How to Bookmark Movies To Resume Where You Left Off

I don’t think my problem is a unique one. I usually don’t watch a video in one sitting, although I might hear a song from start to finish. Sometimes, it takes about three sittings to finish off a movie! It’s not the popcorn calories I get worried about, but the hassle of resuming a movie from where I left of. I also need to remember the position of the movie and continue from there without missing a frame.

I think I have friends out there who are often faced with the same problem. Of course, the fast forward or skip button or the slider can be easily moved to the position where it was left off. But heck, aren’t we movie junkies a lazy bunch. We want one touch solutions to bookmark video.

To solve this problem, I started my search for a way to bookmark video. Bookmarking is a feature in many DVD players. In PCs, bookmark features are there for many applications. From Office suites to PDF files and even the iPod has a feature that remembers to resume a song from where you stopped. Why not a video bookmark for video files? Well, it’s there – by default in some media players and as a plugin in Windows Media Player.

MyMediaBookmarks – A Windows Media Player Plugin to Bookmark Video

MyMediaBookmarks is a Windows Media Player (WMP) plug-in. The automatic bit behind its working is dead simple – while watching a film, the video bookmark is created at the exact frame (or time) where you decide to close the media player. When you launch the video file again, it resumes playing from that spot.

MyMediaBookmarks can be accessed from WMP – Tools – Plugins. From here, it can also be unchecked and disabled.

The Plugins tab under Windows Media Player’s Options takes us into the features of MyMediaBookmarks. As a simple application, it is not feature rich but it does give us some control over the media types we choose to bookmark.

The General tab gives you the choices of auto-resuming video and audio files. If you think that you won’t need it for audio files, choose to disable it. Also, use the same tab to set the auto-resume time difference between the startup and the spot bookmarked. The default of 5 seconds is good enough. As you move through your videos, you can choose to clear all your bookmarks with a click on Clear all bookmarks.

The File Types tab lets you include or remove the different video/audio file formats that Windows Media Player handles. Note the support for newer formats like M4B and MKV.

With MyMediaBookmarks, there doesn’t seem to be any restriction on the number of files you can bookmark. The slight hitch when the plugin starts with WMP is the one thing one has to accept. Or maybe it was so in my individual case, as I have quite a few plugins installed. There is only one way to bookmark your files…by closing WMP. There is no other way you can manually bookmark video without closing the application.

MyMediaBookmarks (ver.1.5) plug-in for Windows Media Player is a 2.19MB download.

KMPlayer – Bookmark Videos Simply and Smoothly

KMPlayer is relatively unheralded but is one of the best media players out there. KMPlayer and VLC Player often get talked about in the same breath as very powerful and free media players. For the purpose of bookmarking videos, I found KMPlayer easier to configure as compared to VLC Player. For an explanation on how to save bookmarks in VLC, go to VideoLAN Wiki.

There are two ways to resume watching a video from where you left off in KMPlayer.

From the right click menu, go to Playback and check Remember Played Position. The next time you play the movie, it resumes from where you left off.

From the right click menu, go to Bookmarks/Chapters – Add to Bookmarks.

The precise time frame gets added to the context menu. You can also use the bookmark editor window (Edit Bookmarks) to add a title or delete bookmarks.

KMPlayer offers the distinct advantage of also letting us bookmark multiple points in the same film. Using this, you can pinpoint all key scenes in a single movie.

KMPlayer (ver.2.9.4) is a 14.2MB free download for Win2000/XP/2003/Vista/7.

A plugin with Microsoft’s default media player or a slick third party free application like KMPlayer – take your pick. For the absolute smoothness and ease of the operation, I usually would go for KMPlayer. What about you?

Do you use video bookmarking? Which media player do you have installed and does it handle video bookmarking?

Image credit: Okko Pyykkö