least one playlist per mixtape, so that the default (no choice made) path between segments would just move on to the next segment in that mixtape. There may be some cases where a video in a segment, uploaded by someone else, already matches the edit in the mixtape, but unless a bunch of those happen in a row, it's probably actually less work to just edit and upload your own segments of existing mixtapes.

Let's talk through an example with two imaginary mixtapes.

Mixtape A has 60 edits total, but only has 5 points that are suitable for choices. "Suitable" meaning that there's a sequence that shows up in multiple mixtapes, is long enough that you can review your choices while watching it, and that regardless of if you make a choice or not, the transition to the next segment is more or less seamless.

Mixtape B has 50 edits total, and has 6 points that are suitable for choices. Mixtape B's choices don't all match A's choices, but let's say 4 of them do. Also, let's suppose that those matching choices don't occur in the same order between the two Mixtapes.

A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6

Let's imagine B6 is "Seaside in the Twilight", and so is A1, and since they match, let's label that Universal choice U-I. Let's say the other three matches agree on their overall order, even if the original numbers don't (not that they matter really). You can imagine U-II is "My Hert", U-III is "Zodiac", and U-IV is "A B Collection (Buckaroo Bonzai theme)".

A1(U-I) A2 A3(U-II) A4(U-III) A5(U-IV) B1(U-II) B2(U-III) B3 B4(U-IV) B5 B6(U-I)

So if someone starts playing Mixtape A, they'll see the usual stuff that starts up a mixtape of that age (Jack Ready, Mary, etc), and start seeing footage that's unique to Mixtape A, like a guy throwing a grenade on a roof only for it to fall back and kill him. They'll continue to see more Mixtape A stuff, but once they reach A1(U-I) or "Seaside", they'd be presented the choice to "jump" to Mixtape B. If they don't choose to jump, they'd continue along Mixtape A, and see other Mixtape A stuff, including A2 (let's imagine it's the full Ocean Shores soundwave/postal address video), see more Mixtape A stuff, and then arrive at another choice -- A3(U-II), "My Hert". From here they could make the choice again to jump to Mixtape B, let's say they do.

A start -> more A stuff -> Seaside (shared with B but they choose to stay) -> more A stuff -> My Hert (jump at end to post-B1 content)

Here's the choices left once they do:

B2(U-III, could jump to A4) [B3] B4(U-IV, jump to A5) [B5] B6(U-I, ... uh oh?)

Design decision time -- is it ok for people to get caught in a loop? In the sequence above, if they stay with Mixtape B (eg they don't jump at B2 or B4) up til B6, they'll see Seaside again. Do we want that?

graph TD

 A0(A start/Jack Ready) --> A0-1(A roof grenade) --> A1(A Seaside) --> A1-5(A post-Seaside) --> A2(A Ocean Shores) --> A3(A My Hert) --> A3-5(A post-My Hert) --> A3-6(A Segata Sanshiro) --> A4(A Zodiac) --> A4-5(A post-Zodiac) --> A5(A ABCollection) --> A5-5(A post-ABCollection) --> A99(A end/BERL)

 B0(B start/Forbidden) --> B1(B My Hert) --> B1-5(B post-My Hert) --> B2(B Zodiac) --> B2-5(B post-Zodiac) --> B3(B Projector Couple) --> B4(B ABCollection) --> B4-5(B post-ABCollection) --> B5(B INDY 500) --> B6(B Seaside) --> B6-5(B post-Seaside) --> B99(B end/BERL)

 A1  --> B6-5
 A3 --> B1-5
 A4 --> B2-5
 A5 --> B4-5
 B6 --> A1-5
 B1 --> A3-5
 B2 --> A4-5
 B4 --> A5-5

From the previous diagram, if a player starts with Mixtape A, stays with Mixtape A after it plays Seaside, but then switches to B later, they have the potential to hit Seaside again.

If we don't like that, we need to figure out how to stop that, but there's more...

...if we do like that, without modifying the plan at all, they would be given the choice at that point to jump back to Mixtape A. If they don't take it, of course, they go on to finish Mixtape B. If they do jump back to Mixtape A, they're seeing all that footage after Seaside yet again.

Do we like that? If not, we need to figure out how to stop that.

If we do like repeating stuff they've seen before, maybe we like it because it gives them a chance to try another/different choice down the line (after stuff they'd already seen). Let's say the first time around they jumped early to B at My Hert, and missed the unique stuff in Mixtape A that comes right after My Hert but before Zodiac, say, a Segata Sanshiro commercial. This is how most games with branching content play out, after all, even if you don't die and have to start over, sometimes you get a second chance at a choice you already made, so you have to re-navigate the branches you took the last time up til the change in choice.

So the good news is if we're ok with loops, the Youtube playlist structures can be pretty simple, if repetitive.

In most scenarios, you'd want a full playlist for Mixtape A and a full playlist for Mixtape B, the "base case". If the player starts in one mixtape and never makes any choices to switch, they should be able to play through like it's a normal, linear playlist right through to the end. One playlist per mixtape, dead simple.

Once you introduce choice, because you can't (at present) jump to the middle of another playlist (only the beginning of one), you'll need a new playlist for each choice, which then continues to the end of each mixtape. Therefore, Mixtape A would need 4 more playlists, and Mixtape B would also need 4 more playlists. In total, you'd need ten playlists.

So you go from two mixtapes to ten playlists. If you add a third mixtape, does that mean you have 5 more for 15? Not necessarily. Essentially you need to add a playlist for every choice in the newly introduced destination. So if Mixtape C only has 3 points where it could branch off to A or B, you just add 3 to what you'd already had. The number of choices at a particular waypoint doesn't really affect the list construction, just the potential paths the user gets to take.

graph TD

 A0(A start/Jack Ready) --> A0-1(A roof grenade) --> A1(A Seaside) --> A1-5(A post-Seaside) --> A2(A Ocean Shores) --> A3(A My Hert) --> A3-5(A post-My Hert) --> A3-6(A Segata Sanshiro) --> A4(A Zodiac) --> A4-5(A post-Zodiac) --> A5(A ABCollection) --> A5-5(A post-ABCollection) --> A99(A end/BERL)

 B0(B start/Forbidden) --> B1(B My Hert) --> B1-5(B post-My Hert) --> B2(B Zodiac) --> B2-5(B post-Zodiac) --> B3(B Projector Couple) --> B4(B ABCollection) --> B4-5(B post-ABCollection) --> B5(B INDY 500) --> B6(B Seaside) --> B6-5(B post-Seaside) --> B99(B end/BERL)

 C0(C start/Mary) --> C1(C Madballs Warning)  --> C2(C Seaside) --> C2-5(C post-Seaside) --> C3(C Projector Couple) --> C4(C ABCollection) --> C4-5(C post-ABCollection) --> C5(C INDY 500) --> C6(C Zodiac) --> C6-5(C post-Zodiac) --> C99(C end/BERL)

 A1  --> B6-5
 A1  --> C2-5
 A3 --> B1-5
 A4 --> B2-5
 A4 --> C6-5
 A5 --> B4-5
 A5 --> C4-5
 B6 --> A1-5
 B6 --> C2-5
 B1 --> A3-5
 B2 --> A4-5
 B2 --> C6-5
 B4 --> A5-5
 B4 --> C4-5
 C2 --> A1-5
 C2 --> B6-5
 C4 --> A5-5
 C4 --> B4-5
 C6 --> A4-5
 C6 --> B2-5

ern2150 / FVCR

YouTube choice playlists #29