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Arumugam and A Gopinath

Arumugam : An Indian YouTuber in his Sixties, Influencing Viewers with his Unique Cooking

YouTube has been a blessing for the content creators, and for those, who had never thought that they would face the camera. Now, millions of people are seeing and liking them. In the past five years, YouTube has changed the lives of millions of content creators from different fields, including music, dance, acting makeup, fashion, travelling as well as cooking. One such content creator and one of the most viewed YouTuber is Arumugam. Though the channel is created by his son, A Gopinath, the protagonist of the channel is Arumugam.

A Gopinath is a native of Tiruppur, a small town near Coimbatore in western Tamil Nadu. He earned a diploma in electronics and communication at the age of 20 and started working at a local cable service provider. He then moved to Chennai and began to work for a nameologist, where he edited and uploaded videos on YouTube for the company. After a few months, he left the job at the nameologist and joined the Tamil film industry. He worked as an assistant director in a few small-budget Tamil films, but none of his films got to see the face of daylight. After struggling in the field of film-making for over four years, he returned back to his village in 2016.

Gopinath’s father Arumugam, a building painter, most of the time used to cook food for his family as his wife worked as a full-time tailor in a garment factory. Gopinath had already seen many cookery videos on YouTube. So, looking at his father cooking, the 27-years old Gopinath decided to film his father and put his video on YouTube. For that, he created a channel named ‘Village Food Factory’.

Arumugam and A Gopinath
Image Source: theweekendleader.com

Gopinath made videos of his father cooking food and edited it accordingly. The videos went viral in no time, and people started liking the content. The uniqueness of the content grabbed the attention of most of the people, as Arumugam did not cook the food in a fancy kitchen with ultra-modern tools, but in an open place in the farms and jungle, that too with limited resources.

Arumugam sets up a traditional homely earthen stove and big wide utensils to cook the food. The channel received huge appreciation from its audience. In fact, by November 2016, the duo uploaded over 42 videos on the channel that gained over 66000 subscribers for the channel. In a span of four-five months, the channel had also gained over 30 million views and earned over 2.5 lakh rupees.

According to Arumugam, he received an 8000 rupees cheque the very first time as the earning from his videos, followed by a 45000 rupees cheque in the next month, and the number continued to increase.

To make the videos look better every single time, the father-son duo keeps changing the locations and try to add new-unique elements to it. Arumugam’s wife and his younger son also help him with his videos.

The family is entirely focussed on the channel, where Gopinath’s wife and mother do the pre-cooking preparation, Gopinath films the video and edits it, whereas his father and brother cook in the video. There is minimal talk in the video, but the detailed cooking helps the audience to see the whole process properly. The channel has helped the father-son duo reach even the international audience. According to Gopinath, one day a white man recognised his father in a flight and praised his work.

Gopinath intends to make this channel his full-time job and has already covered over 25% of south Indian dishes in the videos. Currently, the father-son are posting one video a week. The future plans of the two include establishing a restaurant in their native place.

YouTube has become the biggest source of income for many content creators. The idea like Village Food Factory is getting popular among people for its rawness and authenticity. Village Food Factory is among the top ten food channels in India, and currently, has over 250 videos and 3 million subscribers.

Canon Powershot G7 X Mark III and G5 X Mark II

Canon to Launch an Updated PowerShot G7X Mark III with Support for YouTube Live Stream

YouTube has generated a lot of opportunities for the content creators, and the one thing that has become popular with the emergence of YouTube is Vlogging. Many of the tech companies are now focussing on building tools for those vloggers, among which one company is Cannon. Canon has just announced the new joinees for its vlogger camera PowerShot G7 X line, the G7 X III and a redesigned Canon PowerShot G5X Mark II, equipped with even more useful features than their predecessors.

Canon Powershot G7 X Mark III and G5 X Mark II
Image Source: petapixel.com

Both the cameras are the look-alike of the previously launched cameras of the same series and have been built to target specifically the YouTubers and the bloggers. The G7 X III is boasting the new Stack technology and having the support for uncropped 4K video recording at 30 frames a second as well 1080p video recording 120 frames a second. The feature that will attract most of the YouTubers, is the live YouTube video streaming. Yes, the G7 X III when connected to wifi, allows the users to stream live on YouTube. The camera also renders the support for an external mic, such that the users can record the live audio in the best quality.

The users can also schedule their live stream and record it, as to edit and upload it later to any of the social media platforms. The camera is perfect for recording vertical and Instagram videos. The camera also boasts support for mobile-friendly portrait video.

On the other hand, the G5X Mark II is a revamped premium version of PowerShot G5X, which is a compact-lightweight camera. The centre mounted EVF has been removed from the camera, instead, it has got the pop-up EVF and the pop-up flash now appears over its top deck. The camera now has got a new panoramic shooting mode, and a longer 24-120mm 5x optical zoom lens. Since G5X Mark II is more focused on photography, it does not have a pre-installed YouTube app for live streaming like G7 X III.

Both the cameras are backed by Canon’s DIGIC 8 image processors and feature 20-megapixel 1-inch stacked CMOS sensors. According to the company, the G7 X III will be available in two colour variants, i.e. black and silver, whereas the G5 X Mark II will only be available in black. The cost set for G7 X III is $899, while the G5 X Mark II will cost $749. Both cameras will be in stores in early August.

