For those of you who are tired of waiting for new Nico vids to appear on YouTube, or are simply Japanese-impaired, here’s a little guide on using Nico Nico Video.

[Edit] I realize Nicox2 has now upgraded to version 2. I’m not sure if any of the register procedures have changed, but the video options are generally the same (and have more English!)

[Edit 2] Now that SP1 has released, there probably will be more options out there. I may need to do a second article for those options later on.

Signing Up

As you might have noticed, if you’ve ever tried to watch a video someone has linked you from Nicox2, you can’t actually watch it since you need to sign up. It’s not that hard to sign up really, there’s very little information you need to supply. First of all, you have to go to the right page, so on the home page there’s a banner link like the one shown above. The other banner (blue) is for premium, but who ever signs up for premium? Alright, the form goes as follows:

1) メールアドレス - “Mail address”. They really mean your email.
2) ニックネーム - “Username”. 2-16 characters, alphanumeric.
3) 性別 - Gender. Male (男性) or female (女性)
4) 生年月日 - Birthdate. Year/Month/Day
5) お住まいの都道府県 - District. Since you’re reading this, you probably don’t live in Japan, so choose the etc. option [その他(海外など)].
6) パスワード - “Password”. 8-16 characters alphanumeric. 2nd box is for password confirmation.
7) 秘密の質問・答え - Secret question (to change pw if you forget it.) The question (質問) can be 4-64 characters, answer (答え) can be 1-16 characters.
8) 会員タイプ - Member type. Choose the second choice (free membership)

Click 登録確認画面へ to go to the next page. Confirm everything you typed is how you want it to be and type the image code below. Then click 利用規約に同意し登録 to submit.

If it doesn’t go through and there is a “ご入力いただいた認証コードが正しい内容ではありません。” message in red at the top, make sure you’ve typed the code correctly, or go back to make sure things are correct.

When you’ve corrected everything, it will bring you to a page where it says 登録していただいたメールアドレス宛に 登録完了手続きのお願い を送信しました。 This means that the process has been submitted. Now, go to your email and you will probably see a confirmation email. Click the link provided and your account will be activated. Now you can return to the home page. and sign-in if needed.

If you ever want to log out, just click the link that says ログアウト.

Video Player Options

When watching a video on Nicox2, you may notice text that fly across the screen. These are comments viewers post at certain times in the duration of the video (the log of the comments is visible on the right side of the player). You can make a comment in the box below. PROTIP: The link that says コマント on the left let’s you choose a style if you don’t want it to be plain (default is white scrolling text, usually at the top).

There are two check boxes below the list of comments. The first one puts the video on repeat and the second one removes scrolling comments from the screen. With v2, it just says “Comment” and “Repeat” in English, so no need for explanation.

Near the top right corner of the player, there’s two boxes for linking the video. The first one is an iframe code for embedding on your blog or site. The second is a regular HTML link code. The two other buttons are only for if you have a mixi account or an Ameba blog account.

Searching

When searching, you’ll obviously have to type the name in Japanese if it’s not supposed to be in English. If worse comes to worse, just copy & paste.
The drop down list modes are as follows:
投稿日時が新しい - Newest videos; this is default
投稿日時が古い - Oldest videos
再生が多い - Most viewed
再生が少ない - Least viewed
コメントが新しい - Newest comment
コメントが古い - Oldest comment
コメントが多い - Most commented
コメントが少ない - Least commented

That’s pretty much all you’ll want to know about using Nicox2. There are other things you can do, like upload videos, post on nico blogs, sign up for premium or edit your profile, but most gaijin like you and I don’t really need/want to do that. If there is a demand for one, I might do a part II.

Hope this helped somewhat. Happy Nico-ing.