How to Embed High Quality and Higher Resolution YouTube Videos on Blog or Website

Viewers can now opt to view YouTube video clips in higher quality, or even set YouTube to playback the video in high resolution quality mode automatically by default whenever the video is watched on YouTube website. However, for YouTube video clip which embedded on blog or web page, viewers won’t have such flexibility to switch or upgrade the video playback to higher quality streaming, unless webmaster or blogger specifically embed a high quality and high resolution YouTube embed code on the website.

To allow visitors to web pages embedded with YouTube video clip to view and watch the video in high quality mode, webmaster has to use the hack below to embed the code that will stream from high quality video source, which stream as a MP4 (H264 with AAC audio) and encoded at 480×360. Similar to the hack to view high quality video on YouTube with &fmt=18 or &fmt=6 switch, publisher needs to append a switch to the YouTube embed code so that the Flash Player knows that it should play the video with high quality video streaming.

What’s the different between normal quality and high quality YouTube videos? Take a look at the 2 embedded YouTube video clips below, featuring sexy Mariah Carey singing Touch My Body, and you would amazed.

Normal quality version of YouTube video

High quality version of YouTube video

However, the default “&fmt=18″ flag for URL address bar will not work on embed code. In YouTube embed code, add and append &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 to the end of video clip’s URL specified in “param value” and “embed src”. For example, for video above, the embed code will be as below:

Apend the &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 to the end of two instances of http://www.youtube.com/v/xxxxxxxxxxx&hl=en&rel=0 within the original quotation mark, where xxxxxxxxxxx represents the unique video ID. The high quality YouTube embed looks like below:

The best part of high quality video can be enlarged to the width of 480 with affecting the viewing quality as the streaming video is encoded in 480×360 resolution.

With HD era arriving, YouTube now supports playback of YouTube hosted video in 720p HD (High Definition) picture quality resolution in near CD audio quality. Here’s how to embed video on external third party websites or blogs to play YouTube in 720p resolution or embed video to play in HD by default.

71 Comments

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omar updates August 29, 2011 at 3:21 am

i have to try it. can't see the vids as they are no longer available now..

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SumJuam March 15, 2010 at 8:43 am

Sorry, but as of today (3/14/10) this tip does not work on my embedded Youtube HQ videos.

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Youtube HQ nel nostro blog | Cirillina - Programmi gratis, Blog, Tecnologia, Web 2.0 October 21, 2009 at 4:36 pm

[...] al momento non è possibile fare è integrare nei nostri blog i video HQ. Navigando ho trovato un sito in inglese che spiega come è possibile fare questo e integrare nelle nostre pagine i filmati [...]

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Dragon Blogger August 13, 2009 at 9:48 pm

Really good tip, I use this often even on regular quality video's as it makes them a little clearer

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chet June 14, 2009 at 10:56 pm

Since a few days the hack doesn't work anymore
&ap=%2526fmt%3D18
This is the answer from youtube

YouTube has recently been upgrading. Here's a statement in the uploads section of their "known Issues" website.

"HQ disappearing / not available for videos that meet HQ standards

We made improvements to standard quality for video uploads! Unless there is a large difference between standard quality and HQ , the upload will produce standard quality by default (and not HQ as before)."

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thr…

Anyone knows an updated hack ??

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Setiadi May 3, 2009 at 1:53 am

Cool..The embedded code works for my website and some friends told me that I have a different quality videos (means good quality, off course..)

Thanks

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Video Blogger April 8, 2009 at 8:18 am

I'd been searching all over for this, no one could tell me. I just added this to my videos and it worked.

I was using vimeo for a long time because of this, still uploading to youtube, now I can use youtube videos on my site and not sacrifice the quality.

Thanks a bunch!

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best videos in the w April 3, 2009 at 4:11 pm

hey, a couple of things:

1) The only problem I have with HQ embedding is that the little icon in the video doesn't actually show that it is HQ or HD, which i just annoying, because visitors will always hit the button for better quality, not realizing that it doesn't do anything. Does anyone know if there is a way to get around this???

2) the videos in this post are dead.

Thanks guys!

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Įterpkite aukštos kokybės YouTube klipus « Entellbox Blogas March 16, 2009 at 6:28 pm

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lilian March 11, 2009 at 2:55 pm

Is it possible to embed high quality video with YouTube Custom Player, especially that layout with many small screens display on the side? Its video ID# goes like this: ="http://www.youtube.com/cp/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx=" I tried to append &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 to the end of the video ID# within the original quotation mark (as you have suggested above)but it doesn't work. Please HELP! Thank you in advance.

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Dessa March 9, 2009 at 6:33 pm

Thanks! This worked!

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Dragon Blogger February 19, 2009 at 3:27 pm

Thanks for this post, it helped me embed high quality videos from youtube on my blogs.

Reply
From YouTube HQ: HQ Video Embeds | Viral Video Maker February 17, 2009 at 8:47 pm

[...] video playback on its embeds. Previously, you could switch to the high-quality stream by hacking the embed code, but now YouTube provides a handy-dandy little “HQ” button in the lower-right pop-up [...]

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Bonus Bill February 7, 2009 at 3:00 pm

This is really useful, thanks a lot for the tip – the videos in low quality just look so bad, but this makes all the difference

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Carrie February 6, 2009 at 10:53 pm

Great ! I will add this to my bookmarks. TY

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Tim Davis February 3, 2009 at 7:15 am

Hey, thanks for the code. I couldn’t figure it out on the embed code, until I used the &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 . That helped me out, and I couldn’t find it anywhere else. Have a great day.

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Alex February 2, 2009 at 4:40 am

Thanks for providing this tip. Works great!

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How to Integrate Social Media into Product Marketing « I’m Not Actually a Geek January 27, 2009 at 11:12 pm

[...] page or blog post, you can alter the embed code to force the video to view in high resolution. The hack described in this blog post works. It will ensure that the video’s fidelity is much higher, making it a more enjoyable [...]

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FanTrust » Blog Archive » From YouTube HQ: HQ Video Embeds [NewTeeVee] January 27, 2009 at 2:00 am

[...] video playback on its embeds. Previously, you could switch to the high-quality stream by hacking the embed code, but now YouTube provides a handy-dandy little “HQ” button in the lower-right pop-up menu. [...]

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From YouTube HQ: HQ Video Embeds « NewTeeVee January 24, 2009 at 7:30 am

[...] video playback on its embeds. Previously, you could switch to the high-quality stream by hacking the embed code, but now YouTube provides a handy-dandy little “HQ” button in the lower-right pop-up [...]

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