YouTube Now Higher Quality?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Nick Royer

Nick Royer

Well-known member
Okay, so a while back if you typed in &fmt=18 at the end of a YouTube URL and it gave you a better quality version. YouTube servers were maintenance a few days ago and today when I uploaded my new test footage of the HV30:

1) It isn't stretched from 16x9 to 4x9.

2) It doesn't look like crap.

3) It makes no difference if you type in the "&fmt=18".

See for yourself:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M8b1LmjE7sI

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M8b1LmjE7sI&fmt=18

No difference. I think YouTube may have just improved their quality by a long shot overnight. Anyone else notice this? I may actually start using it more now.
 
If it is now improved it only works with videos uploaded after the update. I tried one of my older videos and "&fmt=18" worked on it.
 
Hang on... do you mean that it'll take 16:9 footage and natively present it letterboxed??

About time!
 
Okay now the &fmt=18 thing works, but it's not much better quality so either I encoded it very well or the regular versions are now higher quality. Either way, it apparently now supports 16x9.
 
That's awesome. It's about time. I kept on having to render a 4:3 version with letterbox but now it's great to hear they support 16:9.
 
When I play videos, without "&fmt=18," fullscreen it is letter-boxed which creates the all around black frame. Videos with "&fmt=18" play fullscreen without letter-boxing and fill my whole screen.
 
Oh never mind - I see what you mean now. I thought you meant on a 4x3 screen 16x9 &fmt=18 videos were stretched to 4x3. I see you are saying that YouTube now adds black bars to 16x9 videos - they aren't real 16x9 unless you go to &fmt=18.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top