HD Youtube Videos

Thursday, April 17, 2008

When a video is uploaded to YouTube, the default view is a 320x240 video stretched to fit in a 640x480 player with a low audio bitrate.  For some newer videos, youtube also retains a full 640x480 copy of the video with higher quality audio.  Sometimes you will be allowed to see a button that allows you to watch the higher quality videos, but it’s not on every video.

I recently discovered that by adding &fmt=18 to the end of the URL, you can view the higher quality video for those that have it!  Check out the screenshot comparison below from the Starcraft 2 trailer:

Watch the videos here to see the real difference:
Standard: http://youtube.com/watch?v=30MBljXxg3M
High Quality: http://youtube.com/watch?v=30MBljXxg3M&fmt=18

For another example, here’s Radiohead’s ”Nude”
Standard: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JsLn9Wl1u_Q
High quality: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JsLn9Wl1u_Q&fmt=18

Posted by Chris Barr on 04/17 at 09:24 PM
Filed under Music, Web, Video/Motion Graphics
Comments
1
Steven St. Clair commented on Apr 25, 2008 at 02:53 pm

Freaking Awesome. I totally didn’t know that, I heard they wanted to add higher quality videos at some point though.

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