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COMMENTS

Watch YouTube High Quality Videos by Default

About a week ago, Ryan wrote about a way that you could watch high-resolution YouTube videos by adding something on to the end of the YouTube URL. That is no longer needed because YouTube videos that are higher quality (not all are) have a link below the video that says “Watch this video in higher quality.” Some of you doubted whether or not you were actually seeing a higher quality video with the “trick” we first mentioned, so now this should put your doubts to rest. The screenshot below shows what you’ll be looking for:

Even better is the fact that you can watch YouTube high quality videos by default. When you’re logged in to your YouTube account, click “Account”. Then under the “Account Section” look for “Video Playback Quality.” Click that and then this is what you’ll see:

youtube high resolution

Once you save the settings, the higher-quality videos will play when they are available. This way you’ll never have to click the link below the video to “watch this video in higher quality.” If it seems to be loading slow, they do include the link to go back to the lower quality video.

Thanks for the anonymous tip!

—

Other news regarding YouTube is that they have added some new ways to “integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more.” In other words, they’ve introduced new API’s and this is what you’ll be able to do with them:

Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc.)
Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc) through software

If you’re interested, checkout the YouTube blog where they explain these new features.

March 12th, 2008 Written by Ashley

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IceDoggMarch 12, 2008 at 11:28 am

Cool, Thanks for the great tip!

TinhedAll-StarMarch 12, 2008 at 1:08 pm

This is pretty good news, even if i have a slow internet connection i can always use the download youtube video greasemonkey script and enjoy high quality video for later.

AshleyAuthorMarch 12, 2008 at 3:40 pm

IceDogg wrote:

Your welcome!

Tinhed wrote:

That’s a good solution for people who don’t necessarily have the fast connection but want better videos.

AmakMarch 12, 2008 at 7:17 pm

Hope their servers can handle the extra bandwidth.

AshleyAuthorMarch 13, 2008 at 1:34 pm

Amak wrote:

I haven’t noticed any issues, so I’m thinking they were prepared for the increase in bandwidth. A good chunk of people probably won’t even care to watch the higher quality video which will help out as well.

PeterMarch 25, 2008 at 8:31 am

NB: You need to be logged into YouTube for this feature. Google can then track your video watching habits.

RyanAuthorMarch 25, 2008 at 6:26 pm

Peter wrote:

That doesn’t really bother me. Google can track my video watching habits all they want because there’s nothing that I really care about on YouTube. If they want to know that I just watched the skateboarding dog video then so be it.

They can also track your video watching habits according to IP address, so it’s not like you have to be logged in for them to track you.

edMay 8, 2008 at 3:53 pm

I can’t load all youtube vids only the high res…

problem cocukMay 19, 2008 at 11:41 am

I agree with you man. Very good script

SkeddyMay 21, 2008 at 4:42 pm

Thank you. I saw the Firefox work-around a while ago, but didn’t know that youtube had added it to the account settings. Thanks for pointing it out!!

AshleyAuthorMay 22, 2008 at 7:37 pm

Skeddy wrote:

TSJuly 29, 2008 at 6:44 am

I’m not sure if this applies to anyone else, but my quality settings do NOT save. After a few hours of having “higher-quality” playback as my default, my settings revert to “choose my video quality dynamically…” and Youtube plays standard quality first. I know that this is not a cookie issue because I remain logged into Youtube; the problem is server-side because my settings reset frequently.

Apparently a few other people are having this problem and have posted on the Youtube community forums but have not yet gotten a response.

asykralSeptember 3, 2008 at 4:00 am

thanks for the scripts.. it was good

xpiritOctober 15, 2008 at 10:41 pm

thx

seo dan??man?October 28, 2008 at 2:00 pm

bravo!!

AnonymousNovember 13, 2008 at 6:27 pm

The setting still doesn’t give the same results as &fmt=18. Pop on some headphones and you’ll notice =18 will give you stereo sound on many vids that otherwise is not heard.

acherimoyaNovember 24, 2008 at 10:22 am

Agreed, &fmt=18 gives stereo where regular “higher quality” does not. There’s also an &fmt=22 which is apparently really high resolution, but I’m not sure when it actually works. I’m still trying to figure this out.

qatestdevDecember 3, 2008 at 4:19 am

Thanks for the information and comments.

I am testing the best way to produce, convert, upload and download YouTube videos that could be well reproduced by &fmt=18 and &fmt=22.

