YouTube, the most visited video sharing site has several nifty tricks that remain mostly unknown because they aren’t highlighted anywhere on the website. But if you are willing to probe around a little, they are easy to discover. That’s why I call these tricks ‘stupid’. In any case, if you do watch videos online on YouTube, you must know them.
Keyboard Shortcuts
As in desktop video players, YouTube too allows you to control playback of videos using keyboard shortcuts. These are:
Play/Pause | Spacebar |
Move forward by 10% | Right arrow key |
Move backward by 10% | Left arrow key |
Skip to 10%, 20%, 30% …. of playback time | Numpad 1,2,3 … 9 |
Move to beginning of video | Home |
Move to end of video | End |
Volume up | Up arrow key |
Volume down | Down arrow key |
Fullscreen | F (doesn't work anymore) |
Exit fullscreen | Esc |
Toggle closed captions | C |
Increase/decrease caption font size | +/- |
Change background of caption | B |
The Options Menu
Right-click on a YouTube video and you will get a menu with a number of useful options (image on left) such as copy video URL, copy video URL at current time, copy HTML embed code and Stop download. The last option allows you to stop the browser from downloading the video when you no longer want to watch it. Remember that pausing a video doesn’t stop the video from getting downloaded – it only pauses playback.
On embedded videos, the option menu appears different (image on right). Some of the actions are missing but you get a new one – watch on YouTube. This action lets you go directly to the video's YouTube page.
Adjust Position of Closed Captions
The closed caption feature allows the video uploader to add subtitles to the video. When a subtitle is available, an icon CC appears on the player toolbar. Clicking on this icon toggles closed captions on and off. Sometimes, captions are available in multiple languages.
There is one trick associated with closed captions which you might not be aware of. You can drag the captions with the mouse and relocate them to any position in the video. Try it out on this video.
Video Statistics
If you click on the small icon besides the video play number, it will reveal details about the video – breakdown of the video’s views by time, demographic information about the videos’ audience and a few more.
Do you know any more YouTube tricks? Share with us.
It worked in the past. Seems like it works no more.
ReplyDeleteit has never worked as long as i have tried.
ReplyDelete