Play video timestamps?

[Diana (Cda)]

The only way to describe what I'm trying to do that I can think of is to show the analogy of playing videos on YouTube and other streaming service by timestamps (Rumble does it, too, it's just trickier, as an example).

So, i.e., this video is the source, say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc5MGwHtQGs

But I can share these timetamps:
Example 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc5MGwHtQGs&start=1h20m20s
Example 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc5MGwHtQGs&start=6h19m49s (let's say because I want to highlight the birds in the video, or something, whatever <g>)

Is there _any_ way to mimic this type of thing but with an mp4 or avi on our computers?!! I have tons of research contained in videos that are found at different timestamps. And it's a pain to have my source Excel document list the timestamps but I have to launch the player, then forward to the spot in question. When I'm in the middle of doing research this is tedious and very time-consuming. And quite a few of my old videos are no longer available online, for whatever reason.

So was wondering if there was a way to add all my research videos in Excel, expanding by topic (which I haven't done due to this very issue), where I can list the timestamp references of the videos.

Thank you!

[jagabo]

You can add named chapters to mp4 or mkv.

https://superuser.com/questions/1320389/updating-mp4-chapter-times-and-names-with-ffmpeg

You can also export those chapters to a text file.

[butterw]

Alternatively, you could create a cmd file to open the video file and start playing at the desired timestamp. The syntax will depend on the player (look for command line options).

[Diana (Cda)]

Thank you so much! I will check both options. What a relief to know that there actually may be something that works. I'll see if VLC has commandline options that cover this.

[Ayaa]

In PotPlayer it is possible have external file - .pbf (same name as video or audio file) with named bookmarks. It is a text file, so you can search for text in many video/audio bookmarks at once.

In PotPlayer setting you can set even what names of bookmarks skip at playing.

I use it for many years, it works much better than YouTube.

a few hotkeys:
- to add bookmark at playing position: P, and edit its name - https://i.imgur.com/JtSw0Ff.png
- to view all bookmarks with image preview: H - https://i.imgur.com/hmR4Pnw.png
- preview: Alt+Z, with jump to scene by clicking by mouse - https://i.imgur.com/aS3dvAE.png
- each bookmark can be seen in playlist as "short" video, separate title - https://i.imgur.com/0dIdUia.png