Interesting Youtube feature.

[John Sayers]

here are two links to a track by my friend Kerry Leigh & expresso lane.

 

 

 

 

 

 

the second link has "&fmt=18" added to the link. It increases the picture quality and changes audio from mono to stereo.

 

I tried it as an embedded link adding the text to the numbers but it didn't work.

 

i gather it only works for recently added clips

[scud133]

wow the sound is fantastic compared to normal youtube

[yermej]

fmt=18 gives you 44.1 kHz, 128 kbps, stereo AAC sound, 480x360 resolution at 24 fps using the h.264 (MP4) codec.

 

You can also use fmt=6 for high quality Flash video (FMV). This gives you 44.1 kHz, 96 kbps, mono MP3 sound, 480x360 resolution at 30 fps using the Flash Sorenson codec.

 

Normal youtube is 22 kHz, 64 kbps, mono MP3 sound, 320x240 resolution at 30 fps using the Flash Sorenson codec (but with a bitrate of around 200 kbps vs. 900 for high quality Flash and 512 kbps for MP4/h.264).

 

Obviously, the preferred choice is fmt=18 as long as the original upload is that good and you're careful with your camera's frame rate (24 fps is film, 30 is pretty much NTSC (really 29.97)). Some youtube videos actually look about 20% faster because the camera recorded at 24 fps, but the video is shown at 30 fps.

 

More info here, including encoding & embedding hints and how to set your account to prefer HQ video.

[the stranger]

Thanks!

[UstadKhanAli]

Very useful link, Yermej...thanks!!!

[blue2blue]

Interesting.