Say what you don’t say, but YouTube, which is constantly polished and polished, has its drawbacks. Some people think that he is slowly loading videos, others complain that ads are constantly appearing, and others do not like playlists. As in any other business, there is always someone who will be constantly dissatisfied. To prevent this from happening, the development team is trying to release something new. This time, such a new feature is the ability to rewind videos, which will make viewing them even more convenient. At the same time, not only those who use devices on Android will be able to try the update, but also those who have chosen to view iOS and even the browser.
YouTube rewind has become more convenient.
If you've ever had to flip through a long YouTube video to get to a 'good' place, you'll appreciate the new feature that YouTube has prepared. Now you can view not only the full video, but also chapters from it. This feature uses timestamps that creators apply to their videos, allowing viewers to easily jump to a specific portion of a video or view a portion of a video.
The function of chapters, which was called “Video Chapters”, was tested by the service back in April, but now it is available to all users of mobile devices and browsers.
In order for you to be able to navigate the tags, content authors must prepare everything. To do this, they will need to add chapter information to the video description.
The first mark must necessarily coincide at the beginning of the video and be at the time stamp 0:00. The name of this piece of video should be separated by a space from time to time. Then one more mark is put on an arbitrary fragment indicating what is in this place, and so on. When you finish adding chapters, you will save your changes and the video chapters will be listed as you watch the video.
This is how a quick jump to fragments looks like.
Here is an example of how chapters work
There is only one limitation that must be met in order for this feature to work properly. Videos must have at least three timestamps of 10 seconds or more each. This will make them appear normally in the video description before the “more” button.
To make it easier to navigate through chapters of videos, YouTube has built-in tactile feedback on mobile devices, so users will feel the vibration informing them that they are moving into a new chapter. On platforms where tactile feedback is not available, you can simply see a thickening of the timeline and a slight sticking of the slider to its joints. That is, the chapters will be clearly visible. The chapter you're inside will be highlighted on mobile devices as well.
When I tried this service opportunity, I really liked it. This is also the case for YouTube, who said the feature received a lot of positive feedback during testing. However, apparently, the final version is slightly different from what was initially tested.
One of the changes is the ability to adapt the number of chapters displayed on screens of different sizes. This is done for the convenience of users who watch videos either in different orientations, or on different platforms. Even if there are many chapters in the video, everyone should be comfortable.
The chapters are clearly visible.
Despite all the convenience of the function, not all users will be able to use it yet. This is due to the fact that not all authors know how to use it yet, and not everyone has managed to adapt their videos, because this does not happen automatically. Over time, more and more videos with support for this function will appear. Therefore, if you are engaged in content production, pay attention to this and use it in your videos. Most likely, Google will even change the algorithm for evaluating the quality of videos. It used to be considered a good indicator if the video was watched to the end. This meant that the content was good and could be served in recommendations. Now, with such hints, videos will often be watched to the end, but skipping the beginning. Although, YouTube assures that the use of this feature will not affect the recommendations.
The new feature is positioning YouTube as the best resource for long content, as video navigation becomes more convenient. This feature can even boost users' interest in some videos. They won't be frustrated by having to scroll through parts they don't want to watch and poke at random places in the hope that it will be more interesting there. As a result, fewer viewers will simply leave. On the other hand, it can reduce the overall viewing time, as viewers only watch specific sections of the video instead of the entire video.
It's always nice to get new opportunities for familiar products. Especially considering that it doesn't affect old features. The convenience of this function can be compared to trying to find something in a thick book without a table of contents. It's somehow easier with him.