How To: Watch YouTube Movies in Full 720p HD Glory
Psst. Hey, wanna know secret? YouTube is offering 720p HD streaming on select videos.
We’ve already showed you how to hack YouTube URLs and embed codes to get higher quality video. While those tricks work on most videos, they only bump the resolution up to 480×360px — better, but still nothing close to HD.
Well, good news, as our friends over at Epicenter point out, some videos on YouTube are available in full 720p HD glory — the same format that sites like the iTunes Store and Netflix offer.
It turns out YouTube has been quietly offering HD for some time. The site began experimenting with 720p videos back in May of this year, though the selection was somewhat limited. But now that HD quality videos are more widely available on YouTube, the new option is getting more useful.
The trick to getting the hi-res versions is roughly the same as with the old, um, sort-of-hi-res option. First you have to apply the same URL hack, but this time the magic bit of code is &fmt=22. Tack that on to the end of a normal YouTube URL and, if an HD version of the video is available, then you’ll see it. If it isn’t, YouTube seems to fall back to the 480×360 video and then, if that isn’t there either, it goes back to the pixelated glory that is its trademark.
When it comes to embedding the HD videos things get a little more complicated. Here’s some generic embed code that seems to work:
<object width="480” height=”397“><param name=”movie” value=”(VIDEO EMBED URL)&ap=%2526fmt%3D22“></param><param name=”wmode” value=”window“></param><embed src=”(VIDEO EMBED URL)&ap=%2526fmt%3D22” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”window” width=”480” height=”397“></embed></object>
The results can be seen here, starting with the HD embed, then the old “high quality” method and finally the good old default (note that the HD video requires Flash Player 9 or better):
Naturally, our favorite YouTube download solution, the Firefox add-on Video Downloader can grab the HD mp4 files for offline viewing. It also wouldn’t be hard to modify this Greasemonkey script to load HD movies automatically (where available); just download the script and change all the lines with fmt=18 to fmt=22. And be sure to check out the How To Wiki for more YouTube downloading options.
Here’s a shot of the downloaded mp4 file playing in QuickTime:
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