Skip to main content

Create custom bookmarks for individual videos in VLC

One of the few things that is still lacking in the popular media player VLC is support for playback resume.

While there are some extensions available that add it to the player, I was never able to get them to work properly in VLC Media Player.

Even if you get them to run, they don't automate the process but work more like bookmarks instead.

VLC Media Player ships with bookmark functionality which you can use to save video positions in the player.

To use the feature, select Playback > Custom Bookmarks > Manager or press Ctrl-B to open the edit bookmarks window.

vlc bookmarks

There you can create and delete bookmarks for the video that is loaded in the player. Since you can control both windows (the bookmarks window and playback window) at the same time, it is possible to create as many bookmarks as you require while the video is playing or paused.

vlc media player bookmarks

Since bookmarks are video-specific, you only find bookmarks for the current video listed by the player.

All bookmarks that you create are displayed under custom bookmarks afterwards so that you can open them from that location whenever the need arises.

Probably the biggest issue is that these bookmarks don't persist across sessions which makes the feature more or less useless.

Moments' Tracker for VLC may be the solution. It is an extension for the media player that more or less does what the program's bookmarking feature is supposed to do: allow you to save video positions to re-open them at a later point in time and across sessions.

You need to copy the file into the extensions folder of VLC:

  • Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\extensions
  • Mac: Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/lua/extensions/
  • Linux: /usr/lib/vlc/lua/playlist/ or /usr/share/vlc/lua/extensions/

It is best if VLC is closed during the operation. If it was open, you need to restart the player so that the extension gets loaded by it.

Moments is opened in its own window when you launch it from the View menu.

vlc moments

The extension adds two options to each video that you play in VLC Media Player. The first allows you to add bookmarks to the video that you can load again at any time using the menu that it makes available.

The other option allows you to set a single checkpoint for a video. The feature has been designed to give you a quick option to continue watching the video without having to juggle around with bookmarks all the time.

While that is still far from being as practical as remembering video positions on exit or when you load another video, it is better than not having that option at all.

This article was first seen on ComTek's "TekBits" Technology News

HOME