How do YouTube response videos work?

September 21, 2021 10:41 AM

Here's a good example, where Thought Slime is responding to a video that someone else made, including actual footage from the video in their own video. First, in terms of copyright, did they have to get that person's permission before doing this? Second, technically, how would someone download or get access to the footage? Is it just like recording your computer screen while the video is playing? (And here's a second example.)
posted by overglow to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

There are loads of YouTube downloader sites, where you just put in the YouTube URL of the video you want to download, and download it. In terms of copyright, the commentary you're talking about is considered Fair Use, but also very vulnerable to the YouTube Copyright Strike.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:50 AM on September 21

YouTube-dl is the best way to download content from YouTube (and many other video sites).
posted by gregr at 12:16 PM on September 21 [3 favorites]

You mean "reaction videos", as in "[insert your name] Reacts"

You can do this a couple ways. On the PC, I'd use OBS to play it in one window while recording my face via Webcam and pipe it to a picture-in-picture in a corner window.

Downloaded version probably works better, but if you have good bandwidth you can do it straight off Youtube as well.

I'd suggest you keep it just to be interesting parts, instead of the WHOLE video, and offer up a lot of talking, like anecdotes, or analysis of specific segments. A pure reaction video is boring where you watch someone else's video is boring.
posted by kschang at 12:38 PM on September 21

If the video responses are educational in nature or for the purposes of criticism, I suspect the Youtubers are intending the clips to fall under Fair Use or fair dealing doctrines. Some “response” formats will have a stronger claim to Fair Use than others. IANAL, obviously.
posted by ceramicspaniel at 2:23 PM on September 21