Table of Contents for

The Modern Web

Media Fragments

On occasion you may want to play only a portion of a media file, but you don’t want to edit the clip manually. You can do this with JavaScript, as you’ll see in the next section, but many browsers also support the Media Fragments URI. This information is appended to the URL of the media file, which sets certain parameters on it. To set a time range, as in this notional example, you would use something like this:

<audio src="foo.oga#t=4,8"></audio>

The #t notation is a shortcut for a time range, with the two comma-separated values after it representing the start time and end time in seconds. In this case, the clip would play for between four and eight seconds. You can leave out either number; leaving out the first means “play from the start until this point,” and leaving out the second means “play from this point until the end.” Either way you must still include the comma. So to play from 7.5 seconds until the end, you would use this:

<video src="foo.oga#t=7.5,"></video>

The Media Fragments URI module contains many more options than time range, but this is the only option that currently has widespread adoption in browsers.