Forcing youtube to run in 720p

Question

There are several methods suggested for this online, but none of them seem to work.

For example:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/youtube-in-720p-hd-viewin.html

This article talks about getting started with 720p, but doesn't even work on its own video.

Does anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

Addendum: &vq=hd720 or &vq=hd1080 does the trick.

Example

Here is an example iframe that will embed your video and play it at 720p.

Replace V1234567 with your unique video embed code.

 <iframe width="324" height="182" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/V1234567?vq=hd720" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 

Update

See: https://developers.google.com/youtube/js_api_reference#Playback_quality

Or iframe: https://developers.google.com/youtube/iframe_api_reference#Playback_quality

• The quality level is small : the height of the player is 240 pixels, and the size of the player is at least 320 pixels by 240 pixels for a 4: 3 format.
• Quality level medium : the player’s height is 360 pixels, and the player’s dimensions are 640 pixels by 360 pixels (for 16: 9 format) or 480 pixels by 360 pixels (for 4: 3 format).
• large quality level: the player’s height is 480 pixels, and the player’s dimensions are 853 pixels by 480 pixels (for 16: 9 format) or 640 pixels by 480 pixels (for 4: 3 format).
• hd720 quality hd720 : the player’s height is 720 pixels, and the player’s dimensions are 1280 pixels by 720 pixels (for 16: 9 format) or 960 pixels by 720 pixels (for 4: 3 format).
• hd1080 quality hd1080 : the player’s height is 1080 pixels, and the player’s dimensions are 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels (for 16: 9 format) or 1440 pixels by 1080 pixels (for 4: 3 format).
• Highres quality level: The height of the player is more than 1080 pixels, which means that the aspect ratio of the player is more than 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels.
• Quality Level default : YouTube selects the appropriate playback quality. This option effectively restores the quality level to the default state and cancels any previous attempts to set the playback quality using the cueVideoById, loadVideoById or setPlaybackQuality functions.

Answer 2

You can do this by adding the &hd=1 parameter to the video url. This makes the video run at the highest resolution available for the video. However, you cannot set it to 720p because not every video has hd ish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID&hd=1

http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/player_parameters.html

UPDATE: as of 2014 hd is out of date https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters?csw=1#Deprecated_Parameters

Answer 3

This is an example of embedding video played in HD 1080.

 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://youtube.com/v/IplDUxTQxsE&vq=hd1080" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="1"></iframe> 

Let me break the code: http://youtube.com/v/ video_id &vq=hd1080

Video ID for this video: IplDUxTQxsE you will see this type of random code in the link of each YouTube video.

So far so good, this trick works for playing HD videos right on web pages!

You can also change the quality to 720. &vq=hd720

Answer 4

I managed to get this work to do the following fix:

 //www.youtube.com/embed/_YOUR_VIDEO_CODE_/?vq=hd720 

For this video, the resolution must be hd720.

I used the attachment via iframe, BTW. Hope someone finds this helpful.

Answer 5

The first example below does not work for me, but the second does (in Chrome).

 <iframe width="720" height="405" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GX_c566xYcQ?rel=0&vq=hd1080" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="1"></iframe> <iframe width="720" height="405" src="//youtube.com/v/IplDUxTQxsE?rel=0&vq=hd1080" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="1"></iframe> 

I believe the first one uses the new youtube HTML5 player, while the bottom one (which works) uses an older flash player. However, the second one does not seem to load correctly in Safari / Firefox, etc., therefore it is probably not used.

Answer 6

None of the above solutions seem to work if the width / height is less than the selected line quality. For example, the following does not work for Chrome in Chrome:

 <iframe width="720" height="480" src="//youtube.com/embed/hUezoHa1ZF4?autoplay=true&rel=0&vq=hd720" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 

I want to show high quality video, but not use 1280 x 720 pixels on the web page.

When I go to youtube myself, playing 720p video in a 720x480 window looks better than 480p with the same size. I want to play 720p in a 720x480 window (with reduced quality). There is no good solution afaik.

Answer 7

If you're still wondering how to do this, add: & feature = youtu.be & hd = 1 Actually, now I checked, this only works when you send the url to someone else, and not by embedding.

Answer 8

Use this, does it work 100% _your_videocode? rel = 0 & vq = hd1080 "