I frequently use YouTube to supplement instruction, learn new processes, or simply to share clips during presentations. Many of the videos are much longer than I have time for or I only want to share a certain part. The following are some easy steps to follow so you can enhance YouTube URLs.
How do I set a set a start time?
With YouTube Time, we discover that using the website to generate a new URL we could set a starting point for a video to start from when clicking play. Using the website makes it quick and easy. Using the skills of copy and paste are all we need to know!
Alternatively, we could simply type the “&” symbol, letter “t”, the “=” symbol and finally our minutes and seconds. The example URL will start like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-tFdreZB94
A modified URL that will start at one minute and 27 second into the video would look like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-tFdreZB94&t=1m27s
The URL as modified simply indicates to a web browser we want to watch the video and start the play time 1:27 into the video.
How do I set a set a start and stop time?
To set a start and stop time in this specific URL that will be copy/pasted into a .ppt slide, we need to modify the URL a bit more. After youtube.com, we need to delete “watch?v=” and replace it with “/v/” followed by the video code. In this example, the video code for the video titled Productivity Future Work from Microsoft for Work is “w-tFdreZB94”.
Following the video code we need to type “&start=”. The next part is to tell the browser how many seconds into the video to start. The browser will not recognize a URL that has both minutes and seconds indicating start and stop times. You have to indicate the times in seconds only. So in my example I will modify the URL by typing “87” so it contains “&start=87”.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=w-tFdreZB94%26start%3D87
Now our next step is to type in the stopping point. To tell the browser where to stop the video playback we need to type “&end=127”.
https://www.youtube.com/v/w-tFdreZB94&start=87&end=127 When you create a URL like my example, the browser will display the online video with a shaded rectangle in the area below it indicating start and stop times. The video play head and the play range will show within brackets.
I want it all with icing on top please!
When using either of the URL formats above, the video will not autoplay. To do that, you need to type “&autoplay=1” at the end of the URL. The final URL will look like this:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=w-tFdreZB94%26start%3D87%26end%3D127%26autoplay%3D1