July 21, 2006

Link Within Your Google Dance Videos

On Digg, I came across a story about Google's Wednesday announcement that their popular video hosting service now supports direct links to specific points within a video.

This new feature is very helpful for dancers who upload videos to Google.

First, here's how it works:

Say, you're watching the "Dancing Around the World" video that features Matt Harding dancing at each location he visits on his global travel tour. You come across the section where Matt Harding is dancing in India and you want a friend of yours to see this specific section of the video as opposed to having to watch the entire video.

What you do is configure the web address for this Google video so a person is taken directly to the India dance scene:

So, as described on the Google VideoBlog, you first cut and paste the URL for the video from the top address bar. The URL for "Dancing Around the World" is:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1609134961558581805

Then you add to the end of this URL the time information. In this case, we want to take people who click on this link to the 0 minute and 48 second mark in the video. So now we'll add this time information to the end of the URL:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1609134961558581805#0m48s

Actually, I found that Google takes you to a point about five seconds before the point you specified, which isn't a bad idea. But you can adjust this if you want simply by adding about five seconds to the time section in the above URL.

The reason why I like this feature is because it gives dancers a way to write about and explain their dance videos in a more meaningful way.

Let's say you upload a dance video (maybe a performance or class) to Google and then you want to write about the video on your blog or website. Now as you write about each portion of your dance, you can include a link to the specific part of the video that you are currently discussing. These time-specific links will make it much easier for your readers to understand what part of your dance you are explaining and will help them visualize the points that you are making. This approach, I think, would serve as a good educational tool for teaching dance moves, providing a viewer guide for an upcoming performance, or showing the evolution of dance styles or choreographic influences.

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