Often we find ourselves scouting in the comments to look for the 'good parts' of a YouTube video; however, YouTube has made sure you don't have to go through that trouble again. Known as 'Video Chapters', this new feature introduced by YouTube on May 28, will make use of time-stamps that the uploader can use on their video. Using this, the viewers can choose to jump to the parts they would like to watch or rewind to a particular scene they'd want to revisit.
Reports of YouTube testing this new feature back in April raised anticipation, but today the feature will be available for all the users across iOS, Android and desktop.
— Philip DeFranco (@PhillyD) April 13, 2020
To avail this feature, however, the uploader will have to make sure there are at least three time-stamps on the video. The uploader will also have to provide captions which will appear on these chapters for their better understanding.
The users can hover their mouse on the timeline to see the time-stamps that they can use to skip to a chapter of their choice. For easy facilitation, YouTube has given an option of haptic feedback on the mobile app. Users will feel a slight 'thump' that will inform them that they are now moving on to the next chapter. In devices where the haptic feedback feature is unavailable, YouTube will provide a 'snapping' mechanism for the users.
However, the users will have to make sure that the video they want to modify with chapters is ten seconds or longer. The feature aims to increase user engagement, make the YouTube interface less cumbersome for long-form content. It will save more views for the uploader, as the viewer can simply skip to the part they're interested in watching, instead of having to go through with the entire video frustratedly. Despite its easy accessibility, the feature could cause the video to lose out on watch time, as the viewers can now move on from video to video without having to spend a lot of time on it.
