appleguru's Journal: Current Youtube video formats, specs, links and more!

I downloaded the video files for each format from youtube. There are currently 5 format tags that seem to currently be being used.. no tag, fmt6, fmt13, fmt17, fmt18... As far as I can tell they're only currently encoding videos to "notag" for youtube's main site, and fmt18 (h.264) for the iPhone presumably. New videos get encoded to these two formats. You can access the formats by appending &fmt=18 to the end of a youtube URL.

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBAnCsmf2A4 == notag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBAnCsmf2A4&fmt=18 == fmt18

Here's a screenshot that compares the formats: http://g.appleguru.org/youtubeformats.png

And here are download links and details on each of them :)

No format tag (standard):
320x240 @ 29.97 fps
Flash video (Sorenson h.263)
MP3 Audio (22.05KHz, mono)
FLV container
3.28MB
http://g.appleguru.org/nofmt.flv

Format 6 tag:
448x298 @ 29.98fps
Flash video (Sorenson h.263)
MP3 Audio (44.1KHz, mono)
FLV Conatiner
9.44MB
http://g.appleguru.org/fmt6.flv

Format 13 tag:
176x144 @ 15fps
H.263 Video
AMR Narrowband Audio (8KHz, mono)
3gp container
700KB
http://g.appleguru.org/fmt13.3gp

Format 17 tag:
176x144 @ 12fps
MPEG-4 Video (simple profile)
MPEG-4 (AAC) audio (22.05KHz, mono)
3gp container
832KB
http://g.appleguru.org/fmt17.3gp

Format 18 tag:
480x320 @ 29.97fps
MPEG-4 Video (H.264)
MPEG-4 (AAC) audio (44.1KHz, STEREO!)
mp4 container
6.28MB
http://g.appleguru.org/fmt18.mp4

Coolness :-)