Mar 02 2008
High resolution Youtube video
Ever felt like youtube video quality is a little too low? Ever wonder how videos about a monorail (no, I’m not talking about the Springfield one) or a beautiful Umbrian panorama would look like? There a way to boost the quality of Youtube videos,. at the cost of an higher download time (which wouldn’t be an issue with today high speed connections). You just need to add &fmt=6 to the end of the url, such as:
from http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0
to http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0&fmt=6
This only works if the video has an high definition version, but you can add fmt=18 to automatically use the low def video if no HD in available.
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March 25th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Actually, that’s incorrect. The fmt=18 version is supposed to be of higher quality than the fmt=6 version. See also here:
http://jult.net/archive/2008/02/21/YouTube_sneekily_goes_high_qua
March 25th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Are you sure? Those are the specifications:
fmt 18 / MP4 fmt 6 / HQ FLV
Screen Res. 480 x 270 480 x 360
Bitrate ≅ 512 kbps ≅ 900 kbps
Audio 44.1KHz 128 kbps Stereo 44.1KHz 96 kbps Mono CBR
Frame Rate 24 30
Video Codec h.264 Flash Sorenson
Audio Codec AAC Mp3
March 25th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
[...] specifications of Youtube high-res fmt url [...]
March 26th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Yes I’m sure:
A bit encoded as H.264 is not the same as a bit encoded as FLV, quality-wise. It’s about 3 times better at the same rate. Plus, the H.264 videos have stereo audio, the fmt=6 versions don’t.
From http://forum.videohelp.com/topic346256-210.html#1826784
On H.264:
Backers claim improved compression means a dramatic improvement in compression over the older H.263 standard at no loss of video quality - a viewer of an H.264 video at 384K bit/sec should see the same sort of picture as somebody viewing a video at 768K bit/sec sent via H.263.
In the above example, the H.263 video is 571 kbit/s and the H.264 video is 440 kbit/s. In theory this means the H.264 version should even be the equivalent of ~880 Kbit/s videoquality of H.263..