With the recent addition of many 2011 ACE videos to AAPG’s YouTube channel comes another opportunity to share the ones that interest you personally. However, some videos could be longer than you like, especially if you only want to highlight a specific moment in the video, and that moment is well past the middle. You could, of course, share the video link accompanied by a note like “watch me at the 9 minute mark!” and hope that someone actually will. Or you could be savvier. :)

Let’s say you’re sharing John W. Shelton receives the Sidney Powers Award video, but you want to skip the introduction and go directly to the moment when John receives the award. YouTube empowers you to do just that. Here’s how.

1. While on the YouTube’s video page, click “Share” and you will see a “Link to this video” section with a shortened link that looks like “http://youtu.be/KPoYhZwf_Xo“
2. Scroll the video to the position you want by dragging the playhead at the bottom of the video area.
3. Note the time in the bottom left corner directly below the video. I picked 04:18 (four minutes 18 seconds).
4. Now for the magic: append the time to the shortened URL in this format: #t=4m18 (‘m’ is for minutes). Your URL should now look like this: http://youtu.be/KPoYhZwf_Xo#t=4m18 (click to test).
5. Copy the new URL and paste it into your email, Facebook or Twitter feed. You’re done!

I hope this little tidbit proves useful as you share AAPG’s YouTube videos!