Following the announcement from November, YouTube started to test higher quality videos. If you append &fmt=6 to the URL of a YouTube video, you should get better quality videos. Note that this only works for a small number of videos.
Here's an example of video that's available both in the regular version (320x240) and in a higher quality encoding (448x336). The audio is now encoded at a sample rate of 44100 Hz, up from 22050 Hz. As you can see in the screenshots below, the right image is clearer and more detailed.
While this increase of resolution might seem minor, for the example above YouTube's re-encoded FLV file is more than twice bigger than the old one (from 9 MB to 22 MB), so it will load much slower.
If you append &fmt=18, YouTube downloads the video as a MP4 (H264 with AAC audio), encoded at 480x360. Here's the same video encoded as MP4.
To make things easier, there's a Greasemonkey script that automatically adds the magic parameter for you.
Is it only available in the US? Because I'm connected from Slovenia and those example videos you've linked are all 8.8 MB with the same resolution. I'm using potable FF 2 in WinXP.
Hopefully they plan to scale their servers to handle the additional load. It can already be annoyingly slow at times for some videos to load, even on a cable connection.
If some of you use the combo Firefox-UnPlug, it will NOT work !! UnPlug only sees the basic non-amended version. You have to reach deeper into the Trick-Box. On MacOSX, help yourself out with Safari and it's Content Container ( Activity ) which is simply the instant cache display. From there you can intercept the amended version as it is loaded.
The video quality does look better. Colors are much more defined in the new video format and there is a lot less blurring around the edges, especially during high motion. This is great news.
I think there should be an option for higher-quality video, rather than making all the videos like that. Some people have low-bandwidth. There should be an account option or something. If you sign-up, you can turn on that option.
The Video is only Higher Quality. Not Higher Bandwith (H.264 only). H.264 enables the use of higher quality at equal or less of the size of say Sorenson spark or vp6 (what youtube uses). There also will be no more strain on the server. Hypothetically there will be less. since h.264 would mean a smaller size. And for that grease monkey script don't let it fool you. "Youtube HD" its not hd its HQ, high quality.
It seems the higher quality versions of videos will have mono sound, even if the "normal" flv version has stereo sound (if the uploader encodes the video into .flv him/herself before uplaoding, with stereo mp3 sound, youtube will leave the .flv as-is and it will have stereo sound), but the higher quality versions will be downmixed into mono, 112 kbits AAC =(
I bet it still won't be the same as Stage6. VEOH is no where near as good and as for Vuze. Well, let us not go there in this forum!
I don't know where all these people get the idea we need more software from their company on our systems to handle all the different formats. Microsoft has already decided that for us.
Divx was by far the best, I know of, for size/ quality ratios. Mp4 HD is excellent but too big for most. MKV just a container for other formats; nothing more (thanks for not much Vuze/Azureus).
YouTube is gay! FlickR is the Shit! Reason being is because FlickR's videos are 10 times better quality. YouTube should know how big they are now and they need to improve dramatically to beat its competitors. YouTube should have HD quality and everyone should automatically be sent to a HD video rather than having a fucking button saying Click for high quality. First of all its not that big of a difference. They need to improve more on their quality stupid bricks!
