Introducing the NEW HD/HQ YouTube Video Formats

Sunday, 18 January 2009 21:00

Star Trek Clip YouTube has recently added High Definition (HD) and High Quality (HQ) video formats to it's selection, and subsequently all of us now have these same format options available for our embedded YouTube videos. See the related article Playing HD/HQ YouTube Videos using the JW FLV Player. This article will go over the differences between the new formats, and will show you side by side video comparisons.

The main differences between the new YouTube HD/HQ formats are 1) the resolution of the video, 2) the aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9), and 3) the size of the video that must be downloaded. Below you will see a table of these differences.

YouTube HD/HQ Formats

Format #	Type	Resolution	Aspect Ratio	Download Size for a video length of 2:13
6	HQ FLV	480x360	4:3	10.5MB
18	HQ MP4	480x270	16:9	8.77MB
22	HD MP4	1280x720	16:9	33.4MB
35	HQ MP4	640x360	16:9	12.7MB

But which format should I use?

Below is a sample High Quality video in Format 18 (480x270) and is 8.77MB in size.

If the movie isn’t playing, download a new ADOBE FLASH PLAYER.

Below is the same video as above in High Definition Format 22 (1280x720) and is 33.4MB in size. You can play all video formats at the same time to compare them along side each other. If one or more of the formats is jerky, its because all 3 video formats are downloading at the same time. To workaround this, pause each video and wait for it to download. You will see the download progress in the control bar. Once all 3 video formats have downloaded, move the slider back to the start. The fact that you may need to do this at all emphasizes the point I make in the conclusion at the end of this article.

If the movie isn’t playing, download a new ADOBE FLASH PLAYER.

Below is the same video as above in High Quality Format 35 (640x360) and is 12.7MB in size.

If the movie isn’t playing, download a new ADOBE FLASH PLAYER.

Now I think it's safe to say that Format 22 is noticeably far better quality than Format 18 and Format 35, especially when viewed full screen. However, it is over 3 times the download size, and what would that look like being viewed on a typical laptop with, on average, much less video memory than the typical desktop PC? Probably very jerky and hard for your website visitors to enjoy.

Conclusion

Until the hardware on the average laptop and desktop catching up with the requirements of displaying HD video, I would recommend displaying your videos in Format 18 or Format 35 to ensure that most of your website visitors enjoy videos without display problems. Just like YouTube, you could also give your website visitors the option of viewing your videos in HD with a 'watch in HD' button or link, and in the article Using a 'Watch in HD' link with the JW FLV Player I'll explain how to do that.

Comments (4)

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I like the video comparison, it really shows the differences between the different formats. I'll be using 640x360.

Bryan S , January 19, 2009 | url

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We are a year later now and perhaps some technology update is in order. The hardware of present day quad core PCs is capable of pushing enough data through to run the HD HQ 22 format. It seems also more practical for these who are trying to output downloaded movies on their wide screen TV sets (most often 1080p (1920x1080 pixels). Today laptops come equipped already with HDMI port allowing for a direct output to the large screen TV, where the difference between these formats is quite noticealbe. When it comes to all Macs (they are based on Linux) they handle this issue much better as their O/S is much better written for graphics/multimedia purpose. For users of laptops with XGA screens (1024x76 smilies/cool.gif