Not tried this myself yet but according to the article below this might help.

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9883507-2.html?tag=cnetfd.mt

They say "To give it a spin, just drop &fmt=6 at the end of the URL of any video you're watching. If YouTube has a higher quality version available on its servers, it'll start playing right away."

Personally, I'd just use one of the video hosting sites that allows high resolution uploads. Even though one of the best ones especially for HD video content, Stage 6, is now gone there are several others worth looking at which are less cluttered with the dross that YouTube seems to specialise in.

Check out www.vimeo.com It allows 720p uploads.

Check out www.vimeo.com It allows 720p uploads.

But more people watch YouTube, so if you're putting up clips to show specific people, go Vimeo. If you're putting up viral videos to show lots of people, go YouTube.

Also, you want &fmt=18, not &fmt=6 for the best quality video.

Here are the new specs:
480x320 @ 29.97fps
MPEG-4 Video (H.264)
MPEG-4 (AAC) audio (44.1KHz, Stereo)
mp4 container

These are probably the iPhone/AppleTV streams. They're a LONG way from HD quality on vimeo, but they are much better that the original quality. h.264 is a far more efficient codec than the old onVP6 codec Youtube usually uses, plus these new encodes are nearly twice the datarate (the old .flvs were around 200-300kps, these are 400-500.

Bear in mind these new streams will only be Flash 9 compatible.

The feature seems to have been disabled. I can't access the H.264 versions as of today.

Hey! it's working again!

Here are two examples from my students' work. They were uploaded as 640x480 XviD AVIs, the result is 480*360 MP4 files, but compared to the older SPARK H.263 codec F:LV files, the difference in the HQ mp4 versions is marked, especially on things like text

Low/standard quality FLV versions:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h47t2cJhzXk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQclD2et8C4

Higher Quality mp4 versions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h47t2cJhzXk&fmt=18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQclD2et8C4&fmt=18

whats been recommended is this...

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55745

since the end of february.
youtube has change some compression method, and the rumors of pirats forum is that they will reencode all(+140million)video.Some say it will be done by country.And all the tricks and theory that worked for 2 years don't seem to work so much.Search for forum of pirats(dvd&animation) they are the one who bring the best video to youtube,and they are the one who miss already Stage6.Because they upload playstation and manga videos.
But I will not put links to those forums because I don't encourage pirating,and copy,of copyright work.
heres an example
http://youtube.com/watch?v=j3JtIkTktz0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=W3KxpVo7PAE
and this one is from a dvinfo member **** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ki3aZwbZME

p.s: I have some videos you can find them by a link I put yesteday ithis section.But I don't have the knowledge(for now)

you cannot press the resize button(second from low right corner)
on dark knight HD, but you can on the other video and my videos.

watch dark knight in full screen it very good.

whats been recommended is this...

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55745

if fact completey ignore this. ive been using what it has recommended and the results are terrrible :(

looking for a better solution and only if i have PPRO CS3 :)

These are probably old explanation
but one very easy way is with divx,the file are not heavy and it convert in 2minutes.But it saturate(underexpose)the colors its like putting a polarizer,work well with daylight sunny clips.But a bit problem in available lights depending on the light source.
or try AVI for very short clips:very good quality

Hello Liam
akuna matata, don,t worry with Flv and others.
Find your solution by trying a lot of setting or imovie can do a good job also.
and by the time you get it youtube will have changed its setting.