How to: watch higher quality videos on YouTube by default
YouTube traditionally has been a great place to find amateur video encoded at lower quality settings. While that’s great for people with lower bandwidth connections, here’s how to insist that YouTube serve up higher quality videos whenever possible.
You may have seen some videos on YouTube more recently with a link that says something like "watch this video in higher quality." If, after clicking on that link, the video plays smoothly for you, tweaking a setting in YouTube might help you enjoy a richer viewing experience.
Step-by-step
1. Head over to YouTube.com
2. Log in.
3. Click on the Account link in the upper right of the page.
4. Scroll down a bit, then click on Video Playback Quality. You should then see a screen similar to this:
5. Click on the "I have a fast connection . . ." radio button and then Save Settings. This will tell YouTube that whenever a high quality version of a video exists, you want to download it.
It’s important to note that this won’t work for videos that were originally uploaded with low quality. And, if your Internet connection isn’t robust enough video playback may become choppy. For some people it may be easier to leave the "Choose my video quality dynamically . . ." radio filled, though in my experience sometimes YouTube struggles to correctly identify my download speed.
YouTube also offers an explanation in its help section:
You can also choose to view a specific video in higher quality directly from the playback page. If the video is streaming at standard quality and is available in higher quality, you can click the link that reads “Watch this video in higher quality” underneath the video. Conversely, if you’re watching the streaming video in higher quality and want to watch it in standard quality, click the link that says "Watch this video in lower quality for faster playback."
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June 27th, 2008
I know how to use this but it bugs me everytime I visit again. Youtube brings it back to default. I clicked ‘I have a fast connection….’ then save and it shows that settings have been saved. So i watched videos and it is now being shown in high quality but when I quit the browser and watch a video in youtube it defaults to standard quality video. What is the problem?