Nov 25 2008

You Tube Goes Hi Def

Published by at 3:58 pm under You Tube

youtubelogo You Tube Goes Hi Def

The Hi Definition Future Starts Now

Today You Tube changed the size of their default player to a wide screen, 16:9 aspect ratio.

This comes after a steady demand that You Tube increase the quality of their videos. Although You Tube still has more than twice as many users as any of its competitors, it hasn’t been wiling to stand pat and lose the quality wars.

The switch to widescreen and the promise of better quality also comes as You Tube begins to display ads across the bottom of most videos. Hollywood is about to embrace – or be embraced by – You Tube. You Tube has been displaying movie trailers in wide screen for a month or more, so this move to wide screen probably presages a deal to show feature films on You Tube. It looks like Google may have found a way for their very expensive acquisition to start paying the rent.

A couple of quick observations:

  • If you want to force a movie to display in Hi Def (assuming it is capable of Hi Def), you can add “&fmt=22″ to the end of the URL
  • For now, embedded videos are still displayed in the old 4:3 aspect ratio player, even if they were shot in 16:9
  • Adding “&fmt=18″ to the URL of a 4:3video still produces far better quality on site, although embedded videos continue to look mediocre.
  • If you can shoot your videos in widescreen, do it. It’s the future of web video.

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One Response to “You Tube Goes Hi Def”

  1. 10 Ways To Customize You Tube | Information Sells says:
    April 18, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    [...] mentioned some of these before. Here’s a round up of the most useful from previous posts and from MakeUseOf’s [...]