Raise your hand if you’ve watched a video on YouTube, or that originated from YouTube (like an embedded player or Facebook share), in the last week. Okay, everyone who doesn’t have their hand up can feel free to go back to the cave they live in. The world of the modern web has gotten to a point where this is literally the standard. YouTube is the way people get video, and people get video a lot. It’s little shock, then, that Google is busy adding new features to their popular video platform.
Their most recent features include a logoless player option when you embed content and an HD image preview for videos that have a high-resolution version. Here are the details:
The logoless player can be added by any user who’s embedding video on their site using YouTube’s current (not legacy) code. To remove the YouTube logo that is normally located in the bottom-right corner, you simply add the “?modestbranding=1″ line at the end of the embed code. This doesn’t remove the YouTube logo in the top-right that appears when the video is paused, but it’s still substantially less branded and there are no restrictions on when, how, or by whom this feature can be used.
The HD video image previews replace the old image previews (which were based on the low-resolution version of the video) with a version based on the best resolution available. The video must be at least 480p. The feature will be implemented automatically for all new HD videos uploaded, and HD image previews will be rolled out to all HD videos in the upcoming weeks. For now, this primarily impacts the still image that’s present before users push “Play,” but it sets a precedent for HD imagery in search results and other locations where your video stills are displayed.