Code to Watch Better YouTube Videos

9 replies
Hey y'all!

For those who don't know, my son gave me a code that can help you see videos better on YouTube. Someone else had made a video about it. For some reason, only some of them say "Watch in high quality."

But it doesn't matter - ANY YouTube video you go to, add this onto the end of the URL: &fmt=18

You'll immediately see it MUCH sharper.

I love it - my own Camtasia videos were a bit blurry with the text but this makes them very sharp!
Tiff
#code #videos #watch #youtube
  • Profile picture of the author Mo Goulet
    Thanks for the tip....

    Mo
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  • Profile picture of the author espacecadet
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author Jesus Perez
      WOW! It went from a gaussian blur of 2.0 to 0 (for you Photoshop lovers out there)
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  • Profile picture of the author Jesus Perez
    Originally Posted by TiffanyDow View Post

    For some reason, only some of them say "Watch in high quality."
    Tiff
    It appears this only works on videos uploaded in 640x480 or larger resolution. If the original uploader uploaded a 320x240, resolution will not improve.

    Still...the difference is huge with the majority of them. Thanks, Tiffany.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mraz
      Very interesting, to think that youtube's flash player is default to 320x240 even though the video source is on a higher resolution. With that additional string, it'll make higher resolution video better.

      Why didn't youtube implement this by default??
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      • Profile picture of the author Dave OSullivan
        Thanks for the share Tiff!

        It really does make a huge improvement, I upload at 480x360 and can really see the difference.

        Dave.
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        • Profile picture of the author TeamGlobal
          Thanks, Tiffany.

          This will make an welcome addition to my collection of youtube tips.

          All The Best,


          Tony
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          • Profile picture of the author ExRat
            Hi,

            Why didn't youtube implement this by default??
            Just guessing, but bandwidth usage or 'video start-up' time could be possible reasons.
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            Roger Davis

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            • Profile picture of the author Josh Anderson
              "It appears this only works on videos uploaded in 640x480 or larger resolution. If the original uploader uploaded a 320x240, resolution will not improve."
              It works on all youtube videos... the key is that if you uploaded a highly compressed video then this is not going to make that much difference in quality.

              If your original video is relatively uncompressed for example lossless DV avi then it will kick some serious butt in quality:

              "Why didn't youtube implement this by default?"
              On youtube partner videos you will see a link directly under them that says "view in high quality."

              I imagine that they did not do this by default for a couple reasons:

              1. Video tasting. Most people taste a video to see if they want to watch it. This savews Youtube bandwidth by not serving the HQ version by default since the default version is approx 325kbps and the h.264 version (HQ version) is approx 400kbps.

              2. Additionally viewing the HQ version which is encoded with h.264 requires flashplayer 9 to be installed on the viewers computer and Flashplayer 9 only came out of beta in December of 2007... however, it now has an estimated 97% + market penetration.

              3. Also the HQ version of YT video in h.264 format was specifically produced for distribution on the iPhone.

              iPhone does not have flashplayer so they needed a format that did not require flashplayer to play.

              Making them available to YT visitors was probably a secondary benefit... the primary purpose of the h.264 HQ video was most likely for the Youtube content on iPhone partership.
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              • Profile picture of the author kevinw1
                Excellent! makes a HUGE difference in the video quality issue I've been struggling with for days.

                Next problem is to get the HD version to play using an embedded object in a Wordpress post. The YT code of course defaults to low res, but simply adding the &fmt=18 code to the two href= URLs in the embedded object code doesn't bring up the HD version. Is there a way to do this?

                Edited to add: the Smart Youtube plugin works perfectly for this.

                Kevin
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