How to create a link to a set time point in a YouTube video

This can be a funny thing to try to name and explain but I think the phrase YouTube time link just about sums it up. Let’s say you’ve just found a YouTube you want to share with your friend, but it’s really long and you don’t care about the first half! Did you know you can create a link that will start the video from the exact point on the timeline that you specify?

It’s actually pretty easy. Just get the YouTube embed link (either from your browser’s address bar or the embed options in YouTube) then, just after the URL add #t= followed by a number and then m (for minute) and then another number followed by s (for second). All together, here are the steps and an example:

  1. Get YouTube URL like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSYadh2xmcI
  2. At the ed of the URL put #t=
  3. Type the minute number followed by m
  4. Type the second number followed by s
  5. So, to get to the part of this video at 2 minutes and 23 seconds in for this video you’d make this URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSYadh2xmcI#t=2m23s

So there you go, save your friends some time and link directly to the parts of YouTube videos that are important. It’s not so hard, just remember this format or come back for a reminder.

Note, this timestamp linking technique also works with the new YouTube “short URL’s” like this one http://youtu.be/vSYadh2xmcI so again, you would add the time and the end product would be http://youtu.be/vSYadh2xmcI#t=2m23s

You can also edit the embed code of YouTube videos to have them start playing at a set time in the video. To get this to work you add a completely different command to the URL’s in the embed code. You also have to convert the time into seconds. So, instead of using #t= you use &start= and then you just put the number of seconds in. Using the same example from above we convert two minutes into seconds (one minute is 60 seconds so that’s 120) then we add the seconds so that’s 120+23=143 and this works with all video embed types including object and the new iframe beta version. The sample code is pasted just below with the added code bolded:

<iframe title=”YouTube video player” type=”text/html” width=”578″ height=”463″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/vSYadh2xmcI?rel=0&start=143” frameborder=”0″></iframe>

This entry was posted on Friday, December 3rd, 2010 at 9:37 am.