YouTube stores several image thumbnails for every video. These are used for video previews and can be extracted and used elsewhere with one of several different web addresses (URLs).

In each of these web addresses, replace VIDEOID with the eleven character long YouTube video ID...

The reason YouTube video views get stuck around 301 views has been explained fairly well in this 9 minute YouTube video. In case you don't want to watch a video, here are the basic points:

• When a video has less than or equal to 300 views, YouTube counts each view normally, with low validity checking. These videos are usually low-impact videos intended for small audiences like family and friends, so making sure views are legitimate isn't super important.

When a video is uploaded to YouTube, several versions of the video and audio data are saved at different quality levels. The video resolutions are 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, and Original, and the video becomes sharper as you go higher. YouTube also plays higher quality audio as you increase the video resolution. This post lists which audio quality is played for each video resolution...

To link to a specific part of a YouTube video, so that upon visiting the URL, you are taken directly to that time, simply add #t=01m10s to the end of the YouTube URL. Replace 01m with the number of minutes into the video, and 10s with the number of seconds...

You should always link to and embed the HD version of YouTube videos when video or audio quality is important. Here's how...

This is a follow-up to my post on linking to and embedding HD YouTube videos. It goes more into depth on how video resolution affects the default playback quality, as well as the differences between the two new embedded players.

You may have noticed that YouTube has two embed players for the new embed code (version 3 of the player). There is a player with controls that fade away, leaving only a 3-pixel tall track position bar along the bottom, and a player with fixed, 30-pixel tall controls that do not fade away...