Brings annotation support back to YouTube
*Currently only works with a temporary, partial API or the custom format in the description of a YouTube video until the archival efforts of /u/omarroth make it into an API. In the meantime, for older videos, you can place the converted annotation data into the description of your video - (example)
On January 15 2019, YouTube decided to discontinue annotations. While the feature was frequently abused, it did have many legitimate use cases, such as games, corrections, and a form of commentary that could be toggled on and off. The removal left many older videos obsolete. Annotations Restored aims to fix this.
This extension will be published to the Chrome Web Store and addons.mozilla.org once an Annotations API with the archived data becomes available. Until then, they can be loaded as temporary extensions in Chrome and Firefox.
Google Chrome/Opera/Vivaldi/Chromium
- Download the latest release of the extension
- Go to chrome://extensions, enable the "Developer Mode" option in the top right and reload the page.
- Drag ext.zip onto the window to install it.
Firefox
- Download the latest release of the extension
- Go to about:debugging#addons, click "Load Temporary Add-on"
- Select ext.zip.
If you were able to download your video's annotation data before it was removed, you can use the conversion tool to convert it into a format the extension can understand. The data put into the description must be in one of the following formats:
[ar_start]CONVERTED_ANNOTATION_DATA[ar_end](example)[ar_gist_start]username/gist_id[ar_gist_end][ar_pastebin_start]pastebin_id[ar_pastebin_end]
If you don't have access to the annotation data for your videos, you will need to wait for the data dumps from projects such as the YouTube Annotation Archive to become available, then check if the annotations for your video were saved.
As I currently don't have access to a server to store new annotation data, it must be put into the video's description as described above, although you will have to manually create the data in the extension's format. If there is enough interest, an annotation creator can be made.
Annotations Restored uses a different format than YouTube used for annotations. The Annotations Restored format is generally more compact than the YouTube annotations format.
Each videos annotations consist of a list of annotations. Annotations are separated by the ; character, with no spaces. Each annotation consists of a set of properties, separated by the , character, also with no spaces. Between each property and value is a = symbol. The properties for annotations are the following:
x: the x coordinate of the annotation in percent of the width of the video.y: the y coordinate of the annotation in percent of the height of the video.w: the width of the annotation in percent of the width of the video.h: the height of the annotation in percent of the height of the video.ts: the start of the time the annotation is displayed on screen in seconds.te: the end of the time the annotation is displayed on screen in seconds.tp: the type of the annotation. Possible values includetextandpause.s: the style of the annotation. Possible values includespeech,popup,highlightText,anchored, andbranding.t: the text of the annotation. Note that text must be url-encoded (use%20for space).
as: the time in seconds to jump to within a video for an annotation with an in-video link.
A ; character must appear after the final annotation.