If you are an Internet regular you have probably heard about the Wadsworth Constant, an Internet meme that has come to some fame at the end of last year.
A user named Wadsworth mentioned that he skipped 30% ahead of every YouTube he was viewing on the Internet. This spread quickly throughout the geeky parts of the Internet and became that popular that YouTube implemented the constant as a parameter on the video hosting site.
If you add &wadsworth=1 at the end of the YouTube video url you are skipping the first 30% of the video. A bookmarklet has been created soon thereafter which automated the process.
There is however a much easier solution that that all YouTube users can make use of to skip ahead a certain percentage of the video. All that needs to be done is to press a number between 1 and 9 on the YouTube video page after you have clicked on the video.
Nothing happens if you try to press the numbers once the video starts playing on the side. You need to click on the video, which pauses it, to use the functionality.
The numbers 1 to 9 correspond to 10 to 90 per cent of the play time of the video. If you press 3 you skip ahead 30% as suggested by the Wadsworth Constant, but you can select to skip more or less of the video by tapping on a different number on your keyboard.
This works well in combination with scripts that auto pause a video automatically, for instance to let it buffer for a while or save bandwidth by avoiding auto play.
We have reviewed several scripts that can do that here on Ghacks. Check out the userscript Automatically Buffer Youtube Videos and Youtube Videos: Playback Problems And Fixes for general tips.
The constant works sometimes but not all of the time. It works great for trailers and videos produced by tv or film studios. You will obviously encounter videos where it does not work at all as you miss an essential part of it.
Have you tried to skip ahead in videos to save time by skipping ahead to the important content?
Update: The wadsworth parameter is not working anymore. You can still hit the number keys on the other hand to skip part of the video.