How to Upload and Watch HD on YouTube

YouTube has been going through some changes in recent months that most folks don't know about.  I've written here about how to take advantage of their new high quality, wide screen, 480x320 format.  Most recently, they have taken the HD plunge.  Not only can you upload suitably-prepared HD video to YouTube, but you can watch it in 720p HD.  Briefly, you save or convert your video to a 720p .mp4 file, upload it, and watch it in high quality by appending &fmt=22 to the URL.  The details follow.

The Inspiration

I found out about this, via Google, from Eugenia Loli-Queru.  Eugenia has a near da Vincian combination of technical prowess and artistic genius, so I expect to be quoting her a lot on this site.

For a fun example of HD quality on YouTube, check out this video of Eugenia's, and hit the full-screen button.  For an impressive display of her artistic sensibilities, check this one out from Vimeo.

Editor Settings

Eugenia spent a good deal of time finding the best settings for a number of editors, and you can find them here.  While her settings are for Vimeo, they seem to work well with YouTube also.  If you don't have a suitable editor, or if you simply want to  convert and upload files right out of your camcorder, the following sections describe the use of a simple tool to accomplish that.

The Tool

Conversion of files produced by your HD camcorder to a format suitable for uploading to YouTube (or Vimeo) is accomplished with a freely-available tool (Windows, Mac, and Linux!) called Handbrake. Download it from this site, and follow the instructions on the site for installing it. The following instructions use the "Windows GUI" version of the program.  ("GUI" stands for "Graphical User Interface.")

Create a Preset

1. Find Handbrake on your start menu, right click, and select "Run as administrator." (We're running as administrator so you can save the settings as a preset, so you don't have to remember or keep track of them in the future.)
2. Making sure that "Normal" is selected under "Presets"on the right side, make the changes like these to the "Picture Settings" tab. Note that steps 2 and 3 have to be done in the right order.
3. Change to the "Video" tab and make these changes.
4. Change to the "Audio" tab and make these changes.
5. These are all the changes we need to make a custom preset, so, at the bottom of the "Preset" panel on the right, click "Add," give the preset a name, and save it.

Convert the File

Now that we have our preset, we can convert a file from whatever format it's in to an .mp4 file suitable for upload to YouTube or Vimeo:

1. In Handbrake, click the "Source" button, and select "File."
2. Browse to the file you want to convert and click "Open."
3. Fill in or browse to the path and filename of the file you want to create, using type .mp4.
4. Press the "Start" button.

Depending on the length/size of your file, conversion could take a while.

YouTube

Upload the file as you normally would.  YouTube will recognize the file as HD, and create several viewable versions.  You may have to wait a while for the HD version to become available.

To watch the video in HD, you need to use a special URL.  Begin with the normal YouTube URL, and add this string to the end of it:

&fmt=22

To embed the file on a web page, copy the embed code from YouTube, and edit the two instances of the URL by appending the following string:

&ap=%2526fmt%3D22

Vimeo

The re-encoded version of the file should give good results on Vimeo.  Upload it and view it as your normally would.

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