Ok so over a year ago, I released a quick video venting my frustration about videos
with baked-in pillarboxing or letterboxing on YouTube - as the platform had been making
great strides in updating the video player to adapt to the native aspect ratio of an
uploaded video.
Aaand a lot of people got pretty salty - including a few of the big “cinematography” channels.
But the video was just meant to be that - me venting my frustration that content frequently
wound up being annoying to watch on my DCI 4K monitor - with a near 17:9 aspect ratio
and a resolution of 4096x2160 - and almost impossible to watch on my 4:3 displays and
CRTs that I love so dearly.
As of the material design layout update to YouTube that started rolling out in late 2016,
the fullscreen player now fully adjusts to fit the native aspect ratio of content to
your monitor’s aspect ratio.
Which WOULD mean that 4:3 content on my 4:3 CRTs would look great, and they’d look pretty
good on 8:5 or 16:10 displays, too.
Except MANY people choose to bake in the black bars to their video.
This means that the actual video file they are uploading is in 16:9 aspect ratio, and
they just have nothing filling in on the sides.
This is a problem, because then trying to scale that video on YouTube on a native resolution
screen doesn’t work.
Instead of a full-screen 4:3 beautiful video, you get a tiny video view in the middle of
the screen.
That’s not a good viewing experience.
*This became more relevant and I thought it was worth posting at the time, since 21:9
ultrawide screens were becoming more sought after at the time.
Screens are getting wider and less standard, even phones are now releasing with 2:1 (or
18:9) screens, some even with weird 19:9 ratios.
Releasing fake cinema scope or 21:9 content with a PNG overlay in a 16:9 canvas will not
look good on those phones.
At all.*
Yeah sure, I sounded kind of like a dick - but not because I was looking down upon people
who didn’t know what they were doing, but because I generally found it frustrating as
a viewer.
Yes, I do kind of scoff at the nonsense trends the past 2 years of pushing destructive LUTs,
b-roll of normal things set to music in slowmo to look cool, and adding black bars to pretend
your footage is interesting -
but my primary goal is always to advocate for “doing it right” if you MUST do it.
*And very clearly, the video was talking about YouTube uploads.
I got so many comments about how their film festival or clients need 16:9 submissions.
Then give them 16:9.
That whole video was referencing the YouTube player and how it impacts YouTube viewers.*
Well there was a recent update that makes this even more prevalent.
At the time I made the video, the player in the new layout adapted to the aspect ratio
of the source video IF you were viewing in fullscreen or in theater mode, the bigger
wide view.
To be honest, I haven’t deliberately used the Default player view in years and I don’t
see how anyone does, so I didn’t even notice that aspect ratios were NOT conformed to in
that mode.
BUT they just updated the player so that even the default view adapts to the aspect ratio
of the file that is uploaded.
So I figured it was time to finally rehash this subject.
*Here’s an example of the old YouTube layout that the last percent of people are being
forced over from are used to seeing.
The older UI design and videos that were always framed within a 16:9 ratio box.
So this video from Paramore, uploaded in a wider aspect ratio has black bars on the top
and bottom.
In the new layout, the player expands and allows the video to take up much more of the
screen - expanding until the top and bottom edges of the native video frame hit the player
borders.
This is what you want.
This is a much better viewing experience.
This also means that in full-screen mode, this video will adapt better to screens of
all different sizes without borders on the top AND sides, which sucks.
Here’s an example of a video uploaded with bars baked into the video, full-screen on
my wider-than-16:9 screen.
Bars on the sides, bars on the top and bottom.
This is a crappy viewing experience.
Now with the update this week, this player adaptation is done in the default view, as
well, which is cool.
Unfortunately, that brought a bug where the Theater mode player has like 50 to 100 extra
pixels to the side, spawning a side scroll bar at all resolutions in Chrome, which is
obnoxious.
BUT they’ll fix that, it’s happened before.*
To me, the important part should be the viewing experience.
Pick a frame size, compose for that frame size, and stick with it.
Randomly chopping off parts of your video does NOT make it more cinematic, and watching
it as a small box in a complete black border as a result definitely doesn’t feel cinematic.
It was also brought up that they HAVE to upload in 16:9 in order to enable End Cards.
I have a couple thoughts on that.
Firstly, just to be blunt, End Cards are something only a small percent of viewers ever see across
most channels.
And if your video looks that bad on my screen, I’m not making it until the end, and I know
many people who feel the same way.
Secondly, while the End Card tool does not work on 21:9 or scope native resolution video,
it does work on non-16:9 videos, despite what it says.
You can go all the way to 2:1 or 18:9 and still have End Cards work, and they still
work on even 4:3 videos.
I have tested this, it doesn’t work any wider than 18:9 but it does work out to that
point.
Works on 8:5 or 16:10, as well.
So if your goal is TRULY to just provide a slightly wider video to FEEL a bit more “cinematic”,
then 2:1 is a fantastic compromise that looks great across most screens, and still has End
Card support.
Please, please consider using it.
And to be honest, it looks better than going full ultrawide anyway.
*Let’s review the ways to actually produce wider content correctly, as well.
In my opinion, the best possible way is to start with the correct aspect ratio you want
to target with your original sequence settings AND your render settings.
That way there is no risk of rendering it incorrectly.
With 18:9 it’s easy to make the presets because minimal math is required.
Your sequence width should be double the height.
Easy.
Alternatively, you could edit in the 16:9 equivalent with matching width to your wider
setup, add a black bar PNG as usual, and then render in the wider view to chop those off
- though in many cases that will simply center your entire sequence in a wider frame, which
is DEFINITELY not what you want, but might help teach you why this problem is a problem.
If you use the correct aspect ratios from the getgo, then you have the freedom to adjust
framing and composition and scaling all while you’re editing without worrying about anything,
nor dealing with a pesky extra layer of black bars to keep up with.*
And, obviously for those of you who want to point it out as some sort of ground-breaking
revelation - if you’re having your black bars scale in from the top and bottom for
an otherwise 16:9 video, this doesn’t work.
I’m talking about videos that are completely wide-screen from start to finish here.
But come on, do you really want to keep over-using that Peter McKinnon ripoff trick?
Is that really what you want from your content?
Anywho, hopefully this helps showcase how aspect ratios are supposed to work, and how
you can make the viewer experience the best it can be.
If you’re putting all of this extra effort in to make your video pop, might as well do
it right, eh?
Sample clips and etc. will be linked in the video description, as well as the original
video.
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I’m EposVox and I’ll see you in the next one.