How to Embed a YouTube Video

YouTube videos are meant to be shared. But the best way to share them is not by copying and pasting a link, but rather embedding the actual video in your blog, Web page, or the like. That way, your visitors can watch the clip directly without having to click away to YouTube proper.

Embedding a video used to be pretty straightforward, but recently YouTube has made some changes that make the process a bit more confusing.

Here's how to handle video embeds.

Open the YouTube page containing the video you want to embed. Just below the video window, find and click the Share button. Then, at the bottom of the "Link to this video" box, click Embed. You'll see a highlighted chunk of text. This is the "embed code," which you'll need to copy and paste into your Web page. You can do so immediately by right-clicking the text and choosing Copy. However, you may want to modify some options first.

Notice the five check boxes below the embed code. The one I have to enable most often is Use old embed code, which provides a different chunk of code that's more widely compatible with blog tools. Make sure to enable any of these options you need before copying the embed code.

Also, you can choose from various sizes for your embedded video by clicking any of the gray boxes below the check boxes. If you need something smaller, use the Custom box. For example, I routinely need my videos to be no larger than 450 pixels wide, so I enter 450 in the Width field. (YouTube automatically calculates the height.)