Getting YouTube Video Embeds To Play In HD by Default
If you’re like me, and have a number of business related videos on your website, or better yet, offer video production as a component of your business, or video as a component of your website or blog, then showing the highest quality video possible on your website, the first time for the user, is paramount.
Lets face it, some people simply don’t know about, or ever care to click on the HD option(s) when watching YouTube videos on their cell phones, computers, and other personal computing devices. Here comes VizTV Media Services to the rescue.
VizTV Media Services is a Houston based videographer and video production shop. I own it. I post videos on all Tha Federation websites. I need all the videos I post to show in HD for a number of reasons few of which are relevant to this discussion so lets get to it.
Coding Video Embeds To Automatically Playback in High Definition
When you click share on a YouTube video and copy the embed code, you’ll see something that looks like this;
<iframe src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/XXXXXXXXXXX” height=”315″ width=”560″ allowfullscreen=”” frameborder=”0″></iframe>
or,
<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/XXXXXXXXXXX” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
The XXXXXXXXX represents the video identifier which is unique to each video on YouTube.
By inserting the following line of code “?rel=0&vq=hd720” right after the video identifier in any YouTube embed code will result in an automatic video playback in 720p once the user clicks play on your video embed.
This coding tag also works in other HD formats such as 480P and 1080P.
An example of a version of the YouTube video embed that would play in HD by default is below.
<iframe src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/XXXXXXXXXXX?rel=0&vq=hd720” height=”315″ width=”560″ allowfullscreen=”” frameborder=”0″></iframe>
Auto HD Playback Only Works On Websites
Unfortunately, you can’t force videos on YouTube to playback in HD, but thank goodness you can on websites because it seems like its the one place where automatic high definition playback on videos would matter most.
We hope this helped you in some way. Whether it did or didn’t, or you have a question, leave a comment below.
