Update of the Old YouTube Full Screen Post

Back nearly two years ago I put up a post about how to work around the YouTube full screen view terminating at the end of each video in a playlist. That post has remained very popular but currently is largely irrelevant.

That post was inspired by my laziness, I got sick of having to click the full screen icon after each ten minute segment of the chopped up documentaries I was watching. I kludged together a way to get what I wanted by creating a local html file and watching from there.

Reviewing the current YouTube site I found good news and bad news. First the good news, the html kludge is no longer needed. While I can’t get a playlist to run from a channel page, I could hand craft a URL to run it from YouTube where it will stay in full screen mode as the videos change.

Here’s how I did it, first you get the ID for the playlist. Click the grid view icon in the upper right then click the playlist you want to watch. This will give you the playlist URL like this: http://www.youtube.com/user/paulhutch00#grid/user/3533EAF39D4A0E3B.

Copy the playlist ID from the end of the URL to use in a hand crafted URL of this format: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&playnext=1. By replacing the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX in the URL template with the playlist ID you copied you get a URL that will let you play the whole playlist without dropping out of full screen mode.

For the example I’m using, the resulting URL is: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3533EAF39D4A0E3B&playnext=1. If you click that link then, click the full screen button in the lower right of the video window, the play list will play full screen and continue in full screen as the videos advance through the playlist. This solves the problem for me, I’m happy to no longer need a kludge html file to make this work.

If you are an ambitious channel creator you can make this easier on your visitors by embedding this hand-made URL in a placeholder video’s description. For an example see the JamesBurkeWeb’s YouTube Channel, great job!

Now the bad news, first the HD modes will not stay set while watching a playlist. When the next video plays it falls back to standard definition. The other bad news for users is that some copyright holders block the embedding of their videos. From what I could figure out, when video embedding is blocked you cannot make a playlist with the video. I believe this is why the Derren Brown playlist I had on my channel stopped working. I can’t blame YouTube for this, if a copyright holder wants it this way YouTube has to oblige them, it’s the law.