YouTube Tests Automated Video Chapters to Improve Navigation

After rolling out video chapters to all creators back in May, which enables creators to define specific segments of their video via time stamps, YouTube is now running an experiment which will see chapters automatically inserted into selected videos, using machine learning to identify segments within each clip.

As explained by YouTube:

"We want to make it easier for people to navigate videos with video chapters, so we are experimenting with automatically adding video chapters (so creators don't have to manually add timestamps). We’ll use machine learning to recognize text in order to auto generate video chapters. We’re testing this out with a small group of videos." 

0:00 Get excited…
1:00 The Video Chapters feature is officially here!
1:30 When Chapters are enabled, viewers watch more of the video, and come back more often on average.
2:30 Test chapters on your own videos by adding a set of timestamps starting at 0:00 to the description. pic.twitter.com/FIFLbLImaj

— YouTube Creators (@YouTubeCreators) May 28, 2020

That could eventually see chapters added to all YouTube clips, without creators having to manually add them, giving YouTube more ways to define specific segments related to more search queries. 

YouTube added video chapters back in May, which creates specific segments on the playback bar to signify each part of the clip.

That makes it easier for viewers to skip through to the sections they're most interested in, but it also enables YouTube, and by extension Google, to identify very specific video elements in response to user queries.