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 | 18 | 35 | 22 | 17 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Format Name: | Standard (360p) | 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 | 640x360 | 480x360 | 864x480 | 1280x720 | 176x144 | |
| Average Bitrate (kbit/s) | 500 | 512 | 900-1200 | 2000 | 58 | |
| Frame Rate (fps) | Unknown | 50 | 25 | 11.24 | ||
| Audio | Codec | AAC | ||||
| Channels | 2 | 1 | ||||
| Sampling Rate (Hz) | 44100 | 22050 | ||||
| Average Bitrate (kbit/s) | Unknown | 128 | 232 | 20 | ||
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
- Get the VIDEO ID
- Navigate to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= and your VIDEO ID.
- View the source code and extact the "t" value from inside SWF_ARGS
- Copy that t value (without quotes) and paste after http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=VIDEO_ID&t=