Internet Technologies Wiki
Advertisement
YouTube

YouTube is a social video-sharing website hosting millions of videos, with advanced features like subtitles and annotations, video commenting and more.

Video Formats

Videos are usually available in multiple formats, as specified by a numeric format id (fmt).

Format: 34 25 18 22 17
Format Name: Standard Medium High HD (720p) Mobile
Container: FLV MP4 FLV MP4 3GP
Video Codec MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) MPEG-4 Part 2
Aspect Ratio 4:3 or 16:9 4:3 16:9 16:9 11:9
Max Resolution 320x240 (4:3) or 400x226 (16:9) 480x360 864x480 1280x720 (720p) 176x144
Average Bitrate (kbit/s) 200 512 900 2000 Unknown
Frame Rate (fps) Unknown 25 Unknown

Downloading a video

There are multiple methods used to gather the video's download URL. Most methods contain tokens which are tied to a specific IP address and expire after a short amount of time.

Method 1

  1. Get the VIDEO ID
  2. Navigate to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= and your VIDEO ID.
  3. View the source code and extact the "t" value from inside SWF_ARGS
  4. Copy that t value (without quotes) and paste after http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=VIDEO_ID&t=
Advertisement