Watch youtube twice as fast!
Long time no see! I would like start this post by saying thank you to all of the people who had read my posts and decided to subscribed to my Medium profile or follow me on twitter. The thought that people have found my writing good enough to want to know when I publish something new really humbles me. So yeah… I just wanted to thank to all of those people who decided to follow me. Thank you.
I love the internet.
I mean, whats not to love about it. Funny cat videos, the ability to communicate with people all over the world in a matter of seconds, information of the minute to minute happenings of the world via platforms like twitter… There is an amazing amount of things that we can do on the internet. However, if I were to choose one and only one thing that I love most from the internet, I guess that would be the opportunity it gives virtually anyone the ability to be come a more educated, self-informed observer of life.
I always loved how you can learn to do even the most random things by just opening google and typing some key words. What to learn to edit video? Just take a look at some tutorials on Youtube and you’re good go. Want to learn more about how economics work? Go to khan academy or any other education platform on the internet and start learning. Have a burning desire to learn to open beer bottles using a lighter or another bottle? Yep, theres a site for that. Want to learn how to do brain surgery? Yeah… You should probably go to college for at the very least 8 years to do that one (for the love of god pelase don’t try that at home!), but I think you get what I mean.
As I am approaching the end of my first semester in college I have found myself using the internet for learning purposes more than ever.
I am currently studying a career on computer science, which, since it is a type of engineering, implies a lot of –drum rolls, please– math.
Luckily, the teachers at my university know how the internet is full with useful examples and other resources that can make the process of learning thing like calculus, linear algebra, algorithmic thinking a lot easier. So some times I have assignments that involve watching lecture for the MIT or other big name universities.
There is, however, the inconvenience that some of the videos that I have/want to watch (e.g.. lectures) are incredibly long. And by long, I mean really long… I am talking about videos one hour and a half long.
I’m not a big fan of wasting time so I noticed that most of my day was being used watching unimportant part of video lectures of subjects like calculus or computer science in which the teacher is simply over-explaing a concept that I either knew or I wasn’t that interested in. Long story short since I just couldn’t skip part of the videos because I could miss something important so I need a better way to watch those videos faster.
I knew that on the iTunes U platform, you could watch videos on fast-forward and be done with half-an-hour videos in just fifteen minutes. If there only were such a tool to do that on youtube which is were most tutorials and example videos are. Luckily for me (and you), there is!
Enter the HTML 5 youtube player.
With the rise of HTML 5 web applications can do much more powerful things. Games can work faster, blogs can look and function much better, and Youtube is no exception.
Youtube has the option to use a special player that has the ability to fast-forward on pretty much any video now.
To enable this function, simple follow the next steps:
1) Go to www.youtube.com/html5
2) You will see a page like the following:
Here click on the button that says “Request the HTML 5 player.”
Congratulations now you have the ability to change the speed at which youtube videos can be seen. That wasn’t that hard, was it?
How to enable the fast-forward function?
Ok, so now you CAN use the fast-forward function. Now, the question is: how?
Simple, next time you are on a video that you would like to fast-forward just click the setting icon the right corner on the video and select speed. here you can select whether to watch the video faster or slower.
I hope that this little trick helps you get more out of your time. It sure has helped me save HOURS on my day.
Peace,
Ricardo Fabila
