YouTube Embed Tricks [and other tips]

Its been a while since I have seen a good list of YouTube embed tricks so I thought I would organize some that I know still work and place them here. Hope you all find this useful.

Start a video at custom time or make custom length

You can start a video at any point in its timeline by adding a snippet of code to the end of the URL. Just add #t=XXmYYs and replace the XX's with the minute you would like to start your video at and the YY's with the seconds. So if you wanted to start the video at 30 seconds your code would look like this, #t=00m30s. Note that a user will still have to click play and the default thumbnail will still appear before play is pushed.

You can also make the video start at any point by using &start= and then the time interval. Using this method, the video will not have the preceding time available to view. By adding &end= and a second time interval further along than the first in the video timeline, you can effectively only show a viewer a portion of the video you have embedded. So for example if you have a 3 minute video but you only want to show viewers the first minute of it you can append &start=01&end=60 to your video URL.

Auto Play your video

This one is an oldie but always good to mention. In my opinion, the cases where you would use auto play are few and far between but it is a cool feature when used effectively. Simply append &autoplay=1 to the end of your YouTube URL and an embedded video will start playing when the page it is embedded on loads.

Loop a YouTube Video

By appending &loop=1 to the end of your YouTube URL, you can loop the video however this will not work by itself. You must also tweak the URL itself in order to get this to work. In your URL you should see a v after the youtube.com. It may look something like this www.youtube.com/v/uahdsfhasdhfaohdhf. Delete the v and write embed and your loop should work.

Remove Logo and Link to YouTube

Sometimes you just want to show one of your videos but not send traffic to YouTube. You can remove the little link that is the YouTube logo at the bottom of your embedded video. Append &modestbranding=1 to the end of your URL or after another parameter and the link will no longer appear.


Play Videos in High Definition by default

YouTube provides controls to change the resolution of a video however you can add a snippet of code to make it happen by default. Add &vq=hd720 or &vq=hd1080 to the end of your embedded video URL to make a video play in high definition.

Watch videos in your browser without leaving current page

There are a couple of extensions for both Chrome and Firefox that allow you to watch videos in the sidebar of the browser without having to navigate to Youtube. For chrome, you get a simple button on the browser tool bar that just has a search box. Search for any keywords and video suggestions pop up. Click a video you want to watch and the video starts playing in the sidebar popup. Its seamless and very handy.

You can download the Quick Search for chrome here, https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...jdmgogmc?hl=en

You can download the firefox add on here, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...don/youplayer/

Upload Videos From email on a cell phone

A little known feature of YouTube is that you can upload your videos via email from a cell phone using a specialized URL provided by YouTube. Visit http://www.youtube.com/account#mobile and you will see the URL next to "mobile uploads". Email your video to this address and Bam! You're done.

There are lots of other third party software programs and plugins that you can take advantage of for YouTube. This link provides dozens and dozens of ideas to help make your videos more fun, more functional or just things you did't know about YouTube.

YouTube Guide: Best YouTube Tips, Hacks and Resources

What tricks do you have for your YouTube Videos?