Apply video effects to YouTube Videos in Chrome or Firefox
YouTube Video Effects is a free browser extension for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome which you may install and use to apply filter effects to YouTube videos.
The browser extension supports other YouTube tweaks; you may use it to switch to a dark theme on YouTube, remove black bars on YouTube videos, and make a handful of other modifications.
YouTube Video Effects is officially only available for Chrome and Firefox but the extension should install in Chromium-based or Firefox-based browsers as well.
It adds an icon to the browser's toolbar that you interact with. Note that you need to open the extension options for most of the tweaks that it provides.
YouTube Video Effects
A click on the extension's icon displays the available filters. YouTube Video Effects supports more than 50 different filters that you may apply to videos.
Just click on any filter to apply it to the video. Only one filter can be active at a time but you can switch between filters in real-time using the controls the extension provides.
Different filter types are available. Some improve the focus or image quality (sharpen, saturation, focus), others fall into the "fun" group (rainbow, sepia) instead.
You may enable a dark YouTube interface in the filter menu as well to switch the lighter default design to a darker one on the site.
The YouTube tweaks
You find additional tweaks when you open the options of the YouTube Video Effects extension. The following tweaks are available at the time of writing:
- Set a desired YouTube video quality. If a video does not support the desired quality, the next lower/higher quality is used instead.
- Loop the YouTube video automatically.
- Add full scale mode to YouTube.
- Remove black bars around videos on YouTube.
- Auto pause and play.
Some features are listed as options but are not available at the time. This includes an ad-blocker, turn off the light, floating video, and custom subtitle style tweaks.
Closing Words
YouTube Video Effects is a useful extension for Chrome and Firefox that adds filters and other tweaks to the video hosting site. Some filters may improve the video quality; this is the case for sharpen or focus for instance.
Mileage depends largely on the actual video but if a video is out of focus or not super-sharp, you may use the filters to improve the quality.
Most of the filters are not uber-useful, however. While you may have a chuckle after enabling the rainbow filter, it is not as if it adds anything of value to the video.
The tweaks that the extension supports are quite nice to have though. Setting a desired video quality is always a useful feature, and so are tweaks that remove black bars or enable the looping of videos.
Now You: Do you use YouTube extensions or tweaks?
I cannot believe the blog post I just read. Back in the olden days everybody knew this stuff inside-out. What’s next, a how-to on using dollar signs to toggle between relative and absolute cell addressing?
Tip: Place your cursor over the cell address in a formula. Then tap the F4 key to cycle through the various combinations of leading $’s to the column/row. You can make either the row or column reference absolute, or both, or neither. (As in: A1, $A$1, A$1, $A1) This affects the result when you copy and paste the formula.
I have no idea if that is another example of nearly-lost knowledge or not, or if these are as well.
Tip: The key combination of Ctrl-F6 will cycle through your open spreadsheets.
Tip: Hitting the Enter key will complete the paste operation while clearing the memory buffer.
Tip: Ctrl-; inserts today’s date into the active cell.
And endless examples like that.
Yeah, the olden days. I miss them too. I also missed or have forgotten Ctrl-; Haha, thanks for the reminder. Wish it worked in word processors.
Did computer users know and use keyboard shortcuts and other tricks more in the past? I don’t know, but the trend to “optimize” and “streamline” products likely plays a role in computer users not knowing about these handy shortcuts anymore.
Martin,
You ask “Did computer users know and use keyboard shortcuts and other tricks more in the past? ”
In ancient days, like 30 years ago, I have a recollection the GUI interface was not as developed as today.
If I recall correctly, most tasks were done with key combinations. I think WordPerfect had a little template that you laid down on top of the Function keys (above your number keys). Each key could do multiple functions, depending on what key was pressed along with it (e.g., control, fn, shift). They didn’t have a Windows key back then. I suppose this was much better than a GUI if that is what you mainly used, but a GUI is much better for non-experts.
I barely ever use my function keys. I just use them to put my computer to sleep, or to change what happens when I start the computer, e.g., to enter the BIOS/UEFI setup, or to temporary change the boot order.
Besides WordPerfect, there was a database program called dBase.
I think the first advanced GUI I saw was either Microsoft Word or Excel.
