Underviewed: Searching YouTube Using Default Video File Names

I am incredibly excited to announce my latest project: Underviewed.com. Here’s the premise:

Most every camera or mobile device uses some kind of default naming convention (iPhone: IMG_1234.MOV, GoPro: GOPR1234.MP4). This site searches YouTube for those default file names, and serves up videos that have a low number of views. Because these videos still retain their default file names as titles, it’s unlikely that they’ve shown up in any searches. And it’s very likely these videos haven’t been seen by all that many people.

With the volume of videos available on YouTube, this project felt like a nice way to search out the lesser seen, the videos at the other end of the “viral video” spectrum.

I built this site as a way to learn Bootstrap and Angular, and also as a way to mess around more with the YouTube API. I’ve been utilizing the command line more lately as well, and have also added Gulp to my workflow.

We’re using Angular at work, and as it wasn’t something I was familiar with… a side project seemed like a great candidate to get some practice. Really had fun learning and building this project, and getting familiar with other frameworks/tools that I hadn’t had a chance to work with before.

Still have some bugs to address. It’s not quite right on mobile, and I have to deal with a layout issue when YouTube can’t find a video’s thumbnail image. Also – I’m starting to see some repeat videos, which is kind of hard to believe given the range of searches I’m making. Not sure if this is due to me needing more file names… or if I’m just viewing a craptop of iamges, as I’m debugging/testing. Maybe one thing to check out is default file names from actual video records.

At several points during the development of this site, I lost a lot of time just using the site and browsing through videos. Which I guess is a good sign. I hope you enjoy looking around, as I know I certainly have.

I hope you like the site, and I hope you find something fun.

Related:
In Bb 2.0: Collaborative Music Project with YouTube Videos in Same Key
Thru-You: Fantastic Collection of YouTube Music Video Mashups by Kutiman