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Can I use a timestamp so that a contact will start watching a video at a time point?

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Evan Stewart

Overview

You may have a requirement to send a link to a player, but also ensure that when the player begins to play, it starts at a certain point. 

This could be useful for a long video where only a particular scene is relevant for the contact to watch.

Solution

You can use the Vidyard API JavaScript and some additional code to read a timecode from the URL for a specific player on your page. Simply paste the code below into the body of your page HTML and replace each mention of <UUID> with the player UUID. 

This code includes the player embed--shown in bold. You can remove this piece if you already have a player on your page and then paste the remaining code underneath.

<!-- Vidyard inline embed code -->
 <script type="text/javascript" id="vidyard_embed_code_<UUID>" src="//play.vidyard.com/<UUID>.js?v=3.1&type=inline"></script>
 <script src="//play.vidyard.com/v0/api.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript">
 // Parsing the query string
  function get_parameter_by_name(name) {
   name = name.replace(/[\[]/, "\\\[").replace(/[\]]/, "\\\]");
   var regexS = "[\\?&]" + name + "=([^&#]*)";
   var regex = new RegExp(regexS);
   var results = regex.exec(window.location.search);
   if (results == null) {
    return "";
   } else {
    return results[1];
   }
  }
  // Get the number of seconds from the query string using "vytime" as the parameter
  var urlParam = get_parameter_by_name("vytime");
  var playerTime = Number(urlParam);
  // If the vytime parameter is present, start the video automatically and jump to the time.
  function timeCheck() {
   if (playerTime > 0) {
   // Use the player API to start the player and jump to a specific time.
    var videos = new Vidyard.players();
    videos["<UUID>"].on("ready",function (){
     videos["DsjTGJVPhoGb4qHem7qELf"].play();
    });
    videos["<UUID>"].on("play",function () {
     videos["<UUID>"].seek(playerTime);
     playerTime = null;
    });
   }
  }
  window.onload = timeCheck();
 </script>

When you provide a link to the page that this code is embedded on, you will need to add a query string to the end of the URL which looks like:

?vytime=<second>

An example of this code in action can be found here:

http://www.vyexample.com/time.html?vytime=56

You are welcome to modify this code to fit your particular requirements.

Note: This functionality is already available on the sharing pages by default, but you would replace the string 'vytime' with 'second'.

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