Sneaky YouTube Embed Tricks

Whatever your business, you should know by now that using Youtube (and video marketing in general) to promote yourself is a modern must-do!

But did you know there’s ways to embed make your videos look better when you embed them on a site outside of YouTube?

Unfortunately, most people don’t.

Well, actually that’s fortunate for you because now your videos will look better than everyone else’s!

Here are a few hints for fixing the common issues and distractions with YouTube videos.

The Search Bar

By default on all YouTube videos, that really annoying search bar always pops up at the end, allowing people to search for videos by OTHER people! Of course, you don’t want that at all!

To fix, just add “&showsearch=0” as a parameter at the end of the YouTube URL, and that search bar goes bye-bye.

So now your embed code looks something like this:

<object width=”640″ height=”385″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/wX57EYeZdwc&hl=en_US&fs=1&showsearch=0“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/wX57EYeZdwc&hl=en_US&fs=1&showsearch=0” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”640″ height=”385″></embed></object>

HD Video

Want a better-quality, better-definition video by default? The difference is definitely noticeable so make your videos show up in their best quality without the user having to select it in the YouTube player. Put in the following codes for each at the end of the video’s URL (in the same place as the example above)

For high quality add &ap=%2526fmt%3D18
For high definition add &hd=1

(you need to have uploaded a high quality or HD video for these to work, obviously!)

Bear in mind your audience when you make this modification, though. Higher quality = longer download times, so if a lot of your audience is on a slow connection you might want to stick with normal quality.

Related Videos

At the end of your video, by default, YouTube will pick a bunch of related videos (usually by OTHER people) to show to the viewer. The same as for the search bar, you want to GET RID of the related videos to keep people viewing YOUR content, and not your competitors.

(Related videos usually equals competitors’ videos because, well, they are kinda related… you just don’t WANT your viewers to know about them!)

So get the related videos window out of there! Again. the code goes in the same place as the search bar removal code: at the end of the video’s URL. Add the following code to the aforesaid location:

&rel=0

That’s all you do. Attach that code to the player, and that cluster of “related videos” that shoots across the screen at the conclusion of your movie will no longer show up!

Captions

You can also remove the YouTube annotations on a video. You might not want to do this for your videos, but if you’re embedding someone else’s and you want to turn their annotations off by default, add this to the end of your URL in the same place as before:

&iv_load_policy=3

And, ta-da! No more captions!

That’s All Folks

So there you have it… a few simple tricks to make your videos look better (and work better!)

Take them and use them on your sites and you’ll no longer be stuck using poor quality videos or find yourself sending visitors to your competitors’ videos!

Tagged as: sneaky tricks, video, Video Marketing, youtube, youtube embed, youtube embed code

Article by James T Noble

James makes small businesses bigger. He's previously worked with some of the world's largest brands and companies to market their products and services online - including Disney, Microsoft, 20th Century Fox, Virgin, Coca Cola, MTV and many others. Read more about James...