The fastest way to download any YouTube video is to add “ss” before the “youtube.com” part of the URL, like this: “ssyoutube.com”. This redirects to you to Savefrom.net, click on “download video in browser” and select the video quality you prefer. Done in less than a minute. — CD

I can’t believe I didn’t know these YouTube shortcuts before! To pause a video press K. To fast forward press L. To rewind press J. To watch frame by frame forward or backward, press the period or comma key. — CD 

Just as I zip through podcasts at 1.5x speed, I recently learned I can speed up YouTube videos too. So now I go through twice as many tutorials. Just click on the gear-circle at the bottom right corner of the YouTube frame, and in the pop-up menu select Speed and your choice up to 2x. — KK

Sometimes I want to watch a YouTube video one frame at a time. This website lets you enter any YouTube or Vimeo URL and it will display the video with buttons that advance or reverse the video one frame at a time. — MF

Fargo. the television series, is my favorite thing in the world right now, but watching it makes me very tense. Some life-changing advice when watching something scary or suspenseful: root for the villain. Once I decide I want the bad guy to win, I actually get happy when he pops up out of nowhere or kills someone off. — CD

I’ve been a long time fan of The Editing Room for their hilarious rewrites of movies in screenplay format. They make fun of movie tropes and call out every cliche. Reading their abridged scripts is like watching a movie with a funny friend. — CD

I stopped watching horror movies a while back, because they seemed to be getting more and more graphic and I couldn’t cut it. Instead, I enjoy reading scene-by-scene spoilers for all the films I am too scared or lazy to watch. The Movie Spoiler is not the best designed site, but it’s been around for a long time and all the reviews are well written. — CD

Flixmetrix is a website that combines film ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and Metacritic and gives you the average. What I find the most helpful is that I can filter my movie search by genre, and limit results to only those available on Amazon Prime and/or Netflix Watch Instantly. That way I don’t waste time flipping between services searching for a movie. — CD

I love getting to the theaters early enough to watch all the movie trailers. Trailernite.com is non-stop trailer watching. If you don’t like it, just hit next. — CD

This database of secret Netflix genres will help you out when you can’t find anything to watch. Otherwise how would I ever realize I was in the mood to watch a Mother-Daughter Relationship Thriller if I never knew it was an option? Some of the category codes currently have no movies that fit the description, but that’s understandable when they’re so specific. — CD

In the mood for a particular movie or show but don’t know which streaming service it’s playing on? That’s where JustWatch comes in. Just enter a title and this site will list all the services that offer it, along with prices. — MF

I’m a Netflix subscriber, but the built-in title browsing isn’t great. I use instantwatcher.com, which lets you browse and search shows and movies in many different ways. — MF

Netflix bases its recommendations on what you watch. If you want to change what its algorithm sees, or if you are just curious to see everything you’ve watched on Netflix, go here. You can delete a show from the list by clicking the X next to it. I was surprised to see that the oldest item on my list was Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension, which someone in my family watched on 12/12/11. — MF

I am wallowing in the deep motherlode of enthusiasm that is YouTube. Here are three ultra niche channels that I subscribe to and keep coming back to for more. One is FliteTest, where they turn almost anything into a flying object, from a pizza box to an Ikea chair. Another is Steve1989, with 600,000 subscribers, who collects and eats vintage military rations and ready-to-eat meals (MRE). Yes, he’ll try that ancient WWII snack box. If he is happy, I’m happy. The third is AvE, a faceless Canadian who takes apart old tools and motors while delivering commentary in his own private language of creative swearing, potty-mouth talk, and the most astounding technical knowledge I have encountered. — KK

Here are 10 hours of oceanic video. Just ten uninterrupted hours of relaxing underwater scenes of fish swimming and bubbling sounds. No narration, no drama. I watched more of this than I thought I would. Outtakes from the BBC’s Blue Planet series. — KK

If the genius artist Escher could make a musical 3D video it would like this one by mathematical explainer Vi Hart. You can move around in all 360 degrees of a 4-minute piece with 3 overlapping piano performances by a recurring Vi Hart. Watch the making-of video to appreciate the mathematical beauty of its recursive complexity. — KK

For something completely different in movies, I recommend the intensely dark comedy The Death of Stalin. As the New Yorker said, its humor “is so black you could pump it out of the ground.” Normally trivializing evil is not something I could enjoy, but this story, loosely based on historical facts, is so over the top and well done, it was funny. Laughing at the horrifying atrocities seemed the only sane response. The movie skirted the soul’s edge, but it worked for me. Available to rent on YouTube. — KK

I’ve been watching Halt and Catch Fire on Netflix, a TV series that ran for four seasons, from 2014 to 2017. It’s like a non-comedic Silicon Valley and is about a team of misfits (led by a guy who looks and acts like a psychotic Don Draper) who are trying to build a 15-pound portable computer during the PC computer revolution of the 1980s. Each season is better than the previous one. — MF

My mother-in-law is 90, doesn’t speak English, and lives with us. She and I enjoy watching the new season 3 of BattleBots on Amazon Prime. This mindless machine-on-machine violence of robots demolishing other robots is universally entertaining, and spectacular. No language needed. — KK

This cool 9-min video story, Fire in Cardboard City, is enjoyable in itself, but I really like it because the creator hacked an Xbox Kinect to do extremely low-budget motion-capture that looks great, proving how far amateurs can go today in film. — KK