1. Open any youtube video and play it in the browser.
2. Edit the youtube.com video URL to you---tube.com (adding three hyphens between "you" and "tube" in the address bar)
3. Enter and Done, Share the URL with others for them to join or live-stream your co-watching stream.
(private and visible only to people with the URL you share)
Example: Modify https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX2qFMC8cFo to https://www.you---tube.com/watch?v=eX2qFMC8cFo and press enter in the address bar.
Voila!
Thank you for taking time to check this out. Points raised by you are valid. We are trying to give this as a quick solution for people who don't want to install an app or a browser plugin.
Alternatively,
https://volcano.live/embed/home is the page where you can insert links to start the Volcano co-watch for Youtube, Twitch & Vimeo videos.
https://vlca.no/chrome is the chrome plugin where you can do all the above just with click.
Thank you so much for your valuable feedback and kind words.
This is aimed at the users who don't want to install a browser plugin. We have a Chrome plugin (https://vlca.no/chrome) and page at Volcano (https://volcano.live/embed/home) where users can paste the video URL and get the co-watch URLs too.
Please feel free to check out and share your feedback.
Thank you, once again. :)
I’m Jithin Raj, co-founder of Volcano together with Sajith Amma (https://vlca.no). We are building a platform for anyone to go live with drop-in video chats by enabling Youtube, Twitch, & Vimeo co-watch features on top of it.
The product is currently WIP. This Youtube hack became popular in our circles and thought of sharing it with the HN community for feedback. This works better on the web and is not fine-tuned for mobile.
We're excited to hear any thoughts, insights, questions, encouragement, and concerns in the comments below! Sajith and I will be monitoring the thread to answer any questions.
Also, feel free to reach out to us by email at founders@volcano.social
Cheers!
My mom loves Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. I've been looking for a "watch party" solution. Of any kind. And reruns are fine (dementia, she won't notice).
I just tried Volcano. Hot damn I love funny cat shorts. I'd definitely watch Daily Dose of Internet type content with my mom.
Sorry, but I don't get it. It seems like I'm watching by myself? Because video started at beginning. And there's no indication that others are watching too?
Also, I need a way to share links with my mom. Sorry, I haven't really thought thru what I'm asking for.
My mom is no longer teachable. She currently has an iPhone. I'd buy and setup whatever stack she needs for "watch party" to work with her TV. Both Apple TV and Chromecast have an app ecosystem, right?
Sorry again, I don't know anything about this stuff. But I really want ad hoc "watch party" features. Cute YouTube videos would be awesome. Live (or recorded live, a la Tivo) content would be amazing. Even a multiuser TikTok client could be cool. (Which might entice my nieces and nephews to join in.)
Please (re)post any and all updates to your product.
Thanks.
Thank you so much for trying it out and your kind words.
Super happy to know that you could relate to the product and use it with your mom. There's some god news for you, we are looking at some basic games also to be included as an activity probably to collaborate/hang out with your friends and family.
hahaha. Cat videos are low risk videos to put for demo vids on internet, hence the link :P
Co-Watch indicators:
For participants: Need to click on Go-live button and allow mic & cam permissions to initiate the video hangout on top of the video you are co-watching with.
For viewers/audience: The live view count indicates the number of people currently watching the stream without participating / clicking on Go-live' button but is there to just listen to you guys or watch the video. (the live count indicator needs some work though)
Please note: When we say audience, the link is always only available with you and only the people whom you share this link with can join the chat or watch it.
As of now you may just copy paste the the Volcano URL and share it with mom using your regular medium of chat with here like iMessage/whatsapp/email.
This is great feedback. We are working on a mobile solution and will be available on iOS & Android soon along with Apple TV & Chromecast features. Please say hi at founders@volcano.social and we will make sure that you will be in the first list of users when we release it.
Awesome! The same can be used for most Youtube, Twitch & Vimeo videos too. To easily to do it, you may use our Chrome plugin (https://vlca.no/chrome) or the page (https://volcano.live/embed/home) where you create co-watching links by pasting the original video URL.
Point noted, let us look into the Tiktok options here and get back to you.
Once again, thank you for your valuable feedback. :)
Cheers!
This is going to be fun!
What happens if I am watching a video with my family using this URL. And someone across the world is also watching the same video with his/her family using the same technique. Now we have two families sharing the same video, isn't it?
Regardless of how many different sets of people are watching the same youtube video, it would still be a private screen where only people with your family's unique co-watching URL can join or watch it.
That way the co-watching experience remains private. It will be a separate private screen for your family and theirs.
Thank you for bringing this up and letting me answer this for others too :)
Thanks for trying it out.
All co-watch URLs are unique and is with only with the host (the one who initiates the co-watch) in the beginning.
If you share the URL with your friends, they will be able to join irrespective of how late they are into the party.
Thanks for trying it out. Whole of this is just the Youtube loaded in an iframe. Video chat is implemented via browser WebRTC. The requests you mentioned would be almost equivalent to what you would notice while watching a youtube embed.
No idea what made you think think that it is not private. Would be of great help if you can raise the concerns here for us to fix if there's any. Happy to chat.
Sad to hear that. It's quite possible that some service providers may be blocking the domain as they would do to most domains which are close/similar to any popular website.
Thank you for attempting. :)
Is there anything that we can do to avoid this? Happy to chat and figure out a solution.
That's very kind of you. We have raised a remove request with Quad9 for the domain. Will keep posted here.
CC @villified
Please feel free to share any feedback you may have here or write to us at founders@volcano.social
Glad that you liked. Thank you so much for trying it out. :)
That's right, resource utilization is generally once the WebRTC connections are initiated as you click on "Go Live". We will work on it in the upcoming releases.
Feel free to send a hi to founders@volcano.social and we will keep you posted as we make progress.
https://www.you---tube.com/watch?v=oLeNW7b_2E0
Thank you for trying out. Yes, I'm live on the URL you shared above to chat, if you are still around. :)
Also, do feel free to check out https://vlca.no/chrome if you want to skip the above steps and save some keystrokes while creating your co-watch URL.
Maybe I am missing it, but I didn't see that info when trying it out.
Thank you for trying it out. The title of the video is loaded at the beginning of the video and disappears as you continue to watch. It appears back whenever you pause the video.
Is the title needed always on top of the video somewhere with minimal intrusion?
I'm live on this URL now: https://volcano.live/youtube/eX2qFMC8cFo/32968583.
Would love to chat and take feedback. :)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It's sad to hear that. :(
We wrote here the reasons behind the name Volcano: https://volcano.live/blog/volcano-begins/
Looking forward to make you happy with the product in future if not with the name. :)
It isn't. Curious what made you think so!
We are just a tiny team of product enthusiasts. Please feel free to share your concerns here and we will be happy to address it.