Is YouTube really usable?

I always wanted a camcorder to record some videos, play with them and do some video art. Last week I bought a Canon HG10, it’s a perfect camcorder for new users.

I shot my first HD videos and I needed a place to show them. There were a few choices, such as Vimeo & YouTube. Vimeo is like a dream to me. I’ve been a member of that community over 2 years and they’re doing a great work. But Vimeo is for more professionals. Since these were my early -junk- videos, I didn’t want to upload them to Vimeo. And so my YouTube journey begun.

YouTube was always like a hot potato for me. I never wanted to touch it, I just watched it. So, I never created a YouTube account either. So now, for these junk videos, I tried to create a YouTube account. YouTube has an option for people that already have a Google Account: “Sign in with your Google Account!”. That’s just for me, fantastic!

Problem one

When you click on “Sign in with your Google Account!” and login with your Google account, there is another registration form. Same as the other “normal” registration form except the password field. The other fields are:

• Username
• Location
• Postal Code
• Date of birth
• Gender
• Word verification (CAPTCHA)
• Let others find my channel on YouTube if they have my email address
• I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

I already have a Google account, so Google already knows what my location is, what my date of birth is & what my gender is. Also they know that I’m a verified person, not a bot (CAPTCHA).

So, the YouTube team doing a great mistake here: people really don’t need to fill all these fields. I think username and last 2 options are sufficient.

Problem two & three

Like most other web users, I really wanted to skip this form as soon as possible. So I thought, why would YouTube ever need my location info (city & postal code), also my gender. So I left these fields blank and pressed the create my account button.

It refreshed the page and showed me the same registration page with this message:

Please select a valid zip code.

There were 3 blank fields but YouTube said there was 1 error. Also it marked all empty fields with red. It also asked me to re-type the CAPTCHA text. Since it was my second try at registering, I got angry and filled the blanks and clicked on create my account again. I already passed the CAPTCHA test last time but the second time I made a mistake (I’m not good at CAPTCHA at all) and mistyped it. So, for the last time, I filled in the CAPTCHA correctly and got my account, yay!?

YouTube didn’t say which fields are required, so I had to fill the form a second time. Even smallest corporate sites tell you which fields are required in their forms, so why not YouTube? Also it didn’t give the right error messages to help me.

Problem four

So, I finally got my YouTube account. What to do now? Play with my profile details, avatar and then upload my first video right? Let’s try.

I actually liked YouTube’s profile update interfaces. Really well grouped profile fields and marking changed fields feature to remind you are really useful. But if you try to upload an avatar:

You’ll be able to upload a Profile Picture once your account has been active for 48 hours. Please check back then.

What is that? Why is that? Are you afraid of porn avatars YouTube? Or bandwidth issues? Really, please somebody explain it to me. Since I have a Google account over 5 years, why YouTube not trusting me? Or why doesn’t YouTube simply let me to upload my avatar and say me:

Since your account is really fresh, your avatar will be visible to other users in 48 hours.

This would be acceptable. I’ll still wonder why they don’t trust me but I can live with that.

Problem five

Since my camera records in HD, I shot an HD video and wanted to show it HD to my friends. I uploaded it to YouTube, edited its info details and privacy options and started to wait. Because video sites need time to encode your video to their format. After a while, I was able to watch my video, but not in HD.

I didn’t get why it wasn’t in HD. I tried some URL parameters, to show it higher quality but useless. Then I gave up and uploaded my ugly video to Vimeo. Today I checked my YouTube account and I am now able to watch it in HD format. YouTube didn’t give me any information about their encoding process. They just said “we’re encoding it”. I guess, they encode two different versions, one is standard quality and the other one is HD.

YouTube doesn’t send you an email to tell you your video is ready. Vimeo does.

Conclusion

I do respect YouTube and its success. But as you can see, even the biggest companies can make really silly mistakes. You may see the YouTube registration form example in many web pattern galleries or usability blogs. They all say how short and usable it is. Is it really?