High-Quality YouTube Hack

Jimmy Ruska (via Kottke) discovered a nice query string hack to enable high-quality videos on YouTube. Basically, just append this to a YouTube video URL:

&fmt=18

According to Ruska, the format 18 video is encoded using "H.264 with stereo AAC sound at 480x360." Following the Kottke post, a YouTube engineer responded with a format 22 video, which is encoded at 720p. The engineer also noted that not all videos have format 18 or 22 versions, dependent on the source file uploaded.

2 comments

Good stuff. Do you know if you can access the high-quality video in the chromeless player?

Will 3 yrs ago

Looks like you can add this string to the embed code:

&ap=%2526fmt%3D18

Look about halfway down Kottke's post to see it in context. I assume if it works for the standard embed it would work on the chromeless player.

Robbie 3 yrs ago