My first test with the kids with HD upload to YouTube was a success after many attempts. Initially the video continuously looked like crap. I would re-compress and upload with different settings. Same results.  It actually took me 4 times longer to get it figured out than it did to produce the video in iMovie ’09!

It wasn’t until I remembered a comment from the help section of YouTube that referred to the “Watch in HD” link only being available with YouTube set to “English” in the upper left of the screen. After putzing with this all afternoon, I changed the settings to “English” and there it was. The HD Version!

I also learned that you can short-cut the link by adding &fmt=22 to the end of the video’s URL. Which would be in this case:

so all in all it worked out great and I can now sit back and enjoy the pleasures that are my kids in high quality on YouTube.