YouTube In better quality

[Shasoosh]

This is a simple "guide" i thought i'll share.

add &fmt=18 to every youtube clip you watch to get the "high quality" version of the clip, even in clips you don't see the "watch in high quality" link underneath.

high quality:

Most of the clips i tried worked.

Enjoy.. :)

[Trong]

That's old but thanks.

But you can just go here: http://www.youtube.com/video_quality_settings

and select that you have a high speed connection so that every video defaults to high quality.

[torrentthief]

didnt know about this, i've selected higher qual in settings now:) Thought they were saving on bandwidth giving us poor qual videos, the hq actually look decent instead of blurred:)

[s0nic69]

thanks! i think i have seen this somewhere before, cant remember where, but thanks! sometimes when i watch the videos i think, "wish the quality was a lil better", and now it can be.

I didnt know about the settings on youtube, thanks!

[Denis W. Veteran]

If you refuse to get a YouTube account, try this User JS script instead. It automatically appends &fmt=18 to all YouTube videos. This works on Firefox with Greasemonkey and Opera.

[buckaroo]

Or YousableTubeFix:

[Shasoosh]

That's old but thanks.

But you can just go here: http://www.youtube.com/video_quality_settings

and select that you have a high speed connection so that every video defaults to high quality.

changing in the options to "have a high speed connection" never worked for me. I still get the low quality videos and needs to add the &fmt=18 to every clip.

[BoJo]

Bit old, but then again I would have loved someone to come out and post it for the 6 months I watched horrible quality videos on a 20Mbps connection :p

&fmt=6 also works with varying results. Sometimes better, sometimes worse (could be in my head though lol), so I'm not exactly sure how it works.

[hjf288]

Alot of HQ Videos are showing Sorry this video is unavailable. or no longer available

[Abhishek kapoor]

But you can just go here: http://www.youtube.com/video_quality_settings

thax

[Shasoosh]

thax

again, changing the video settings doesn't cut it. After you changed the setting to High you can surf again to

and notice you still get the low quality video.

[Zoom7000]

Didn't know about this. Nice one, thanks!

[Shasoosh]

the user js rm20010 offered didn't worked for me. YousableTubeFix however , nicely done!

Thanks buckaroo.

[Bubbabyte]

can someone point me to some good encoding settings for youtube videos.. i take videos with my digicam, 640X480, xvid, mp3 audio.. and no matter what i do, when i upload it, it looks like ass... i can't seem to figure out how to make them look better.

[DARKNRGY]

Good tip, however it makes loading 10x longer... :pinch: (higher quality = more bandwidth)

[Srugie Veteran]

Nice tip!

[Ghatak]

gr8 stuff thanks for sharing

[azz0r_wugg]

There's an option on your account now, you don't need to-do this.

[Brian M. Veteran]

As far as I know, the "Watch in high quality" link is posted whenever a high quality stream is available. If it's not available, you're just watching the standard quality version ;)

[Shasoosh]

As far as I know, the "Watch in high quality" link is posted whenever a high quality stream is available. If it's not available, you're just watching the standard quality version ;)

I believe are wrong mate, just enter the youtube link i posted in the first post. It has a good quality clip but there's no link.

[Ambroos]

Let's make it clear.

Even if there ISN'T a "Watch in High Quality"-link, there oftenly IS a high-quality version!

I use a combo of these two userscripts:

// ==UserScript==
// @name		  YouTube HQ Links
// @description   All links will directly go to HQ version
// @include	   http://*youtube.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
var a=document.getElementsByTagName("a");for (i=0;i<a.length;i++) {if (a[i].href.indexOf("/watch?v")>-1){a[i].href+="&fmt=18";}}

// ==UserScript==
// @name		   YouTube HD
// @summary		If you watch a YouTube Video that isn't in High Quality yet, makes it high qualiy.
// @include		http://*youtube.com/watch?*
// ==/UserScript==

// Do it
function is_hd() {
  var fmt = false;
  var new_url;
  var url = new String(window.location);

  // Remove HTML anchor
  if (url.indexOf('#') > -1) url = url.split('#')[0];
  new_url = url;

  // Make sure we have a querystring (just in case)
  if (url.indexOf('?') > -1) {
	url = url.split('?')[1];
	var segments = url.split('&');

	// Check to see if we currently have a requested format
	for (var i=0; i<segments.length; i++) {
	  var current = segments[i].split('=');
	  if (current[0] == "fmt") fmt = current[1];
	  if (fmt) break;
	}

	// If not redirect to video in HD format
	if (!fmt) window.location = new_url + "&fmt=18"
  }

  // Not a video link
  return false;
}

is_hd();

both of them together make me OR directly getting HQ links OR if I am missing the fmt=18 tag redirects me to it always.

[+Elі Subscriber²]

Is there a version of these scripts for Internet Explorer?

[Julius Caro]

Good tip, however it makes loading 10x longer... :pinch: (higher quality = more bandwidth)

youtube always has bandwidth problems, in most cases (at least for me), a very low bandwidth (compared to my maximum) is used. its as if youtube tried to load the thing at the kbps speed the video requires for uninterrupted playback, but always fails.

chances are, 720p trailers from apple trailers will load faster than the crappiest youtube videos. it always happens to me

[Joshua-San]

I always have my quality option set to high quality, however, adding the fmt=18 switch still improves the video and audio quality significantly. I notice this with my own music uploads, watching the video in high quality mode makes the audio sound dull and makes it single channel audio (mono). Simply disgusting audio quality.

Adding the fmt=18 switch significantly improves the audio quality. The audio becomes much more clear and it's in stereo! There are still noticable artifacts in the audio where you can 'hear' the compression, but it's a lot better than the standard 'high quality' muck.

[Skulltrail-old]

Good tip, however it makes loading 10x longer... :pinch: (higher quality = more bandwidth)

+1