How to harness HD on YouTube. (Hint: It ain't easy, yet.): The Social Path

Just as my agency was finishing a recent video project, we saw that YouTube had officially added support for high-definition video. It definitely wasn't the first site to let you upload HD clips, but a lot of people had been waiting to see this change at the Web's No. 1 video site.

So of course, I took this chance to play around with the HD hosting options at YouTube and on lesser-known sites. The result was some frustration and a few good learning experiences, so I figured I'd share the good and the bad with you folks.

Check it out after the jump.

The perils of posting to YouTube.

Obviously, you can't beat the potential audience of YouTube. More than 5 billion videos are watched on the site each month in America alone. And now that the site supports HD, we should be good to go, right?

Turns out, the hosting itself is fine. But sharing the videos is another matter. There's no easy way to embed an HD clip from YouTube in a blog or site. Even linking to the HD version is difficult.

So we had to do some fiddlin'.

Problem 1: Linking to your HD clip on YouTube

Even if your clip is HD, it will pop up in low resolution when most people go to watch it. For example, this link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw2gy01gkzs - will take you to the low-rez version of our new ad.

But I want you to watch it in glorious HD, right? To link to the HD version, I have to add "&fmt=22" to the end of the link.

To see the difference, click on these:
Original - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw2gy01gkzs
HD - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw2gy01gkzs&fmt=22

Problem 2: Embedding your HD clip from YouTube

Chances are, you'd like people to be able to share your HD clip by posting it on their blogs and other sites. But much like linking, YouTube has yet to create an "embed HD version" option.

To do it by hand, you'll need to add more code! Woohoo! (Warning: It's about to get a little geeky up in here.)

This time, you'll need to add "&ap=%2526fmt%3D22" to the end of the video URL both times it appears in the usual embed code.

So this:

Becomes this:

Here you can see what a difference it makes.
Original embed:

HD embed:

The HD embed looks great, but there's one huge problem. If I send it to a blogger, I have to try explaining all that code nonsense in hopes that he or she will embed the HD version. Ugh.

Sidestepping YouTube

As I mentioned before, there are plenty of sites that support high-definition video. But each comes with its own pros and cons.

We posted the new ad on Vimeo for two reasons: We could do it for free (this is a nonprofit commercial, so the budget was tiny), and we could post in HD.

And I was very happy with the result. However (thanks to a commenter for pointing this out), the embedded clip defaults back to standard and makes you go to the Vimeo site to view the HD version.

Scale Back Alabama: Gettin' in shape (HD) from ScaleBack Alabama on Vimeo.

The other problem is, Vimeo doesn't allow commercial video clips. They were kind enough to make an exception for this public-service announcement, but I won't be able to use the site for many future projects. (Still, if you're just making videos for fun, check it out.)

I should note that (I hope) much of this post will be obsolete within weeks or months. YouTube is constantly expanding its HD capabilities. (Today, for example, the site added a gallery of HD content.) But if, like me, you want to get an early start, I wanted to share some of these tips and experiences.

If you've been dabbling in HD, please share your thoughts in the comments.

The Vimeo Embedded clip doesn't actually play in HD. The icon on the right side says "HD is off" and when you click it to turn it on, a large graphic pops up that tells you that you can watch the video in HD on vimeo. So you still have to click through the site to watch in HD.

I would stick with the YouTube HD embed, even if you have to go through the extra effort of supplying them with the code.

Posted by: warplayer | December 19, 2008 at 05:14 PM