OK, so not everybody includes Youtube videos within their pages content, or even within their website, BUT! for those of you who do, ever wondered if you could embed a video, and start the video from a particular minute, or even a particular second? Well, now you can.

Using embedded HTML, means you can now customise the property for the players start time, this means, that any video you include, can be started from mid way, the beginning, or even 10 seconds from the end.

So why is this useful?

If your trying to convey a point, open a discussion, or show people something useful, most of the time, you would include a video where the user has to wait to see whats been highlighted. Now, using the embedded Youtube video code, you can tell the player to start at 0:15 seconds in, 2:00 minutes in, or where ever you like, which is great if the videos you include are more then 10 seconds long.

Now, no fear if your no good with HTML, its not that difficult, below we will give you the code, and show you how to work the Youtube timestamp magic.

I find this very useful, when I discuss a topic, and I want to get straight to the point, making a user wait 7 minutes before they get to the point that I was covering, is almost like asking them to give up and move on. Youtube has offered many customisation features over the years, moreso after Google’s acquisition of Youtube.

So, how do we do it you may ask, easy!

When copying a video from Youtube, you will generally use tbe embedded URL option

Once you have copied your Embedded URL, you can add in the attribute for the timestamp.

Ok, so you have your HTML, open up the document where the code is to be inserted, and set the following parameters:

The start attribute allows you to customise the starting timestamp for the video. Remember, the time shown is in seconds, so to work out how far that is, you would do the sum of minutes x 60 seconds, I.e if you wanted a video to start 4 minutes in, you would do 4 x 60 = 240 for 240 seconds.

If you want to do it at a particular second, do the same as above, round the number, then add the uneven number, i.e.

For 4 minutes and 20 seconds you would do 4 x 60 = 240 + 20 = 260.

The variable should appear as:

&start=60    (Replacing 60 with the amount of seconds you wish to jump in the Video)

There you have it, a quick and simple way of really customising your youtube content.

There are loads of other cool video tricks from the embedded HTML, even colouring your youtube player is possible. Thanks to the guys at Google, you really can tailor your websites media, and get the best out of timestamp customisation for Youtube Videos.

Make sure your volume of seconds does not go over the video length, or it wont work.