Become a YouTube expert

Watching videos on YouTube is a no-brainer, but if you want to control the way viewers see your videos or videos you're sharing, there are some handy tweaks.

YouTube recently introduced a relatively simple way to do this using tags. During or after an upload you have the option to add tags, and this is where the magic happens. Adding one of the below tags has different effects on your video, which gives you complete control over how it looks:

Controlling the size of the video by cropping or scaling

• By adding 'yt:crop=16:9' this zooms in on the 16:9 section of the video, and gets rid of any black bars on the side or on the top of your video.
• By adding 'yt:stretch=16:9' it takes any content that's been shot in anamorphic (with the black bars on the top and bottom) and scales it to fit the widescreen player.
• By adding 'yt:stretch=4:3' it scales widescreen videos to fit a 4:3 player.

Changing the default quality of the stream

• Add 'yt:quality=high' to make the default quality level the highest, whether that's HQ or HD.

How to control the start time on a shared link or embed
With some small URL tweaks you can control the start time of a video when shared as a basic link, or when embedded. YouTube is likely to add this as part of the embedding options at a later date. In the meantime, the below methods are helpful if you want to share a specific part of a long video.

For basic links
The time you want the video to start must be appended by hand with #t=_m_s at the end of the video's URL. You have control over the minutes and seconds, which are where the underscores are. So, for this URL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfkxBVIJ0vc#t=0m21s, the video would start 21 seconds in.

For embedded videos
Skipping ahead in embeds is a little harder than with basic URLs, but still manageable. Copy and paste the embed code wherever you intend to put it. Then find the two places where the source URL is. These two links come after 'value' and 'src' and simply contain the link to the video. Now, paste '&start=__' on to the end of that URL, placing the number of seconds you want it to start at where the underscore is. Since there's no minutes section like you get with the link trick above, you have to do the maths and add an additional 60 seconds for each minute you want to go in.

Creating and embedding a self-playing playlist
Say you've got two or more videos you want to share, or just group together. Skip the link dump and make a playlist. Go into your uploaded videos and create a new one. Then simply check off the videos you want to add. Pick the 'add to playlist' option, then click on the playlist you just created.

For one reason or another, YouTube isn't very up front about giving you an embed code to stick the playlist elsewhere. Don't worry though -- it's still there. To find it, go to the playlist you just made from here: www.youtube.com/my_playlists. Then click on the "play all" link on a playlist to start playing it. Under the playlist option on the right, click on the link with the name of the playlist you're watching. This will take you to a page that gives you a run-down of the entire playlist, along with the option to send that self-playing list as a permalink, and the embed code to put it elsewhere.

You're looking for these three things (the highlighted link will have the name of your playlist, not ours):

Third-party sharing tools
Worth a mention here is Splicd, which lets you pick specific beginning and end points of a video. It plays these videos off YouTube's site, but gives you simple sharing links and a slightly higher degree of control than YouTube does.

See also the aforementioned Quietube and Theeter, which both provide links that can be shared with others that format the video without the rest of YouTube's UI.

These are just a few tips to become an expert in all things YouTube. If you have any of your own or any questions, add them in the comments below.