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For a while there, we had it very good as bloggers and content producers: we could use YouTube to store our videos, and embed them in high quality on other websites.

On sites such as Remix.vg, we have been doing this for some time now, allowing visitors to find high quality remixes of their favourite popular songs.

The way in which this is achieved was by the addition of “&fmt=18″ to the end of the embed source in the YouTube code (or hard-coding in a way to do this in an XHTML compliant way – for those of you who like these sort of details – e.g. “&=fmt18″).

Two very simple explanations of how to do this can be found here and here. Or, rather, should I say, in the past this is how it was done?

SEE UPDATE AT THE FOOT OF THIS POST!! IT IS STILL POSSIBLE!!

It seems that, at least since around about the time YouTube started displaying their videos in the new wide-screen size boxes on their site (this very week), one cannot embed any high-quality version of their videos.

It would be understandable that YouTube should wish to stop this: maybe they are cost cutting the data transfer involved (they must be streaming an inordinate amount of data this way); or, maybe YouTube wants people only to be able to get the higher quality stuff on their website: using the embed feature as a low-fi preview of sorts.

However, whatever the reasons, I sure as heck cannot figure out a way to get the high quality version of YouTube videos to embed on our sites anymore. That is a shame. It may be a deal breaker too, in many instances, which leads us down the path (at least on Remix.vg) to using an embedable mp3 player and storing the files ourselves.

YouTube offered the ability to outsource such features. In return they get a great deal of additional views and traffic for YouTube users from blogs and websites around the world. If they have, as I suspect, removed the opportunity to embed high quality videos from the YouTube website, they might just have cut their nose off to spite their face, so to speak. Then again, a lot of dealings with Google seem to point in this direction of late, as the company struggle to come to terms with the economic slowdown.

Maybe, though, I’m way off-beam as always. Perhaps it is still possible to embed the high quality version of YouTube videos, and all my thoughts are misplace. If someone can state a definitive answer in the comments box below, that would be helpful! Only time will tell… as always.

UPDATE – Yes You Can!

As always, writing about something that’s bugging me has revealed the answer – someone pointed me towards this post on Cnet which explains the new HD YouTube stuff (the wide-screen super high-def stuff I was talking about above).

Yes. You can embed this stuff, but you need to get your hands mucky a litt, and delve into the old code, because previous versions don’t work.

HD Embed

The High Definition stuff (&fmt=22) will ruin a slow computer, and takes longer to stream, but my word, how good is the quality.

With Remix.vg we’ve stuck to the high quality version to compromise picture yet still enhance audio quality: have a listen to this Remix of Alesha Dixons “The Boy Does Nothing” if you don’t believe you can get high quality audio from YouTube (make sure you have good speakers, and turn them up load though!!).

How its Done

Just a glance at the Cnet source code will show you how they did it – copy this, but obviously swap for the video you want:

<object width=”570″ height=”345″>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/zlfKdbWwruY&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″><param name=”wmode” value=”window”>
<param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Mgan4rt7ZHw&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” wmode=”window” width=”570″ height=”345″></object>

This, of course, is a huge bind, so you should code a way to simply input the YouTube URL and get it to do the rest automatically (we’ve done this with Remix.vg!) – perhaps a post on this later – just request it in the comments box.

Obviously, I jumped the gun with my earlier post, but its funny how as soon as you do this, you find the error of your ways!

YouTube in SUPER high quality is now available to embed (just not as easy as simply pasting in the embed code).

I might even make this a plugin for WordPress at some point, though life’s pretty busy…