Stereo and Widescreen (16/9) at 480×270 are done (&fmt=18), also the normal quality (16/9, 320×180, Mono) but is missing &fmt=22 that I think will guive Stereo and 1280×720 (High Definition 720 horizontal lines, near HD Ready resolution 1366×768).

Tests and results at:
- [youtube.com] – real 16/9 480×270 + Stereo (480×276 in this specific case, but low quality source video), moving souns from left to right in a easy way to test the efectiviness of Stereo, 17 secons video
- [youtube.com] – real 16/9 480×270 + Stereo (480×276 in this specific case and very high quality source video), 14 secons video

I will try today &fmt=22.

qatestdevDecember 5, 2008 at 3:19 am

Worked ! and some new findings.

You could see the results for HQ 720p (1280×720 + Stereo) here: [youtube.com] .

New ?! YouTube generates 7 different videos (4 in stereo and 3 in mono, with 2 in ~4/3 format), you could see and hear the differences by yourself, try to watch in full screen (or download the YouTube respective files):

NQ – Normal Quality (320×180, Mono, &fmt=5) – [youtube.com]
HQM – High Quality Mono (480×270, Mono, &fmt=6) –
[youtube.com]
MS – Mobile Stereo (176×144, Stereo, &fmt=13) –
[youtube.com]
MMLB – Mobile Mono Letterbox (176×144, Mono, &fmt=17) –
[youtube.com]
HQ – High Quality (480×270, Stereo, &fmt=18) –
[youtube.com]
HD – High Definition 720p (1280×720, Stereo, &fmt=22) –
[youtube.com]
NQS – Normal Quality Stereo (320×180, Stereo, &fmt=34) –
[youtube.com]

In the YouTube site you only have access to NQ and HQ videos, and allows you to switch between them, but to access the HD 720p version you need to “add &fmt=22″ in the end of the YouTube video link (works only if the upload file was at least 1280×720).

In the “(more info)” section (in the right below the yellow button “Subscribe”) on YouTube site from the 3 tests you have all the details so you could use that information to upload 1280×720 videos to YouTube and have him generate the 7 different quality videos, after you could verify all watching in full screen or by downloading the 7 different video files and reproduce them in your computer/device.

Have noticed the 13 (Stereo) and 17 format for Mobile/Personal MP4 devices? On the YouTube site they are played in 16/9 format but they are natively ~4/3 format (check by downloading the respective files).

Enjoy the new High Definition and Mobile era in YouTube !

qatestdevDecember 7, 2008 at 6:51 am

After December 6 YouTube started to show a “watch in HD” option, but to access some old 4/3 format videos and some 16/9 previously produced videos but in HQ and HD 720p you continue to need to use &fmt=18 and &fmt=22 respectively.

qatestdevDecember 11, 2008 at 3:48 am

YouTube generates not 7 but 8 videos with different formats. The new one is used in 4/3 YouTube screens like Annotations setup and in the firsts minutes after the initial upload and before the other formats are generated (processed) by YouTube.

This format Q43 don’t has “&fmt=” and is slight different from NQ (”&fmt=5″) has higher bit rate, same format 320×180 and same mono.

You could check that at [youtube.com] .

Asbjørn UlsbergDecember 15, 2008 at 7:20 am

Setting this does nothing but creating a cookie in the browser that seemingly has a rather short expiration. I haven’t debugged it thoroughly, but the setting is not stored at YouTube’s end in any way, but in a browser cookie, so changing browsers, deleting cookies, etc., will make YouTube completely forget about the quality setting.

I kind of understand the reasoning behind this as people can be logged in to YouTube from several different places with several different connection bandwidths, but it still sucks having to set this preference in all browsers, all the time, everywhere. At least when the default is the Qualitatus El Crappo Majoro.

çiçekçiJanuary 2, 2009 at 11:16 am

thanks

meyve sepetiFebruary 6, 2009 at 6:26 am

lig tv izleApril 29, 2009 at 12:05 pm

nice text, thanks for all

sohbetMay 8, 2009 at 12:40 am

thanks for all

chatMay 8, 2009 at 12:41 am

thanks all

ChrisMay 21, 2009 at 9:33 am

Thanks for this, it was always a bother to just click HD everytime when I have a computer that can handle the extra space.

sinealemJune 10, 2009 at 11:49 am