High Resolution YouTube Videos

YouTube is host to a lot of user-made Xara tutorial videos including a number from myself. I recently discovered that you can watch them in high resolution, which for tutorial videos is very beneficial as it shows the small details much more clearly.

Simply add "&fmt=18" to the end of a YT video address to see the high resolution version (if YT has processed it yet). So for example:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=M7aJdzY8fEA

would become

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=M7aJdzY8fEA&fmt=18

The high resolution videos have a resolution of 480x360 (instead of 320x240) and use 44 kHz stereo MP4 sound quality (instead of 22 kHz mono). All videos uploaded may already have high res versions, but some are still in the process of being converted.

The disadvantages are that they take longer to download, and you can't skip ahead taking advantage of non-linear streaming.

Great tip Xhris - thanks.. Works well :)

There's also the code &fmt=22 that can be added for HD videos. These codes are now redundant now pretty much given that links appear automatically in the bottom-right of the video indicating the other qualities that can be seen.

Quoting from my website making tutorial for completeness:

There are additional switch commands that can be added to embedded HTML code (used to embed YT videos in your site) to force the video to automatically play in high quality (HQ) or high definition (HD) mode.

Add to the end of the address:
• &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 for HQ (480x360)
• &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 for HD (1280x720 a.k.a. 720p)

For example:
Flash=“http://www.youtube.com/v/stI9LQ0mjKY&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D18”

Note that a video will only automatically play in HD with the above extension if the video was uploaded at HD quality, otherwise it will play in standard definition (SD)—which is poorer quality than HQ. HQ mode will always work however. Hence unless the video is HD or SD quality, the address should always have the HQ extension added to ensure maximum playback quality.

Also, see here for downloading high resolution YT videos.