About a week ago, Ryan wrote about a way that you could watch high-resolution YouTube videos by adding something on to the end of the YouTube URL. That is no longer needed because YouTube videos that are higher quality (not all are) have a link below the video that says “Watch this video in higher quality.” Some of you doubted whether or not you were actually seeing a higher quality video with the “trick” we first mentioned, so now this should put your doubts to rest. The screenshot below shows what you’ll be looking for:









Even better is the fact that you can watch YouTube high quality videos by default. When you’re logged in to your YouTube account, click “Account”. Then under the “Account Section” look for “Video Playback Quality.” Click that and then this is what you’ll see:

Once you save the settings, the higher-quality videos will play when they are available. This way you’ll never have to click the link below the video to “watch this video in higher quality.” If it seems to be loading slow, they do include the link to go back to the lower quality video.

Thanks for the anonymous tip!

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Other news regarding YouTube is that they have added some new ways to “integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more.” In other words, they’ve introduced new API’s and this is what you’ll be able to do with them:

Upload videos and video responses to YouTube

Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc.)

Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales

Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales

Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc) through software

If you’re interested, checkout the YouTube blog where they explain these new features.