How to embed high quality YouTube videos

Filed under: Video, Web services, Google, web 2.0

How to embed high quality YouTube videos

by Jay Hathaway Nov 15th 2008

A lot of people don't know that YouTube has high quality videos, as well as the generally poor-quality standard versions. The links to the better (not HD, but still pretty good) versions are easy to miss, but there are a few steps you can take to make sure you're watching (and even embedding) the good stuff. Jason Kottke ran through a few of them recently on kottke.org.

First, make high-quality your default setting. You can do this in the Account menu, under "Playback Setup." That takes care of playback, but what if you want to link to the high-quality version of a video? Just paste "&fmt=18" or "&fmt=22" at the end of the URL. 18 is the 480x360 version, and 22 is the 720p version. Some videos will have one, but not the other, so try both if you need to.

When it comes to embedding, you can make a quick change to the embed code to get better video quality. Just add "&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" to the end of the URLs in your embed code. Here's an example:

[via Kottke]

Tags: 480p, 720p, high-quality-videos, kottke, video, youtube

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Cirdain said 3:24PM on 11-15-2008

I've always done this

arturo goga said 9:35PM on 11-15-2008

I've made a greasemonkey script which will embed, by default, the high quality version, thus avoiding the hassle of doing it time and time again.

Plus, it also embeds the video at a 530px default.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/36916

emmie said 11:48PM on 11-15-2008

Pls can you provide me with a link to download the application use for downloading youtube video with high quality.

cathkun said 5:00AM on 11-22-2008

video to flash converter does that job. http://www.videotoflash.net/avi-to-flash.htm

michael said 6:09PM on 1-14-2009

this works great but it seems they pull the videos due to a agreement violation when someone embeds the high quality versions.

any ideas that don't violate the agreement?

Natasha said 11:09PM on 1-23-2009

Thank you!

Josh said 12:29AM on 1-25-2009

i have been rick rolled, again... and again.... thanks

Art Hughes said 5:48PM on 1-28-2009

I have embedded YT videos on my site that work perfectly in Firefox (my default browser) but dont show up in IE6. Can someone please tell me what I have to change about my embed script for it to work in IE too.

my site is www.arthughesrc.com

thanks so much

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