Tesla to Bring Support For YouTube Along Next Update to its In-car Software

Tesla
Image Source: autoblog.com

Tesla has always brought something different for its users. This time, the company reported that it will be bringing YouTube to the central screen of its Tesla cars, soon. The company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, during a Q&A session held at the E3 event in Los Angeles, revealed that the company has been working towards hosting video streaming on the central infotainment screen of the Tesla cars since past one year, and YouTube will be the first video streaming service coming to it.

Last August, Musk responded to a Twitter request about bringing video streaming to the Tesla cars’. In the tweet, Musk had indicated that the streaming service will come along with the ‘Version 10” of its in-car software. Currently, Tesla cars are running the ‘Version 9’ of the software on its infotainment screen. At that time, Musk did not give any names on which streaming service it would be, but during the Q&A, Musk clearly mentioned YouTube as one of the video services for the central screens of the Tesla cars.

The company has already offered games and has been hosting “Easter eggs” on the central screen of the cars, and this will be the first time that any of the automobile company will stream YouTube over its cars’ infotainment screens.

Along with YouTube, Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter will be joining Cuphead, Missile Command, Asteroids, Lunar Lander, and Centipede as one of the games to be played on the big central screen of Tesla cars.

Though people are questioning the need of videos and games on the screen of a car, the company has clarified that the owner or the passengers of the car will only be able to see the videos or play the games while the car is parked. In most of the cases, people only sit inside a car when they are charging it at the Supercharger stations. This way, now the passengers and the drivers will enjoy their time through YouTube and video games, at the charging station while waiting for their cars to get fully charged.

YouTube Working Towards Bringing Transparency to the News Section for its Indian Users

For the past two years, the internet has become more accessible for the Indians, due to high connectivity and low-cost plans. This has led to increased screen time for Indian smartphone users. According to a report from YouTube, the Indian users have become more active on this video streaming platform, tripling the number of users in the past two years, especially on the news channels.

youtube news
Image Source: business-standard.com

Keeping this in mind, YouTube is now focusing on the news section on the platform and is working towards promoting authoritative news and bringing transparency for the users on YouTube. The company is launching three new features in support for the sources that provide authoritative news and to provide transparency to its viewers, i.e. Top News, Breaking News, and Fact-Checker labels.

As the name suggests, Top News feature will display a shelf of news on the platform, where the latest and important news from the trustworthy news sources will flash frequently. The Breaking News again will show the breaking news from reliable sources, and the news will reflect directly on the homepage of YouTube. And, the Fact-Checker Labels, will help the users with the context and sources from where the news has been produced.

The company has also introduced the information panel for its users, such that the users can easily look for the context fo a specific content, event or even a publisher and make their own decision, i.e. to believe or not to believe on that very content.

The information panel, as well as the fact checker, will include the information both in Hindi and English languages, and along with India, those features have been launched in thirty other countries too. The fact-checker works on the open source Schema.org ClaimReview markup process.

The information panel will also label the government-funded news channels on the platform with “funded in whole or in part” as well as “public broadcast service”, such that the users will be able to judge the authenticity of the news sources. The information panel will also include a link to Wikipedia or other authorised informational sources of the news channel.

YouTube has mentioned making an investment worth $25 million for the news section on its platform and will work towards building a better online presence for the news channels.

YouTube Launches its Music Streaming Services for its Indian Users

It has been less three weeks since Spotify has entered the Indian music streaming market. And now, Google has also just entered the same market after it launched its new music streaming service, the YouTube Music, along with YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium.

Youtube-Music
Image Source: techaeris.com

The YouTube Music will be a free but ad-supported music service for the Indian users, whereas the YouTube Music Premium will be a paid service like YouTube Premium. YouTube Music Premium will cost Rs 99, and the YouTube Premium will cost Rs.129, a month per user, offering an ad-free experience to its users. Through the premium service, the users will have access to features like background play, and millions of tracks and videos, which also will be available for offline downloads. The YouTube Premium subscribers will also get access to YouTube Originals, and YouTube Music Premium.

YouTube is already hosting over 245 million monthly active users, and the number is constantly increasing every day. It has been an effective platform for different types of content creators, especially for the musicians.

“India is where the multi-lingual music scene thrives. It’s interesting to note how Indian artists have consistently claimed top spots over the last few months in the Global YouTube Top Artists chart. With YouTube Music, we are hoping to bring the best in global and Indian music to millions of fans across India, and give them an immersive music experience, with the magic of music on YouTube.” said Lyor Cohen, Global Head of Music, YouTube.

Google is already active in the music streaming service with Google Play Music. For now, the subscribers registered with the Google Play Music service will also be able to access their purchased music and uploads through their YouTube Music service.

The Indian music streaming market is already dominated by the streaming services like Amazon Music, Apple Music, JioSaavn, and Gaana, etc., and in this tough competition, to lure new customers, Google is offering a special introductory offer of 3 months free subscription for YouTube Music Premium to be redeemed by March 31, 2020. But the offer is valid only for the people who are not registered to the YouTube Premium or Google Play Music. Also for the Samsung Galaxy S10 users, Google is offering the same free subscription for a period of four months.