Incremental video

Incremental video with SuperMemo 2008

Incremental video is a technique for learning or watching video material. On the face of it, it looks like channel-zapping on steroids. However, it is also a powerful learning technique that makes it easy to process thousands of videos at the same time without getting lost. It also makes it easy to learn individual video scenes for long-term retention. It can be used to learn sports, master musical instruments, understand biology, or learn fun dialogs in your favorite movies. Individual videos are processed in small portions. Viewing can be resumed at any time at the last viewing position. Best pieces are preserved for repeat viewing. Individual vidoes are prioritized and served on a daily basis in manageable portions in order of priority. Incremental video in SuperMemo 2008 uses YouTube as the main source of its video material.

SuperMemo: Incremental video in action - Incremental learning about DNA wrapping and replication based on a video imported from YouTube

For users of SuperMemo

SuperMemo is a pioneer in implementing versatile incremental video. For those who are familiar with incremental reading (also pioneered by SuperMemo), incremental video is an analogous technique. Instead of text extracts, you generate video extracts that form a portion of a larger video. Video extracts are viewed repeatedly in increasing intervals, as is the case with other pieces of information in SuperMemo.

General idea

This is how you work with incremental video in SuperMemo 2008:

1. open your favorite YouTube videos in Internet Explorer
2. choose YouTube import option to import videos to SuperMemo
3. use Learn to process individual videos
4. use Start and Stop buttons to mark interesting scenes
5. use Extract to generate new elements with scenes marked with Start and Stop (see below)
6. use learning tools of SuperMemo to prioritize, schedule, and organize videos and video extracts

SuperMemo: An extract created from the "Pirates of Silicon Valley - Part 4" YouTube video in the process of incremental video watching

An extract created from the "Pirates of Silicon Valley - Part 4" YouTube video in the process of incremental video watching. SuperMemo will keep playing the fragment between 8:43 and 9:08 (of the original video) in a loop. On the right, you can see the description of the video directly imported from YouTube and automatically generated references with Edit : Import web pages : YouTube (Shift+Ctrl+Y). Both the description and the references are propagated from the original element which the video was imported to.

You can easily work with thousands of videos at the same time and never get lost, never get bored, or ever miss a valuable scene. You can also use SuperMemo as your video or music jukebox. You can work with individual videos for mere seconds. Just as much as is needed to set the new viewing point, determine the priority and determine the date of the next viewing. This way, you can process dozens of videos daily and work with thousands of videos in parallel.

YouTube

Incremental video in SuperMemo 2008 is based on YouTube. You can still use local video files, but these slow down the program, take lots of space, and are not as easy to use with incremental video (poorly developed toolset). You can capitalize on the video streaming power of YouTube and speed up SuperMemo (even though you may suffer video lags on weaker Internet connections). You will also dramatically save on hard disk space. Videos are notorious hogs of space, your YouTube collections will take a tiny fraction of space. They will actually take less space than incremental reading collections while carrying lots of learning power. If your network is slow or frequently down, you should take comfort in the fact that this situation is likely to change for the better as networks improve worldwide all the time (and this progress is not likely to be slowed soon). Last but not least, SuperMemo will encourage you to upload your favorite videos to YouTube and thus share them with other users of SuperMemo. It would be helpful if you marked them as suitable or specifically destined for incremental video by including "incremental video" text in the description.

Importing videos

To import videos for incremental learning do the following:

1. open YouTube videos in Internet Explorer
2. choose Edit : Import web pages : YouTube (or just press Ctrl+Shift+Y)
3. optionally, set import options (e.g. which videos to import, video priority, name of the import node in the knowledge tree, etc.)
4. click Import

SuperMemo: Importing videos featuring Richard Dawkins from YouTube for incremental learning

Viewing videos and learning

Use Learn as you would do when learning with SuperMemo. The video starts automatically. When you get bored or would like to watch other videos, press Start to mark the point from which you will resume the video next time you see it. If you find an important fragment that you would like to learn or view again, press Start at the beginning of the fragment, and Stop at the end of the fragment. Use Test to review the fragment or watch it again. Press Extract if you would like to create a new fragment that should take part in the learning process as a separate element.

