How to link to full-screen, HD video in YouTube

Sometimes you want to ensure your viewers are getting the best viewing experience from YouTube. Here's how to link directly to full-screen and HD versions of your video.

Craig Simms Special to CNET News

Craig was sucked into the endless vortex of tech at an early age, only to be spat back out babbling things like "phase-locked-loop crystal oscillators!". Mostly this receives a pat on the head from the listener, followed closely by a question about what laptop they should buy.

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Craig Simms

Dec. 5, 2011 5:04 p.m. PT

Sometimes you want to ensure your viewers are getting the best viewing experience from YouTube. Here's how to link directly to full-screen and HD versions of your video.

We're not sure when it was disabled, but the old &fmt= suffix doesn't work any more for determining resolution on YouTube. Here's what does work at the time of writing.

Full screen

Replace the watch in the URL with watch_popup.

Celebration! (Credit: The Lonely Island)

Change resolution

Add &vq=hd1080 to the end of the URL for 1080p.
Add &vq=hd720 to the end of the URL for 720p.

Note that the video will have to exist in these resolutions for the URLs to work, and these tags must be used in conjunction with watch_popup.

Bonus: start the video at a specific time

Add #t=0m0s to the end of the URL, replacing the zeroes where you want the clip to start.

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