All about How to Watch YouTube in HD, Search for HD content on YouTube, and How to Download them
I have been receiving quite a number of emails complaining that my previous post on Youtube HD has been hard to follow. I have also received other emails congratulating me that the hack, google search code as well the downloading script worked perfectly. Just for the benefit of the people who did not get it, I am reposting it, in a simple plain layman language, so that everyone can enjoy Youtube in its full HD beauty. So here it goes.
First things first, only a few of the zillions of videos on YouTube have HD enabled in them. This solely depends on the quality of the original video that has been uploaded. If the original video being uploaded is a 1080p or a 720p video (from a Blu-Ray or an HD TV rip, in simple terms a video with a large resolution), only then we could see the HD option for that video. e.g. The KungFu Panda OST- Kungfu Fighting. It is available in 3 options.
Option 1: The Low-Quality flv version which is suitable for viewing in low bandwidth internet. The buffering of this video would be much faster but the video quality is the most inferior. This is in most cases the default video quality for all Youtube videos.
Option 2: The High Quality mp4 version which is suitable for viewing in high bandwidth internet. The quality is much better than flv. It is available for most videos on Youtube which have been uploaded recently. You can make buffering Higher Quality versions of the Video as default, by changing the Playback Settings in your YouTube account. Just follow the steps below.
Go to your YouTube account page. On the left hand side of the page, click on a link called Playback Setup. Now, you will get 3 options to choose from- low quality for slow connections, high quality for faster connections, or let YouTube choose dynamically depending on runtime connection speed.
Alternatively, even for videos which do not have High-Q viewing enabled, a better picture and sound quality version (not necessarily better resolution) is available if the video URL is tweaked.
e.g. If the Kungfu Panda OST URL is :
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=u3aTU-IJ8c4,
just append it with &fmt=18, to look like
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=u3aTU-IJ8c4&fmt=18
This would make it stream the High-Q version.
Option 3: HD version. Like I said, HD is only available for a few videos, but the number is expected to increase as we see more HD content being uploaded. All the videos available for HD can be viewed in HD by clicking on the “watch in HD” link below the video. The mentioned Kungfu Panda OST -Kungfu Fighting has the link as well.
Alternatively, HD versions can be viewed directly by appending &fmt=22 in the video URL.
So if the original URL is :
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=u3aTU-IJ8c4,
then the HD version would be
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=u3aTU-IJ8c4&fmt=22
How to Search for HD content on YouTube and Download HD videos after the jump.
