Notate: Annotate YouTube videos 17+

This is something that is really needed. I don’t think the developer knows how much a good video annotation app is needed. If he knew, then he would’ve put more effort into getting this one right.

Problems:
Interface is at times nonresponsive.

No way to make annotations private. He got the wrong business model. People want to do annotations for themselves and for private groups. Throwing all the annotations on a public page severely limits the usefulness of this app.

The Good:
You can play vids in the app & make notes at timepoints.

Very useful application where I can share my thoughts with friends on specific parts of videos. What I've been waiting for in video!

I would absolutely love this app except there are a few things that make this app virtually impossible to use. (1) There is no way to organize the videos that you personally annotate. For example, it would be nice to have a customizable folder system for organizing the videos that I annotate so that I can find them easier. (2) This one is a big issue, you can't see the time of the video as it is playing so it is very hard to position the annotation in the correct spot. It would be more than helpful to be able to see the time where you are at in the video AND be able to adjust the time that the annotation registers. I understand if the video time could not be seen in the actual video but a text box that displays the current time of the video would be nice. (That way I could view the time and know where it is coming up so that I could be ready to hit the button at the correct spot). It took me over 3 hours to annotate a 1 hour video because it was extremely hard to go back to the exact spot that I wanted to place the annotation! By the time the part came up that I wanted to annotate, if I missed it for whatever reason then trying to back up a few seconds was next to impossible and so I would have to back it up to wherever and repeat the process with the same results, of course, which is very frustrating, to say the least. (3) If there could be some sort of fine-scrubbing (where you could slowly go backwards in the video) or a button that would let you go back 10 or 20 seconds, this would help with getting the position of the annotation just right. I LOVE the fact that the annotation shows up on the video and that you can just tap on the annotation to go back to the start of that annotation. If I could just add a wish feature it would be the ability to loop the playing of an annotation but it would get 5 stars from me without that feature but the other features is a necessary. The ability to export the annotations (with their time stamps) in a text file or open them in the native note app of the iPad/iPhone would be an absolute bonus! Oh, and separate folder to save videos for future annotations (sort of like a TODO folder) would send this app over the top...I did not want to leave all of this here but there was no way for me to contact support because it just sent you to the website where you could annotate the video on your computer. (I love the fact that there is a website AND an app to annotate the video). One more thing...I understand the pausing of the video to make a new annotation but editing a previous annotation should not pause the playback (so maybe a toggle button that controls whether playback is paused with the editing of a previous annotation).