@Martin: Absolutely. And you can still see this old-school approach in macOS, which has a much stronger emphasis on keyboard shortcuts for pretty everything – even though it actually originated the graphic UI. Windows also used to highlight keyboard shortcuts for many activities, but that’s been shelved since Windows 95.
In the days of MS DOS, keyboard shortcuts were just what everybody did naturally. When we transitioned to the Windows GUI world there was no reason to abandon them. For example, highlighting a block of filled cells by holding down Shift-Ctrl and moving the arrow keys — is that not how everybody normally does it any more? Serious question. The larger the block, the more kludgy it is to use the mouse.
Every day I feel like more of a dinosaur.
Thanks for the head up on this highlighting column option. To be honest the only intent of this blog would have been how to pop to the last row in excel, however Ctrl + D. + Arrow won`t be working properly unless you already have the cursor on the last row (which doesn`t make any sense as it means you have already been there at some point lol..) However if you highlight the whole column it doesn`t matter when you or your cursor are you will get for sure to the last row.
Ctrl+End can jump too far in Excel after you have deleted rows. Saving the file correctly resets the last-row index, so you won’t need to Ctrl+Up after Ctrl+End.
That is a good tip, thanks!
Is there a keyboard combo for jumping to leftmost cell of the row you are in?
Yes it is the Home key. You may also use Ctrl-Left if there are no blank cells.
Hi I am old school too. Yes Ctrl & the arrow keys are good for jumping. Most of the older folks would know that. Less commonly known is that in Excel there is a shortcut method to jump using the mouse.
Left double-clicking on the border of a cell when you get a 4 prong arrow will allow you to jump (in the direction the border is facing) to the last filled cell of a continuous data range or last blank cell if the data range is not continuous.
You can jump down, up, right or left depending on the border you click on when you get the 4 prong arrow.
I did not know that one about the 4-prong arrow jumping. Very convenient for when your hand is already on the mouse. Thanks.
Using the Shift key in combination with the above helps to quickly highlight cells.
For instance, to highlight all cells, use Ctrl-End to get to the bottom right most cell, then Shift-Ctrl-Home to highlight all cells.
From there, I find it very useful to use the Shift – arrow key combo to unhighlight a row or column (or several).
Page Up and Down is like scrolling on steroids, Home, End, Ctrl they all basically work in both Word and Excel. I learned Office 2000 and surprisingly most of the basics are still the same today, though with a lot more bells and whistles of course.
And you don’t think people with large spreadsheets already know that? Come to that ones who haven’t. Just useless filler which is becoming common on here these days.
For many year’s I’ve been hoping to find a particular keyboard shortcut. Highly doubtful that it exists in Excel but it never hurts to ask. To describe it briefly…
Sometimes we need to copy the contents of a filled range to a blank area — but the new range will be of a different size. Maybe a single formula is to be copied to a matrix of various rows and columns, say. If you’re using a mouse it’s dead simple. Click and drag to highlight what you want. Highlight, copy, highlight, paste. Done.
Except that it doesn’t work so well with ranges that are very large and can’t be viewed all at once on the screen. Really big ranges should be highlighted with keyboard shortcuts like those discussed here.Terribly inefficient to use a mouse.
So then, are there any Excel shortcuts to define new ranges in blank areas of your worksheet?
The old programs had them. In Lotus 1-2-3, you first highlighted a range and then tapped the dot/period key (.). Then you could move the highlight region around with arrow keys and such. You weren’t moving any of the the cell content, mind you, but rather the defined size-shape of the highlight area.
For this to really speed-up your work, you needed to (already) have a filled range somewhere in your worksheet of the desired size. You used it as a size template, and you quickly highlighted it with the other handy keyboard shortcuts available.
This may be hard to explain, but believe me, it was an extremely helpful feature. You grew to rely on it in a hurry. Not sure if I made myself clear, but on the off-chance that I did… Does anybody know if you can do this in Excel? Again, we’re talking about quickly highlighting an area within a set of BLANK cells.
These shortcuts are not right. End by by itself does nothing for instance.
I am on a new job and have never used Excel in my previous job of where I retired with 22 years. This is very helpful. Thank you.
I can’t say about Excel but for Google sheets the response to CTRL-DN seems to depend on what is in the column corresponding to the cell that’s currently selected. If the number of entries in your columns is not uniform (mine rarely are), then the result may not be what you intended.
Doesn’t one have staff?