Javascript event listener to start video at certain time and stop video after certain duration

Question

I'm trying to get my video (locally hosted, not streamed) to start after a certain time and stop after a certain duration. Someone here helped me out here with Javascript, but it's not working for me -- no effect on time of playback at all.

So, in my header, I've called the javascript like this:

<script src="Backend/build/Timer.js"></script>

And the actual javascript looks like this:

// JavaScript Document

var starttime = 2000;  // start at 2 seconds
var endtime = 4000;    // stop at 4 seconds

var video = document.getElementById('player1');
video.currentTime = starttime;

video.addEventListener("timeupdate", function() {
    if (video.currentTime >= endtime) {
        video.pause();
    }
}, false);

Answer 1

1. Wrap your code into a function and invoke that function in document ready or body load event handler, otherwise video variable value may be invalid.

2. According to W3C standard:

   The currentTime attribute must, on getting, return the current playback position, expressed in seconds. On setting, if the media element has a current media controller, then it must throw an INVALID_STATE_ERR exception; otherwise, the user agent must seek to the new value (which might raise an exception).

   If you want to start playing the video at 2 seconds and stop at 4 seconds (in the video time stamp), set starttime, endtime to 2, 4 respectively, not 2000, 4000. Furthermore, before seeking to starttime, you must load the video resource once

   function playVideo() {
       var starttime = 2;  // start at 2 seconds
       var endtime = 4;    // stop at 4 seconds
   
       var video = document.getElementById('player1');
   
       //handler should be bound first
       video.addEventListener("timeupdate", function() {
          if (this.currentTime >= endtime) {
               this.pause();
           }
       }, false);
   
       //suppose that video src has been already set properly
       video.load();
       video.play();    //must call this otherwise can't seek on some browsers, e.g. Firefox 4
       try {
           video.currentTime = starttime;
       } catch (ex) {
           //handle exceptions here
       }
   }