watching youtube in better quality

[japanesebaby]

ok i must be a bit slow/stupid since i only discovered this just now :-P - but anyway:
i didn't know that pretty much every youtube video can be watched in HQ, just by manually adding "&fmt=18" at the end of the address line.
just compare the two:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wt3zQRJRqI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wt3zQRJRqI&fmt=18

the change is remarkable, especially in the audio!

[lostflower4]

Or simply add a # at the end of the hyperlink.

However, this only works with videos that were uploaded fairly recently. YouTube didn't used to store a "high quality" version.

Well, it's progress. Maybe in 10-15 years YouTube will finally catch up with the quality of real TV. 

[japanesebaby]

Or simply add a # at the end of the hyperlink.

hmm, that doesn't seem to work for me for some reason.

anyway. well, it's not that i'm overly thrilled about this or thinking it's something really awesome. actually i just edited the topic subject to say just "better quality" because i really don't think that such a thing as "HQ youtube" exists.
anyway, it just makes the whole youtube a bit more reasonable. mostly i find youtube totally unreasonable (when viewed in standard quality) because it's simply too crappy.

[wish-man]

On ur 2 links quality is the same...  :roll:

[wish-man]

http://curefans.com/index.php/topic,5275.0.html 

[japanesebaby]

On ur 2 links quality is the same...  :roll:

:
no, it's not the same.
the first one's standard, the second one's not. there's a very clear difference. just look at the specs (for instance the second one has stereo sound whereas typical crappy youtube audio is alwasy some 64 kb/s mono. :roll:)

besides, when you click the second link (the one with "&fmt=18"), you should see the option "watch in standard quality" under the screen (under "views"). if you can't see that then obviously it's not working for you and for some reason you can only watch the standard quality stream.)
perhaps it's your own browser settings or something, that prevents you to see the difference(?). or, perhaps adding "&fmt=18" doesn't work where you live(?) - just like adding "#" that lostflower4 suggested doesn't seem to work for me.
youtube does have some restrictions on what videos you can watch depending on where you're located, so perhaps this works a bit similarly. i don't know.
anyway, there is a notable difference between the links i posted.


i'm not interested in downloading anything from youtube, since the quality is just so bad there even at it's best. personally i don't see any point in  collecting low bitrate .flv files on my HD.  but i do find the "HQ" option useful and handy when watching random clips over there.
it makes it a bit more bearable.

[lostflower4]

Or simply add a # at the end of the hyperlink.

hmm, that doesn't seem to work for me for some reason.

Sorry, I was mistaken about the "#" thing. It's definitely "&fmt=18"

Maybe in 10-15 years YouTube will finally catch up with the quality of real TV. 

Well, I have to give credit to YouTube. They've recently quadrupled the available resolution from 320 x 240 to 680 x 480 (which is close to DVD resolution). The sound quality is much better too.

They've even introduced some 1280 x 720 high definition stuff, which I never would have expected.

Of course, all the really old stuff is still pretty bad and people will continue to upload crappy stuff. But it's a huge step forward!

(Although I imagine there will be more copyright complaints since things are getting closer and closer to quality that one might pay for).