joreth: (Silent Bob Headbang)
Joreth ([personal profile] joreth) wrote2008-06-22 09:32 pm
Entry tags:

YouTube In Stereo

So I wandered over to YouTube, as I am wont to do sometimes, and I stumbled across an amazing guitarist.  And I followed the links to find more of his stuff.  And I skimmed the comments on the first page of each since the description told me nothing except the URL to his record label's website.

And I found a comment that said if you add &fmt=18 or &fmt=6 to the end of any youtube URL, it'll sound better.  

So I tried it.  

http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2008/03/view_youtube_in_highres.html
YouTube has been testing higher bitrate encodings of it videos, which you can see if you add a &fmt=8 or &fmt=18 to the video url. Historically, all videos have been delivered to the lowest common denominator: sorenson encoded 320x240. By adding &fmt=6 to the URL, the video is served up in 448x336 resolution and I'm guessing it's using the VP6 codec (can anyone confirm?). &fmt=18 gives you the iPhone-style MP4 stream.

If you have a YouTube account, you can change your settings in your account to always play the high-res when available.

So I'm posting about this so I will have a convenient place to find the tag later.

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