seek to a point in html5 video

You can use v.currentTime = seconds; to seek to a given position.

Reference: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLMediaElement/currentTime

Unfortunately it seems with some movie elements it behaves differently than others. For instance with an amazon video_element, it seems you must call pause before you can seek anywhere, then call play. However, if you call play "too quickly" after setting the currentTime then it won't stick. Odd.

Here is my current work around:

function seekToTime(ts) {
  // try and avoid pauses after seeking
  video_element.pause();
  video_element.currentTime = ts; // if this is far enough away from current, it implies a "play" call as well...oddly. I mean seriously that is junk.
    // however if it close enough, then we need to call play manually
    // some shenanigans to try and work around this:
    var timer = setInterval(function() {
        if (video_element.paused && video_element.readyState ==4 || !video_element.paused) {
            video_element.play();
            clearInterval(timer);
        }       
    }, 50);
}