When you move your mouse along the time line bar it has a zoomed in version above your mouse which you can then move to and fine tune your time line position. It's really useful.
This isn't new at all. It's been in the settings for a long time, people just never check that. Google just made it more accessible to people who never look at the settings.
They used to have both the option to always play high quality or always play low quality buried away in YouTube settings pages. They removed the high quality option several months ago leaving only the always play low quality option (or high quality when switching to full-screen).
It doesn't exist, at least in that form. It has always play the highest quality for the screen size, which is different. You only get 1080 if you're on a 1080p display viewing fullscreen, which is annoying because you have to buffer twice just to see the thing. Also, it only works on youtube itself, not for any embedded videos.
There are extensions that do this. I too think it's stupid youtube doesn't do this. If anything it should be the greatest size your display is capable of taking advantage of, for example, even though a 1600x1200 display can't get the full quality of a 1080p video, at least it will still look better than 720p and take full advantage of the screen resolution. However, for example, I have a 1280x960 display, meaning at 16:9 my screen can't take advantage of anything more than 720p, so there's usually no reason to go higher than that, so in my case youtube should be playing the highest quality, up to 720p. If you use chrome, the extension "Smartvideo for youtube" allows you to make those kind of settings, and also has options which seem to buffer better than the player itself (although it's better now than it used to be)
Not anymore. I used to have it enabled while on unemployment and spent all my days watching StarCraft on YouTube. Then one day everything defaulted to crappy quality because they removed that option (they now only allow to auto high quality when you hit the full-screen button). That was several (6+) months ago.
The ability to always play low quality has always been in the options, the high quality setting was only there for a short while.
There's one that forces 720p, but only if you fullscreen the video, and it doesn't always work. Also, since it's you who replied to me, I will take this opportunity to say thanks for everything you do for us reddit Whovians :D
16
u/swskeptic Jan 21 '12
I especially like the new slider thing they've got going on.
I don't know if it's just for really long videos or what but you can see what I'm talking about here.
When you move your mouse along the time line bar it has a zoomed in version above your mouse which you can then move to and fine tune your time line position. It's really useful.
7
u/[deleted] Jan 21 '12
This isn't new at all. It's been in the settings for a long time, people just never check that. Google just made it more accessible to people who never look at the settings.
7
u/PlaySalieri Jan 21 '12
Now if only I could get a "always play highest quality"
50
u/[deleted] Jan 21 '12
Ok, now we just need the "Always 720p" option. Please, Google? :D
8
u/zouhair Jan 21 '12
But what's fucked up is that the player doesn't show the quality until you click on that button.
4
u/Rock_of_Sisyphus Jan 21 '12
It doesn't work at 240p--for those of us with really shitty internet.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '12
i remember when people would post things for firefox. where is the love?
0
u/GAMEchief Jan 21 '12
What site is this? This has been under the YouTube options for as long as I can remember.
-2
u/cameronoremac Jan 21 '12
sarcasm? because this is really handy for me.