YouTube Will Let Creators Edit Start And End Times For Copyright Claim Timestamps

Video editing updates are coming to YouTube Studio.

In the latest Creator Insider video, Team YouTube member Abhinav revealed that soon, all creators will get access to an updated version of the copyright timestamps tool introduced last year.

For those unfamiliar, YouTube’s copyright claiming system used to inform a creator when a claim had been filed on one of their videos, but didn’t tell them exactly what part of the video supposedly contained copyrighted content. This made it difficult for creators to identify and remove said content from their videos, and resulted in a number of creators simply pulling claimed videos down permanently rather than trying to comb through and edit them for reupload.

YouTube’s timestamp tool made the process much easier. It requires anyone filing a copyright claim on a video to provide the creator with exact timestamps indicating where they think their content is used. Then, on the creator side, YouTube added an onsite editing feature letting creators auto-delete portions of their videos timestamped by copyright claimants.

But there was a slick sticking point with the timestamps: creators were completely unable to change them. So, if a claimant highlighted the wrong portion of a video, or too much of a video, or their timestamp didn’t capture the entire duration of copyrighted content, the creator couldn’t use the one-click editing tool to fix it.

That’s now changing. YouTube’s new tweak will let creators manually adjust the start and end points of copyright timestamps. Once an area is selected, creators can choose to mute all audio in the section, or just the music (though this latter option is still in beta).

Abhinav said 100% of creators should see this change within the next week.

Another unveiled update is coming to YouTube’s blur editor. The tool lets creators auto-identify and blur faces, plus offers custom fuzz boxes that can be sized and placed over objects like license plates and signs. Currently, creators can ask the tool to track the blurred object and blur it for the entire upload.

With the update, they’ll be able to set exact timestamps for each blurred object, and will be able to modify the position and size of the blur as needed throughout the video. Additionally, YouTube is adding custom oval-shaped blur sections to complement the already-available boxes.

It’s not clear when that update will roll out to creators.