New features and improvements

June 2023

  • You can now add a photo to your profile directly in Switch Tube. Gravatar is no longer used for profile photos.
  • Deleted channels and video can now be restored for up to 40 days. Go to “Recently deleted” under your profile.

April 2023

  • We’re now showing much higher quality thumbnails and a sharper poster frame in the player.

February 2023

  • Support for 4K video. Keep in mind that 4K video will take longer to process.
  • Uploaded videos can now be played while higher-quality is still processing.

December 2022

  • Streaming! 📺 You can now go live with any of your channels. First enable the “Live channel” setting, then select “Live channel” from the top-right menu on the channel page and follow the instructions. Live channels are currently in beta and subject to change.

November 2022

  • The video page and player have been updated to Switch Tube’s new look and feel.
  • You can now more easily customize a share URLs or embed code to start playback at any position, silence audio initially and choose which subtitles to show by default.
  • The player supports additional keyboard shortcuts to more quickly navigate video.
  • The player now has a consistent look and feel across devices, with more easy to use relative scrubbing on mobile devices.
  • Processing video listed on a channel page now updates automatically when processing is done.

Summer 2022

  • We’re busy updating Switch Tube’s look and feel. Pages already updated are faster, more responsive, and better use the available screen space. It’s a big undertaking, so some pages might still use the old look and feel. We’ll get to those as fast as we can!
  • If you’re no longer a collaborator on a channel, you’ll now no longer be able to edit video you added and uploaded to that channel.

February 2022

  • Your profile page now only shows videos you uploaded.
  • A new “Your videos” page shows all videos accessible to you.
  • You can now accept large numbers of e-mail invitations with a single button.

January 2022

  • Better search with more relevant results! 🔎
  • You can now exclude a word by putting an exclamation mark in front of it. For example, search for “strings !cello” to leave out cellos.
  • Search results can now be ordered on publication date with the most recent instead of the most relevant results on top.
  • You can now also search for the name of a video publisher or channel owner.
  • Search from the top-right menu is now global by default. You can still toggle to searching within your organization only when you’re signed in, or you can go to an organization page and search from there.

November 2021

  • You can now replace existing video or audio without changing its link, title, or other details using “Upload new video or audio” from the “Edit details” sidebar.

September 2021

  • Uploaded video files can now be up to 10 GB in size.
  • Streamed Switch Cast lecture broadcasts now offer controls to skip 30 seconds back and forward, to restart playback from the beginning, and to skip back to live.

July 2021

  • A chart showing views per day is now linked to from the sidebar of every video page.
  • As a collaborator you can now easily leave a channel by yourself when you no longer want to view, upload to, or manage it. You don’t have to ask the channel owner to remove you anymore.

June 2021

February 2021

  • Podcasts! 🎙 You can now make any of your channels available as a podcast feed. Listeners can subscribe to this feed directly, or you can use it to submit your channel to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other podcast directories.
  • Audio files can now also be uploaded; there’s no longer a need to convert audio-only content to video first.
  • The player now supports audio-only media.
  • From now on, uploaded video files will also be converted to audio-only for use in the podcast feed.

January 2021

  • The homepage now plays a highlights reel featuring clips from open video licensed for use and remix under a Creative Commons license by members of the Switch Tube community. Happy New Year!

November 2020

  • Playback speed can now be set in ¼ increments between ½× and 2× normal speed.
  • The player now includes a control to enable Picture in Picture when you use Safari on iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
  • You can now add a new channel with the same settings, options, permissions, and collaborators as one of your existing channels. This can save a lot of time if you regularly need to set up channels with the same details, or to share video and collaborate with the same groups of people.

September 2020

  • Video processing is faster with improved image quality. Still frames are now delivered separately, so you can choose a poster frame without having to wait. This is especially nice for longer videos, which can take a while to process.
  • Switch Cast lecture series can now be browsed and watched separately from video added to Switch Tube channels. New lectures from Switch Cast are available immediately and can now also be streamed live.

