Automatically Embed and Link to High Def YouTube Videos

Not a fan of YouTube’s crappy video quality? Did you know not so secretly for the last few months YouTube has been quietly saving and giving users the ability to display “high resolution” videos. Sadly however, all videos on YouTube and embedded on other sites load at normal quality by default.

Here is how you link to high quality YouTube videos:
If you need to link to a high quality video on your blog, append &fmt=18 onto the end of the YouTube URL, like so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuqiGrWBRqE&fmt=18

Now if you wanted to embed high quality video in your blog:
Add &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 onto the end of the YouTube link in the embed code…

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MuqiGrWBRqE&hl=en&fs=1 &ap=%2526fmt%3D18"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MuqiGrWBRqE&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Thanks Tim for the heads up!