Do you utilize YouTube to host videos you create and want to share with the world at the best quality?  Has someone else created a YouTube video, but you are only interested in a portion of it for your blog or website?    Here are 2 tips that help ensure your audience has a better YouTube expereince:

Tip 1. Forcing the browser to use the High Quality version of the video

You may notice just under the lower right coner of the video window, some videos have an option to “Watch In High Quality”.  By default, these videos will play as a 320×240 FLV file at 320Kb/s.  Check out this sample:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A

The user could click on this link to “Watch in High Quality” which will reload the video and play the MP4 version , which is 480×360 at  512Kb/s.  By adding &fmt=18 to the end of the URL, you’ll make the URL you share with others bring them right to the high quality version.  Here’s the same video in the High Quality view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A&fmt=18

What else are you gaining besides increased video resolution?  The video is compressed with H.264 compression, so you get better video even at the same data rate.  You also go from a low fidelity mono audio feed to stereo @ 44.1Khz sample rate.

&fmt=6 increases the resolution from 320×240 to 448×336, Flash 7 video @ 900Kbps; audio @ 44.1KHz 96Kbps Mono CBR.

&fmt=18 increases the resolution to 480×360, H.264 video @ 512Kbps; audio @ 44.1KHz 128Kbps Stereo. Note, the bandwidth may be lower, but it’s utilizing a more efficient compression codec.

UPDATE: &fmt=22 increaes the resolution to 720p HD video if the source was uploaded at a high enough resolution.

Tip 2. Advancing the video to a specific playback point.

If you evern wanted to link to a video in YouTube that was lengthy, but had a very interesting part partway through, there is a hack to allow you to begin playback at a precise time.  You can specify the minutes and seconds of the start time like this:

add #t=53s to the end of the URL to start at 53 seconds into it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A#t=53s

add #t=1m57s to the end of the video URL to start playback at 1 minute 57 seconds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A#t=1m57s

Think of this as bookmarking your video clips!  Now you can link to a video, and have an index of the segments included, which link right to that precise moment!

Many time you have thought of to play some videos in the presentation but lack of knowledge may come in your path or you may want to just add the video directly from the internet. Now there is a easy way to do this using Microsoft PowerPoint.

Play Youtube Videos Using Internet Connection

To insert YouTube video into a PowerPoint slide you need to provide the YouTube video URL that appears in the browser address bar, the rest is taken care of by the YouTube Wizard. After installation, there will be a new “Insert YouTube Video” option to your PowerPoint Toolbar. While running PowerPoint presentation LIVE internet connection is required for Youtube video to run.

Wizard can be download from here..

Play Youtube Videos Without Internet Connection

For using this feature first of all you have to download the Youtube file form internet which you want to play in your PowerPoint Presentation. For downloading the Youtube video follow our previous post from here..

Then convert this file to MP3 or .AVI format using some converter because PowerPoint doesn’t understand .FLV or. MP4 format.

After converting to the correct format follow this..

• Go to Insert
• Then Movies and Sounds
• Then select Movie from File
• Then after inserting a pop-up will appear asking Automatically or When Clicked. Select as your wish.

That’s it.

After downloading any video from the Youtube, many people are unable to play the video. Reason  is that the downloaded files are generally in .flv format which is not supported by many players. So for playing the video follow the following instruction..

• First make your player compatible to play the file, for that it is recommend to install K-lite codec pack. After installing the package, you can now watch the video in most of the video application, including Windows Media Player.  Also, the good thing is that Media player classic is included. It is very small (in size) video player application. You can downlaod the Codec from any of these two links

1. Download
2. Download

• VLC player is a portable multimedia player for various types or formats of video. Just Download the application and open the youtube video through this player. That’s it!

• If you want dedicate player for playing only the Youtube videos you can download the FLV player and install it. It will play the downloaded file. You can downlaod it from here

Download

Download any Youtube Videos/Movie Directly from your Browser. It will start downloading the video instantly, on the other side video keeps on playing .  No Website or software is needed. This works on most of the browsers. Eg. Google Chrome, Firefox etc.

It’s easy! Just Copy and Paste the Code Below to your Address Bar:

javascript:window.location.href = ‘http://youtube.com/get_video?video_id=’ + swfArgs['video_id'] + “&l=” + swfArgs['l'] + “&sk=” + swfArgs['sk'] + ‘&fmt_map’ + swfArgs['fmt_map'] + ‘&t=’ + swfArgs['t'];

If you want to download the video in High Quality MP4 Format…

Just follow the same procedure as above. Instead of pasting the above code, paste the code Below:

javascript:window.location.href = ‘http://youtube.com/get_video?video_id=’ + swfArgs['video_id'] + “&fmt=18″ + “&l=” + swfArgs['l'] + “&sk=” + swfArgs['sk'] + ‘&fmt_map’ + swfArgs['fmt_map'] + ‘&t=’ + swfArgs['t'];

[Via UnlockForUs]