Youtube has announced the launch of its Tiktok rival, Youtube Shorts. The short-form video creator will allow people to create videos that are about 15 seconds long, edit it and upload it.
The service is being rolled out first in India where Tiktok has been banned and will be made available to other countries with time, although no definite date has been announced yet.
The videos will appear in a new row created for Shorts on the Youtube app. The videos can be swiped vertically to move from one to the other within the row created for Shorts.
How to create videos using YouTube Shorts
You have to first be sure that you have access to the Youtube Shorts camera.
To do this, click the + icon on the Youtube app on your phone, then select Video. If the option to Create a short video appears, it means that you have access to the Shorts camera and can create a Short.
Once you can access the Shorts camera, you can record multiple video clips, just like on Tiktok, and mix them together with the editing controls. The controls allow you to edit speed, time, and add music to the video clips.
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An in-product music picker feature allows you to select from 100,000s of tracks which are currently available for YouTube Shorts.
YouTube says it is working with music artists, labels and publishers to make more of their content available to continue expanding the catalogue for users of YouTube Shorts.
The features are being rolled out in a graded manner. It is currently available in early beta as part of the YouTube Android app on devices including smartphones and tablets. The short video creator service will be available for iOS devices soon. It is a mobile-first service and a version of it may not be released for notebooks and PCs.
If you want to create Shorts but cannot access the Shorts camera yet, there is another way to create it. You can upload any vertical video that is less than 60 seconds to YouTube and use the hashtag #Shorts in the title or description.
YouTube will be highlighting videos created from the Shorts Camera as well as other videos less than 60 seconds in a section on the homepage. By uploading your video with the hashtag, you can start creating Shorts even if you do not have access to YouTube Shorts in your country yet.
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