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How can I play a video starting from the point it was stopped last time?

This is useful for watching long videos.

I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and VLC media player.

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  • 2
    SMPlayer does this OOTB.
    – Rinzwind
    Jul 16, 2012 at 12:32
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    This is more of a suggestion than an answer, the default Totem Movie Player in Ubuntu 12.04 has a feature that allows you to start playing from the last position (or where it stopped when you closed it).
    – Peachy
    Jul 16, 2012 at 12:33

7 Answers 7

Reset to default
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Note: In recent versions of Totem below feature sadly was removed.

Totem

The default Ubuntu movie player Totem has an option to resume playback too. This is accessible from the "Edit -> Preferences -> General" menu. Just tick "Start playing files from last posititon":

enter image description here

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    Ubuntu 15.10 doesn't have that.
    – sitarane
    Mar 19, 2016 at 13:45
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    @sitarane: thanks for spotting this... sadly it appears that recently the GNOME team prefers to remove rather than add features.
    – Takkat
    Mar 19, 2016 at 15:10
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I dont think there is such a feature in VLC. If you are willing to switch to another media player for this feature, which I am not, you can try smplayer. From their project page on sourceforge:

One of the most interesting features of SMPlayer: it remembers the settings of all files you play. So you start to watch a movie but you have to leave... don't worry, when you open that movie again it will resume at the same point you left it, and with the same settings: audio track, subtitles, volume...

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  • Sorry for the downvote, but by now there is such a feature, so you'd better delete this answer. :(
    – Fabby
    Apr 14, 2016 at 9:21
  • I just successfully turned it on. It definitely exists in VLC.
    – pxc3110
    Aug 16, 2017 at 8:52
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Yes you can, with VLC.

View the video in VLC. Press Ctrl-B to manage bookmarks. Click on Create. Then it will make a bookmark at that particular point in the video. Click on X or Close the dialogue box. Then Press Ctrl-Y to save the playlist to file. You can type in the name of the playlist. It will save playlist in same folder as the video. The bookmark will be saved into the playlist file.

The next time you play the playlist, the bookmark is intact. If you did not save playlist to file, the bookmark is gone the next time you play the same video.

To test it out, exit from VLC.

Run VLC again. Click on Open File. Click on the name of the playlist that you saved.

The video plays.

Go to main menu, Click on Playback. A scroll down list appears. Click on Custom Bookmarks. A scroll list appears. It says on the top, Custom Bookmarks - Ctrl B. And beneath that, is the saved Bookmark that you want to jump to and resume watching the video.

You just click on the bookmark that you saved. It will jump to the bookmarked point where you left off and you can resume viewing.

Special Note:

Do NOT Press Ctrl-B to search for the saved Bookmark. The manage bookmark dialogue box is shown. But it is completely empty. This has deluded many users into thinking that VLC never saved the Bookmark.

This is an idiosyncrasy of VLC. Ctrl-B merely calls up the "Create Bookmark" dialogue box. It does not display any previously saved Bookmark.

But if you use the main menu Playback and submenu Custom Bookmarks, the saved Bookmark will be shown.

In case you are wondering, the saved playlist file with the saved Bookmark is very small in size. It does not recopy the entire video. It only saves the instructions of what video to play and where the saved Bookmarks are within it.

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YES it is Possible in VLC , open any Video you may wish to View later ,

Pause the video where you want it to Resume to playback next time , then

Go to Menu Bar , then PLAYBACK >> Custom Bookmarks>> MANAGE and CREATE from where you want to resume for NEXT time.

enter image description here

Then close the Vlc player , go to the same Video you want to Resume , then from the same above listed options ,select the Created Bookmark like in this image , and it will resume playing.

enter image description here

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    The point, of resuming the video from where we stopped/left it, is to do less amount of work :) otherwise we can simply open the video and drag the cursor to point where we left it
    – binW
    Jul 16, 2012 at 14:46
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    That's a hellovalot of work :D :D
    – Rinzwind
    Jul 16, 2012 at 14:57
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    if today i am watching a 2+ hours Documentary (Long Videos) , and adjourned it for 3-4 days and i follow this process , it is easy , rather than dragging to find where exactly i left (which would take more or less equal time). After all EASY for every user is different ( eg. Unity vs Gnome-shell). Anyway you are going to open the video for reviewing , resuming method for every other would be different. I like this method and so i posted :) . It also resembles like a Bookmark method.
    – atenz
    Jul 16, 2012 at 14:58
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Just use mpv
for mr on ubuntu
sudo apt install mpv

then
mpv --save-position-on-quit *
This save all position for all file by obtaininh md5

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Now it's possible in a simple way (checked on Ubuntu 18.04 and VLC 3.0.4):

in VLC open Tools -> Preferences and set Continue playback? to "Always".

After that, VLC will resume playback if it was paused after 5% of the video duration.

VLC settings

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Creating a bookmark only saves it if the video is part of a playlist first. So add the video to a playlist, create your bookmark and then exit. When you relaunch your playlist you will be able to utilize the bookmark in the playback menu.

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