YouTube now offers some videos in multiple resolutions. If you’re watching a multiformat video on the YouTube site itself, you can call up different resolutions by adding a format code to the end of the URL. Adding “&fmt=6″ bumps the resolution from 320×240 to 448×336 and doubles the audio sample rate from 22.05 to 44.1kHz. And adding “&fmt=18″ (iPod mode) raises it to 480×360 with stereo sound. This mode also uses h.264 encoding for better video quality.
If you’re signed in to YouTube, you can specify that it always serve you the highest-quality videos. But Tech Recipes offers another approach: drag this bookmarklet — YouTube Hi-Res — to your browser toolbar. Whenever you click it, the bookmarklet will add “&fmt=18″ to the page’s URL for you.
Wired explains how to add the format codes to the standard YouTube embedding code. Note that the hi-res videos take longer to load and are more prone to stalling during playback. —David Battino
Source: O’Reilly Digital Media
