Google Chrome to Introduce Browser-Level Video Chapter Functionality for Efficient Navigation

Some video websites have already provided chapter functionality for video creators, allowing them to add metadata to their videos during upload. This enables users to jump directly to specific segments of the video by clicking on chapter descriptions.

This type of chapter functionality is highly practical, as users can quickly navigate to the parts that interest them, rather than having to close the video or fast-forward to find what they're looking for.

However, this requires some effort from creators, who need to add metadata to their videos to mark specific time segments with corresponding chapters. Nevertheless, this can increase the video's appeal.

Google Chrome is set to introduce a browser-level video chapter functionality, allowing users to jump to different parts of the video quickly. This feature will require collaboration from video creators.

The good news and the bad news:

Google plans to develop this functionality based on W3C standards, which will improve compatibility and adaptability, enabling all audio and video publishing websites to create metadata for chapter functionality.

The bad news is that Chrome cannot automatically recognize content, so video publishers still need to add metadata to their videos during upload, which can be a hassle.

Looking ahead, video websites should be able to automate the process of recognizing audio and video files and adding chapter-related metadata through some automated workflow. When that happens, video websites that integrate this feature will be able to widely offer chapter jumping.

According to the plan, Google aims to add this functionality to Chrome 126 for testing, but note that this is still a developing standard, and the release date may be subject to change.