Wanna watch YouTube videos in high quality? Read here....

[Thirdgen89GTA]

I'm pretty sure its something fairly unknown I just learned about this today.

And it's damn simple too:
Take a normal Youtube address, like this:
[video=youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0]YouTube - Skateboarding Dog[/video]
Then add &fmt=6 after it, like this:
[video=youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0&fmt=6]YouTube - Skateboarding Dog[/video]
And boom, it's a lot higher quality.
Not good enough? Well, there's even better quality, add &fmt=18 instead, like this:
[video=youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0&fmt=18]YouTube - Skateboarding Dog[/video]
This should apparently be even faster to load than the Format 6, but more heavy too (Flash Video / h.263 vs MPEG4 / h.264)

There's additional format, fmt=17, but it's not higher quality, it's in fact even worse than the normal

Explanations of the formats above:
Normal, no tag:
320x240 @ 29.97 fps
Flash video (Sorenson h.263)
MP3 Audio (22.05KHz, mono)
FLV container

Format 6 tag:
448x298 @ 29.98fps
Flash video (Sorenson h.263)
MP3 Audio (44.1KHz, mono)
FLV Conatiner

Format 18 tag:
480x320 @ 29.97fps
MPEG-4 Video (H.264)
MPEG-4 (AAC) audio (44.1KHz, STEREO!)
mp4 container

Format 17 tag:
176x144 @ 12fps
MPEG-4 Video (simple profile)
MPEG-4 (AAC) audio (22.05KHz, mono)
3gp container

I think it has something to do with the iPhone's backend to youtube as Youtube looks pretty good on the iPhone, even though the screen is 320x480, or 480x320 depending on how you are looking at it.

I tried a few videos and it didn't seem to work on all of them, I assume it is possibly because the original video might not have been a high quality video in the first place.

Stage6.com still has by far the best video quality on the whole, but there isn't alot on stage6 at this point.