April 2020

  • You can now choose between English and German for the language you see in navigation, on buttons, and for other text that’s part of Switch Tube.

February 2020

  • The player now adjusts its size to better accommodate the aspect ratio of the video it’s playing. This makes video using a widescreen cinema aspect ration look nicer and it allows portrait orientation video to take up more vertical space when available.
  • You can now delete thumbnail images you uploaded previously.
  • Formatting in subtitles is now done using HTML markup.

December 2019

  • You can now resend a collaborator invitation email.
  • There’s now an invitation URL available you can share with the person you invited.

These features should help you resolve issues where invitation email doesn’t arrive. Click “invitation pending…” in the list of channel collaborators on the “Manage channel permissions” page to get started.

September 2019

  • Playback can now be slowed down to ½× and sped up to 1½× or 2× normal speed.
  • Clicking anywhere on the video now toggles playback.
  • The playback bar now uses the full width of the player, making it easier to scrub through video.
  • The total duration is now always shown in the player.
  • When embedded, the title shown before playback has started is now easier to read, especially when the embed is small.
  • You can now select which subtitles or closed caption you want to be displayed by default.

July 2019

  • Video abstracts and channel descriptions can now be added and changed using a rich text editor. There’s no longer a need to use codes for bold, italic, links, or any other formatting.
  • You can now upload your own thumbnail images to use with your video.

November 2018

  • Comments! 🎉 Authenticated users can now comment on all video in a channel when the “Comments” channel setting has been enabled.
  • You can now easily get a link to a specific playback position in a video using the “Share” button below the player.
  • A new “External playback” channel setting allows video to be loaded in external players.

May 2018

  • The video license options have been updated to Creative Commons 4.0 International. The 4.0 licenses are applicable to most jurisdictions and no longer require national ports.

If you’re using earlier version Creative Commons licenses for your video, it’s recommended to update to the equivalent 4.0 version on the “Edit video” page.

January 2018

  • The channel and video history has been redesigned. The channel history overview now also lists all the changes made to its videos, making it easier to find out what has happened in your channels.
  • You can now see more details when something was changed, including the old and new values of the channel title, settings, and permissions, and the video title, episode, license, and publication status.
  • History entries are now also created when channel collaborators are added, invited, or removed, when video is moved or copied, when documents are added or removed, when channel ownership is transferred, and when subtitles are added, edited, imported, published, and removed.

Please note that past channel and video history entries from before this change might contain less detailed information.

August 2017

  • You can now add subtitles and closed captions to your videos. These can be imported from SubRip and WebVTT format subtitle files, or added using the built-in subtitle editor.
  • Channels can now be marked as “Open Channel”. These Open Channels contain teaching, learning, and research videos that can be freely used and re-purposed.
  • The general ”Home” page now contains a link to an overview page of Open Channels in the top navigation.
  • On the “Search” page, you can now toggle between searching within your organization only or searching across all organizations.

An Open Channel is an easy way to make your videos publicly available. Create an Open Channel, or change your existing channel into an Open Channel to promote your content as a valuable educational resource that can be used and shared freely.

  • The channel page of a channel with the “anyone with the link to the video” view permission is no longer publicly available. Videos in channels with this view permission are still public, but no longer show the title of their channel.

March 2017

  • The player now shows its own video controls when you go fullscreen.
  • You can now hold the “Shift” button while scrubbing using the “Left” and “Right” cursor keys on your keyboard to step forward and backward in steps of 1/30th of a second.
  • Scrubbing using the “Left” and “Right” cursor keys on your keyboard now uses smaller steps when the video is short. Videos longer than 150 seconds still use steps that are 15 seconds long.
  • During playback, the player now starts out showing time played instead of time remaining. You can still toggle between time played and time remaining by clicking the time display.
  • The player now includes a control to enable Apple AirPlay when it is available.

February 2017

  • The view permission for new channels now defaults to “Authenticated users within your organization only”.
  • You’re now warned before the upload starts when you try to add a video that’s larger than the maximum file size supported.