Of course the school I’m taking my part time diploma course in uses Microsoft’s Teams as its communications platform.

Mind you, I like Microsoft’s Surface Laptops & Tablets, and I’m team Windows 10, so this is not just some lame Microsoft-hate. I’m even waiting to get the Service Pack 1 injection for Bill Gate’s 5G Antenna I installed in my left arm a few weeks back. But, despite their improvement over the years, what sets companies like Google apart from Microsoft is in the tiny little details.

Which, brings me to Microsoft Teams and its recordings.

There are some videos that can’t be downloaded, due to privacy reasons. Fair enough. But that means watching 4-6 hr lectures and classes using the native video player on Sharepoint, which sucks.

There are some downloadable classes where it’s so slow, I watch them at 1.5x speed. And on other platforms and video players, if there’s a short phrase or word that’s not clear, it’s very easy to just tap the back-arrow key, and the video cuts back 5 seconds, so you can repeat that little part of the recording to gain some clarity.

Both speed and fast forward/backward controls are not available using sharepoint’s player.

Speed Controlling Extensions to the Rescue

Thankfully, there are extensions, and the default video player on sharepoint for Microsoft Teams’ recordings is based on html 5.

Which means, you can use the extension called Video Speed Controller

As you can see, it adds a semi-transparent controller at the top left of the screen. This let’s you increase/decrease the videos speed in 0.1x intervals.

The settings menu opens up more customization options, letting you set your preferred key short-cuts, the intervals for speed and time jumps, as well blocking this app from appearing on sites that you choose.

That’s it. No more slow lectures and vaguely clicking on a 5 minute block in a 5 hour long recording just to try and hear a word again.

Download the Video Speed Controller now. This is on chrome, so it should also work on other chromium based browsers like Opera and Edge. Otherwise, you can try looking for similar html5 based speed controllers on other browsers’ extension libraries.

Also, you’re welcome.