I apologize if this has been posted somewhere before or if this forum's not the right place to post these kind of "tricks".

I'm guessing a lot of people already are aware of the fact that you can change your personal settings to adjust the quality of the videos. Did you know, however, that by simply adding this little line at the end of the url, you'll be able to crank up the quality? "&fmt=18"

This is an ordinary link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsiQO3hO3pc

This has better quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsiQO3hO3pc&fmt=18

Do note that the version with better quality will load slower.

Update!4/9/08

"YouTube announced in November that they would be testing out encoding videos at higher resolutions (and with higher-quality audio encoding). Now it appears that a small sampling of uploaded videos can already be seen at their higher resolutions, simply by adding a little tag to the end of the video's URL. To get a (slightly noticeable) bump in resolution, try adding &fmt=6 to the end of the address line. The trick, according to YouTube watchers, seems to work primarily with newer videos, and bumps the resolution from 320x240 to 448x336. Add &fmt=18 to the end of the URL, and you might get an MP4-encoded version, with better audio and a 480x360 resolution"

If "&fmt=18" doesn't work for you, try using "&fmt=6". Some users has reported that this improved the quality, when "&fmt=18" didn't work for them.

I'll try to find out what's causing these codes to work diffrently from user to user.

Also, this "trick" only works where there is a video of higher quality available. So you won't see a difference in every video on youtube. Newer videos usually has a version with better quality available, though.

@Swordfish: Glad I could help! Thanks for the cookie btw

@Jeff: Why don't you try some different videos? Some videos, especially the featured videos are at a higher quality by default, though. If you're refering to the videos I posted, try reading the text. It's near impossible to make out what it says in the poor quality one.

Hmm, I didn't know that.

I'm gonna try it on that gnome video lol, maybe we can find out what it is 0.o

ASDFGHGHKAJAF!!!!

NOW I read this, just when I finished downloading a bunch of Crisis Core FMV's ​((((

I downloaded a 6 min fmv that was like 6.7MB. Now Im downloading a 4 min FMV with that code, and the filesize is 17MB, so yeah, the quality IS better