Obsidian Timestamp Notes

Use Case

Hello Obsidian users! Like all of you, I love using Obsidian for taking notes. My usual workflow is a video in my browser on one side of my screen while I jot down notes in Obsidian on the other side. While Obsidian itself is a great notetaking tool, I found this setup quite lacking. When reviewing my notes, it would often take me a long time to find the section of the video the note came from and I found it annoying constantly having to switch between my browser and Obsidian.

Solution

This plugin solves this issue by allowing you to:

• Open up a video player in Obsidian's sidebar
• Insert timestamps with a hotkey
• Select timestamps to navigate to that place in the video

Setup

• Download and enable the plugin
• Set the hotkeys for
  • Opening the video player (my default is cmnd-shift-y)
  • Opening a local video (my defauly is cmnd-shift-l)
  • Inserting timestamps (my default is cmnd-y)
  • Playing/pausing video (my default is cntrl-space)
  • Seeking forward/back (my default is cntrl-arrows)
• Set options for
  • Colors of the url, url text, timestamp button, and timestamp text
  • Title that is pasted when 'Open Video Player' hotkey is used
  • How far you want to seek forward/back

Usage

• Copy to clipboard or highlight a video url and use the 'Open Video Player' hotkey or press your designated hotkey to select a local video/audio file to play
• Jot down notes and anytime you want to insert a timestamp, press the registered hotkey
• Toggle pausing/playing the video by using hotkey (my default is option space)
• Open videos at the timestamp you left off on (this is reset if plugin is disabled)
• Close the player by right-clicking the icon above the video player and selecting close

Valid Video Players

This plugin should work with:

• youtube
• vimeo
• facebook
• soundcloud
• wistia
• mixcloud
• dailymotion
• twitch
• local videos/audios
• bilibili

Demo

ezgif.com-gif-maker.1.mov

Known Issues

1. Inserting timestamps into a bulleted section does not work. Unfortunately, code-blocks cannot be in-line with text. Make sure to press enter/insert the timestamp on a new line.
2. If you decide to change the colors of your buttons/text, any old buttons/text will not update with the new colors until you reload the app. You can also click the '<>' when hovering over the code-block and it will refresh with the new colors.
3. If your timestamp/video button dont work, simply switch between live-editing and viewing modes.

Other Authors

This plugin uses the react-player npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-player.