no more squinting

in case you missed the memo, YouTube has been testing out higher quality videos.

just append a video link with '&fmt=6' or '&fmt=18' and you will see a significant increase in video quality, provided that the source video was of greater quality than the standard flash video quality that YouTube uses.

regular: 320 x 240, audio sample rate: 22050 Hz

&fmt=6: 448 x 336, audio sample rate: 44100 Hz

&fmt=18: 480 x 360, H264 video encoding (MP4), AAC audio encoding

this means that the higher quality videos (&fmt=6) carry twice the information (which also at least doubles the filesize and download time). &fmt=18 uses video and audio encoding that is significantly more efficient, so for nearly the same file size, they can pack in more than twice the information. this is the same encoding being used on YouTube videos that are being converted for viewing on iPhones and iPod Touches.

however, audio is still being converted to mono (single channel), even if videos are recorded in stereo (multi-channel). uploaders can circumvent this restriction by converting their files into flash video at the correct resolution (and in stereo) before uploading so YouTube will forgo the conversion process. not every video has been converted for higher quality yet; recent .wmv uploads seem to be the first batch. if a video does not have an HQ version, all you will see is the black loading screen.

Sample Video: regular; higher quality; MP4. it's easy to see the difference in video game videos.