How to download your youtube videos at the highest quality

[Cougar_II]

Hello,

Here's 2 little tricks on how you can download your Youtube Videos at the highest quality...

The problem is as soon as you start the video, VSO DOWNLOADER detects it, so even if you manually change the quality to HD it will continue to download it at a lower quality.

Make sure VSO Downloader is installed and running...

1) If you are a Firefox user, you can install this AddOn: YouTube High Definition 7.8

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... efinition/

This will let you force the video to play at your selected quality "before" the video starts, this way VSO Downloader will be able to detect the video at the highest quality

2) add "&hd=1" ( <Shift-7>hd=1 ) at the end of your video URL...

In firefox:
Search for your video, then <Right-Click> then Copy Link Location

Then paste it in your address bar on top: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM

before you press enter, add "&hd=1" on the end...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM&hd=1

This will force the playback to the highest quality...
Press <ENTER> and go start that video...
VSO Downloader will detect it, playing at it's highest quality

[Claire]

Nice tip, thank you!

[LouisM]

Hi Cougar,

I've just tested downloading with &hd=1 and it didn't work. I think it's been disabled by youtube recently. Could you confirm?
The firefox add-on works fine.

[Mike89]

I use the firefox addon, works perfect. Amazing Google doesn't have this feature on it's own product. BTW, might want to update original post, that Firefox addon is now at version 31.5.