Want to Save Time? Watch Your Videos on High Speed

Want to Save Time?

Life is busy. We have so many things we want/need to do each and every day.  From work, to family, to maintaining your household, to free time (ha ha), all of it takes a chunk out of your day.

What can you do?

Find ways to minimize the time it takes to get your tasks done.

 

Watching Videos

If you work in the online space, whether for your work, hobbies, or studies, you will most likely have some videos to watch.  That can take a lot of time. Especially if you’re watching a webinar (replay), or a course lecture. In many “recorded live” videos, people tend to take their time explaining their process, or making idle chit chat. (I do that when I host my Time-Saver Tuesday videos… I try to keep it short and sweet, but… you know how it is.)

The Solution

If you watch videos on a regular basis, you can shave off a SIGNIFICANT amount of viewing time by speeding up your videos when you watch them.  YouTube already has that capability built into it.

If you click on the gear icon in the lower right side of the YouTube video, a Settings box will pop up. One of the settings you can change is the speed. The default setting is “normal” but the speed range is 0.25 – 2.00. This is such a handy feature. If you’ve got to watch a video, but are pressed for time, you can choose a higher speed.

Let’s say the video you need to watch is 60 minutes long. If you set your speed to 1.5, you’ll be able to take in all that information in 40 minutes. That is a significant amount of time!

Be sure to choose a speed that works for you.  It would be pointless to watch a video all the way up to 2.00 if you miss all the information given.

But I’m not watching a YouTube Video…

If you’re not watching a video on YouTube, don’t despair… there are browser extensions that can help you do the same thing.

If you use the Google Chrome browser,  Video Speed Controller is an extension that can save you a ton of time.

Once the extension is installed, a small box with 1.00 in it will show on the upper left corner of your video screen. If you click on it, the box expands to the image you see in the picture. The – and + symbols control the speed of the video in increments of .10. It’s very easy to use, and will save you a ton of time.

Another great browser extension is Vimeo Speed & Repeat, which is strictly for Vimeo videos.

Once you install the Vimeo Speed & Repeat extension, the controller shows up on the right hand side of any videos hosted on Vimeo.  In the picture you see the 1x in the bottom box, which is the “normal rate of speed”. You can raise the speed in increments of .25.

No matter what browser you use, I highly recommend using a speed controller when watching videos. There are more controllers available than the ones I mention here, so feel free to look in your browser’s app store, read the reviews and experiment until you find a controller that you like.

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