Improve Video Quality with Easy YouTube URL Addition
I found this lovely YouTube video tip at LifeHacker. The tip easily improves the quality of a YouTube video.
All you need to do is copy and paste:
&fmt=18
at the end of the URL of the video you are watching. For example, here is a YouTube Video:
ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChq5drjQl4
All you do is paste “&fmt=18″ at the end of the URL, and you get:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChq5drjQl4&fmt=18
Easy!
Click on each link above, and you’ll see and hear the same video, but with a difference in video and sound quality.
For example, here’s a screenshot of one frame of the video without the hack:

And here’s a screenshot of the same frame with the hack:

Notice the sharper details — and the option to “watch this video in lower quality for faster playback.” Handy!
I don’t know how long this little tip will work — but if you need to boost the quality to see some visual details or bump up the sound quality in a training video, this hack works nicely… for a while. It’s quite likely that YouTube will soon allow you to select “video quality” as a regular option.
Until then, when you need a bit of a boost, give this little URL hack a whirl!
Related Posts:
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
[…] Improve Video Quality with Easy YouTube URL Addition Improve Video Quality with Easy YouTube URL Addition Posted by Laura Bergells March 13, 2008 I found this lovely YouTube video tip at LifeHacker. The tip easily improves the quality of a YouTube video. All you need to do is copy and paste: &fmt=18 at the (tags: youtube audio quality) […]
[…] disappointed with the quality and wondered what had gone wrong. A little investigation led me to this site that offered a very simple solution to the problem. It was to simply add &fmt=18 to the YouTube […]

Laura, thanks for the great tip — I linked to this post from my blog at Absoluteppt.com