Viewing Higher Quality Videos on YouTube

Earlier this week when YouTube announced its new APIs, I asked "where are those higher quality videos?" What I didn't realize was that higher quality videos have been available for a while, but only on select videos. It's not HD, but 480 x 360 is better than 320 x 240.

How do you view them, though? The default setting is still normal resolution.

Well, there are 3 ways:

Change the URL. Add &fmt=18 to the end of a normal YouTube URL. If there's a high quality version available, that extra string will cause it to load.

Better YouTube Firefox extension. Lifehacker has made the Better YouTube extension for Firefox; the latest version of the add-on includes the URL technique above. Check it out, it has other features as well.

Change Account Settings. If you have a YouTube account (not all do), go to account settings where you'll find a "Video Quality" option. You can change it to always serve up the higher quality video if it exists.

YouTube also gave some details on their blog on Friday.

You may have noticed that we're now giving you the option of watching some YouTube videos in higher quality. We're making these streams available on certain videos, based upon the source file uploaded to us, and over time you'll find a greater percentage of the library is available to view in higher quality. This feature applies to all eligible videos uploaded from the YouTube community, and is not restricted to partner content, so everyone can enjoy this upgrade.

We want to help everyone understand that YouTube will continue to evolve with the videos you're creating. We're especially excited about offering this upgrade in video quality to our community of filmmakers and animators, who have been requesting this feature for some time. As more of you guys produce great-looking videos, we want to make sure they can be seen in all their glory. So we'll continue to increase quality behind the scenes and make tweaks to support your uploads. (Remember, we can now support uploads up to 1GB in size.)

Yep, still stuck with a 1GB size limitation anyway, so you're not going to see HD videos on there anytime soon. The amount of time it takes to upload in our mostly asymmetric broadband world is also a problem. But at least they're trying.