You can use Mark and Resume to set a bookmark that will not affect the point from which video starts (e.g. when preparing an extract).

You can generate extracts without interrupting the viewing process. Extract elements are generated only when you move on to the next element or when you press Alt+X.

Exemplary videos

Incremental video is a video equivalent of incremental reading. However, there are many things you may wish to learn that are best learned with video and cannot be substituted with incremental reading. The list is truly endless. However, these are a few examples just to give you the first sense of why incremental video is an important complement to incremental reading:

• learn a foreign language with the help of movies, speeches, lectures, etc.
• learn recent history with archive footage
• learn to play a musical instrument using video tutorial produced by experts or best players
• learn to play along or sing along your favorite songs
• use Mike Phelps videos to learn how to swim butterfly
• recover from injuries by learning physiotherapeutic exercises
• watch movies incrementally
• listen to your favorite music
• watch historic sports events
• watch video lectures from reputable universities
• enjoy or learn the best jokes or comedy pieces by Leno, Connan, Jon Stewart, and others
• master speechmaking with videos of MLK, JFK or Obama
• seek motivation from Tony Robbins or other self-help gurus
• learn to cook
• relive memorable moments in the lives of your family and friends
• learn physiology, geology, physics, or history, wherever a video explanation is needed

Problems

Here are some problems you may encounter when learning with incremental video:

• Alt+Left shortcut is used by Internet Explorer to return to the previously visited page. As a result, it also works like an Undo for your Start:Stop setting. To return to the previous page in SuperMemo, use the < button on the element toolbar
• Enter in the extract dialog will extract portion of video and move to the next element. If you want to keep adding extracts, use OK instead
• it may happen that your network is down or the Internet is slow when working with YouTube videos. You may therefore prefer to first experiment with a dedicated incremental video collection to learn how to handle videos and prevent interruptions to learning in cases of network problems. You can always stop working with your incremental video collection, return to your regular learning, and resume video learning when the network returns to normal functionality
• if you would like to use SuperMemo as your YouTube jukebox, you should also keep music videos in a single collection (or mark them all with a specific keyword for fast subset learning). You can later hide your jukebox collection in the system tray. Your jukebox will play only the selected fragments of individual videos in order of priority as specified in your sorting criteria. As in incremental reading, using intervals and priorities is a good remedy against getting bored with a given song or video
• vidoes cannot be played in SuperMemo if embedded video is blocked. Those videos you can only watch in YouTube. This means, it will be hard to view them incrementally; however, you can still use prioritization and scheduling tools to choose which videos should be played in which sequence and on which day
• for technical reasons, some videos (roughly one in a thousand) cannot be watched incrementally (they will ignore extracts and always play in their entirety); some can show large rounding errors for extract precision (around 10% of videos can only be watched in large increments). These estimation are valid for winter 2009.

Your own incremental video script

Videos are handled with the help of YouTube Player API in HTML components using a small JavaScript program. When you first run SuperMemo, it writes this script into a file stored in the BIN subfolder of the folder in which you installed SuperMemo. The name of the file is yt.htm. If you know JavaScript, you can substitute your own incremental video script in that file (e.g. to change the layout, size of buttons, or even add new functions for processing videos). Here are the only components of the script that you need to preserve:

• the order of INPUT fields (these are used by SuperMemo to collect extract boundaries)
• SELECT and OPTION fields for generating extracts
• INPUT field with YouTube video ID substituted by SuperMemo (id="videoid")
• INPUT field that determines the position of video start and end (id="startvideoat" and id="stopvideoat")(must be "0:00:00")

If you would like to share your own script with others, you can upload it to SuperMemoPedia.