Thursday 21 Feb 2008YouTube sneekily goes high quality

To fetch the higher quality version of a YouTube video, add &fmt=18 to the end of the URL, like this:

current/old version, 320x240 resolution:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-DGjfcUkRGk
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-DGjfcUkRGk&fmt=18
high-quality (H.264) 480x360 version!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=C0_aFU4Yjj8 -> low quality 320x240 resolution
http://youtube.com/watch?v=C0_aFU4Yjj8&fmt=18 -> high-quality (Flash 9 required)

YouTube seems to have converted 90% of all uploads. Audio is now double the samplerate (from 22.05 to 44.1 kHz), and stereo for the fmt=18 version (not the fmt=6 version!), but sound is being processed in a weird way. You can read here how all this got discovered by dtfinch, bayme and yawoo. All three are members of the videohelp forum, where discussion on YouTube quality is still ongoing.
YouTube's timing is brutal by the way, since Stage6 is shutting down the 28th!

Er zijn locaties, in Japan en de VS, waar hogere kwaliteit al de 'default' is. YouTube is een aantal formaten aan het testen. Ook &fmt=6 bestaat in veel gevallen. De oplettende internetter merkt tevens dat de hogere kwaliteit data afkomstig is van razendsnelle google servers, terwijl de oude van trage overbelaste youtube servers binnenstroomt..
Uitgaand van deze statistieken, ziet 20% van de internettende mensheid gemiddeld 9 hele videos per dag van YouTube (flink naar beneden afgerond). Als de gemiddelde grootte per video (nu) rond de 10 Megabytes ligt, dan hebben we het over 264 miljoen keer 9 keer 10 megabytes = 23,7 petabytes/dag. Met deze hogere kwaliteit video's verdubbelt de gemiddelde grootte per video. Hoe ze het klaarspelen is mij een raadsel..

You can find the embed code here, to use for putting the H.264 version of a video on your website, like so:


For those interested, I also wrote a nice comment about this subject under this article.

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