Watch YouTube at High(er) Definition Easy

[rookandpawn]

example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1YvhN-XpSU

becomes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1YvhN-XpSU&fmt=18

Audio quality should also improve(ive noticed mono to stereo improvement as well).

Overall, this should help out some people with distributing their vids. Blip.tv recently announced they are no longer supporting machinima and AMVs. Perhaps youtube is an acceptable streaming option now. (stage6 is gone anyways)

[Dark Shikari]

Their H.264 encoder (rumored to be Xvid AVC in restricted-baseline mode) is possibly the worst I've ever seen, however. :rolleyes:

[um3k]

When I add the &fmt=18 to the URL, the video doesn't start playing. It loads for a while, but it doesn't play.

[J_Darnley]

I believe you need Flash 9 to be able to decode the AVC video.

[Brother John]

Their H.264 encoder (rumored to be Xvid AVC in restricted-baseline mode) is possibly the worst I've ever seen, however. :rolleyes:
Since when has YouTube been about quality ...?

[fibbingbear]

I've also heard that they just recently started doing this, and not all videos are converted yet.

[unfortunateson]

I can upload any of my x264 files directly to blip tv without any reencoding. I just rename the extension to .flv, and the blip.tv flash player plays them back perfectly. Thats probably the best option for highest quality video streaming over the internet at the moment.

Any Youtube videos suffer from poor quality.

[Dark Eiri]

If you add &fmt=6 instead, the quality will be much higher on video, but the audio will stay like the original youtube version.

[Inventive Software]

Tried the higher-quality mode on a video a couple days ago. Virtually no difference. Go figure. :D

[mgh]

quite a few of the older vids are also converted.
audio seems to be 105 to 115 kbps-44.1KHz-2 channel-AAC LC
-video kbps varied from 206 to 404 -baseline L 1.1 to L 2.1

These are older ones.
video download helper extension of firefox gives you a choice of downloading either the mp4 or the flv using &fmt=18, get only flv with &fmt=6

[zilog jones]

I take it the videos are still 320x240? Stereo upgrade is nice though, especially for music

[mgh]

size varied from 320x240 to 384x288.
I checked the vid in OP
&fmt=18 gives the mp4, &fmt=6 gives a higher res flv1 524 kbps-480x270-96kbps mono mp3

[Boiled Beans]

I've also heard that they just recently started doing this, and not all videos are converted yet.

In the first place, when you upload a video, I believe Youtube already reduces the quality? I've uploaded files close to almost 100MB before and when I download it again as an .flv file, it's only 20MB.

So unless Youtube has kept the original file I uploaded, I don't see how the quality can increase.

[bond]

HowTo download the .mp4 versions of youtube video:
1) take the following url:
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=AAA&t=BBB&fmt=18
2) replace AAA with the v= ID of the video, in the case above its v=a1YvhN-XpSU
3) replace the BBB with the t=value to be found for the video when checking the html sourcecode of the video's page
in this case its t=OEgsToPDskKEL4t23D9u95TFaaZeTZPB
4) download the result:
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=a1YvhN-XpSU&t=OEgsToPDskKEL4t23D9u95TFaaZeTZPB&fmt=18

[rack04]

HowTo download the .mp4 versions of youtube video:
1) take the following url:
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=AAA&t=BBB&fmt=18
2) replace AAA with the v= ID of the video, in the case above its v=a1YvhN-XpSU
3) replace the BBB with the t=value to be found for the video when checking the html sourcecode of the video's page
in this case its t=OEgsToPDskKEL4t23D9u95TFaaZeTZPB
4) download the result:
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=a1YvhN-XpSU&t=OEgsToPDskKEL4t23D9u95TFaaZeTZPB&fmt=18

Can you explain how to find the the t=value?

[bond]

Can you explain how to find the the t=value?go to the normal youtube page, right click on the white part, choose "show source", search for "&t="

[zilog jones]

When I download the MP4, I noticed in the properties (in MPC) it says "(C) 2007 Google Inc. v06.24.2007." :)
Anyone know have they been using it since then? Is Google Video using the same codec as well now?

[Schrade]

When I download the MP4, I noticed in the properties (in MPC) it says "(C) 2007 Google Inc. v06.24.2007." :)
Anyone know have they been using it since then? Is Google Video using the same codec as well now?

The iPhone was released on June 29th so maybe that's why the date is so similar. They started encoding videos in h.264 for the iPhone.

[smok3]

The iPhone was released on June 29th so maybe that's why the date is so similar. They started encoding videos in h.264 for the iPhone.

this sounds logical, they are probably just pushing allready encoded stuff (for iphone) via flash interface, now that it can do h264.