yeah it did work, and very easy to set up as you said.. however it only takes the short yt urls, and not the ordinary, at least when i tried that didnt work..

thanks for posting this, and a happy new year too

I tried this for normal link.

if (strpos($content,"http://www.youtube.com") !== false) {
$content = str_replace("http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=", "http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/", $content);
}

but vids only load on pc, won't load on mobile device though. anyone has better solution?