Annotate Your Way To Better Videos

Not long ago, YouTube released annotations for their videos. I was all over it. The one thing about video that irks me is I don’t have the patience for it. I can watch an hour long TV show or a 90 minute movie but can’t sit through a 10 minute online video. It’s just me. Yet, I do a lot of videos because I realize my subject matter (tech stuff) is often better explained using videos and many of my readers are visual learners.

Sometimes, I’d like to point them to a specific point made in the video. Up until now, I’ve always had to say, wait and watch around 3:30 minutes. Now, I don’t have to. You can annotate a video and link to it so it starts exactly where you want it to.

That’s just one part. You can add speech bubbles or highlights to emphasize a point or add a comment that you may have missed out while recording. You can even link the annotations although the links are limited. At time of writing you can’t link outside of  youtube.com. While somewhat limited, I think these additional tools do help you make your video message clearer and that’s always good.