Townizen

The Pain

A LOT of us are getting into online video...and many of us want to show them off on our blogs, our websites, etc. Whether our videos are for property walk-throughs, general information, or personal enjoyment...it's evident that the power of online videos will be increasingly important to our professional and social lives. 

But currently, it's still somewhat challenging showing off high definition (HD - 720p) video online. It's pretty costly to serve HD videos (due to high bandwidth and high file sizes), and not many providers are offering this service for free. Some offer HD free, but they only let you embed the lower quality version while making you go back to their website to view the HD version (somewhat inconvenient for your web visitors). For example, Vimeo, a great service for providing HD video, only lets you embed low quality video...but you have an option to pay for a premium account to embed HD video. 

The Cure!

Fortunately for us, YouTube has recently decided to offer HD...and there's a way (a hack really) to embed that HD video anywhere you want! Actually, they only quietly released this feature, and has not really officially supported it...but with a simple hack, it works! As you can see below, I've posted a normal quality version and an HD version...and the differences are remarkable! 

Tutorial

It's a pretty simple hack. All you need to do is add this code --> ;&ap=%2526fmt%3D22 to the end of your embed code. For example:

My Original Embed Code Is:

<object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfc-30EqjPs&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfc-30EqjPs&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>

My New Embed Code (With Hack) Is:

<object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfc-30EqjPs&hl=en&fs=1;&ap=%2526fmt%3D22"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfc-30EqjPs&hl=en&fs=1;&ap=%2526fmt%3D22" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>

Pretty simple! Of course, keep in mind that you can only embed HD video if the original video that you uploaded to YouTube was in HD! 

The Pepsi Challenge

Notice the BIG difference...you can be the judge!

Normal Embed (No Hack)

HD Embed (With Hack)