We get asked all of the time, “Why does my video I uploaded to YouTube play in a low quality?” Our answer is this:

“YouTube videos will automatically play in a low quality because of their bandwidth usage. They will always play that way unless you force it to play in HD.  Now there are different ways to force the coding to play in HD, depending on how and where you are using the videos.”

Sharing the link
Generally when you go to youtube, you will find your video then below it there will be a list of options to share the video. Then there will be a link that you can copy and paste.

So with this video you will use http://youtu.be/zLWVPWe4Zf8
But when you use that, it will not automatically play in HD. Now for the magic. If you add “?hd=1” at the end of the link, then voila, it will force play in HD. Try it out. http://youtu.be/zLWVPWe4Zf8?hd=1

Embedding on your website

When you are embedding a YouTube video on your website, you have to go to your video, then  instead of the share this video section, you will click embed.

You will get your embed code and then add one of the following codes: “ ?vq=hd1080 ” or “ ?vq-hd720 ” to the end of your embed link.  It should look like this:

iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/zLWVPWe4Zf8?vq=hd1080” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe

If this still doesn’t work, then we suggest you go with a paid hosting that will always play back your videos in HD.  Check out SurReel Interactive video hosting today.  There are a lot more perks then just HD playback.    

-SurReel Video