Google is to add automatic captions to the tens of millions of English-language videos it hosts on YouTube, the web search giant said Friday.

The move will make the videos more accessible to deaf viewers but will also help Google index the content and supply relevant ads alongside it, analysts said.

Google has been experimenting with the automated captions for several months with a handful of high profile partners like the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University and National Geographic. All other captions on YouTube videos were provided by the videos’ producers.

Google has been working on speech recognition technology for some five years, and uses the technology to transcribe audio voice mails through its Google Voice service, and to provide spoken Web searches from smart phones.

However, engineers warned that the technology is far from perfect and that the machine translations are sure to contain mistakes.

“We know it’s not perfect, and sometimes it will be funny,” said Google engineer Ken Harrenstien, who is deaf. “But it’s better than nothing.”

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YouTube shuts down its short-lived video downloads program. Some of you must be wondering, if there even was a ‘video downloads beta-program’

YouTube in February, launched this service which allowed content creators to post both free and paid downloads to YouTube.

YouTube sent emails to the users who were allowed to upload content to this service saying that current downloads will be available, but no new ones can be posted.

David Rodriguez of StuffWeLike.com posted a video explaining the move.

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YouTube has taken its first tentative steps into the movie rental business and confirmed rumors that have been circulating for some time.

Google’s video sharing site, YouTube, is currently sponsoring the Sundance Film Festival. Yesterday, the YouTube team announced that starting tomorrow, titles from Sundance 2010 and Sundance 2009 would be available for rent for U.S. Youtube users.

While there are only five titles on the bill (including “One Too Many Mornings,” “Homewrecker,” and “Children of Invention”), and these are only available for rent through Sunday, January 31, the YouTube team says a small collection of rental videos from other U.S. partners across different industries, including health and education, will be made available in the weeks ahead.

“These are early days and in the coming weeks we’ll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option. Anything that brings more content to the YouTube community is a good thing.”

In addition to all of this, YouTube is putting out the call for more independent filmmakers to join the rental program as part of their “Filmmakers Wanted” campaign at the festival.

It’s not yet clear if this kind of move will eventually spread to include titles from Hollywood studios. Certainly there’s nothing of the sort hinted at in the post but wouldn’t it be nice, eh?

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Web video site YouTube will be profitable for Google Inc in the near future, the Internet search leader said on Thursday.

Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, but has lost money on the site that lets people post and share videos free. Analysts have raised concerns about the huge costs involved in streaming millions of videos with only a tiny swathe of them being supported by advertising. “YouTube is now on a trajectory that we’re very pleased with,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said during an earnings call on Thursday. He added that Google is helping marketers and advertising agencies create “great ads easily” for YouTube. Google executives have recently made bullish remarks on YouTube’s revenue growth. Schmidt told reporters at the Sun Valley technology and media conference this month that new advertising formats, such as pre-roll ads that appear before a Web video program, will draw in more revenue. On Thursday, Google’s head of product management and marketing, Jonathan Rosenberg, said “monetized views” – people viewing videos that are supported by advertising – more than tripled in the past year. “We’re now monetizing billions of views of partner videos every month,” he said. In response to an analyst question, Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said recent efforts to introduce new ad formats and promote videos have helped to establish YouTube’s home page among advertisers as relevant and “desirable for customers.” “We’re really pleased both in terms of (YouTube’s) revenue growth, which is really material to YouTube, and… in the not long, too-long-distant future, we actually see a very profitable and good business for us,” Pichette said.

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