[somat]

A question about aspect ratio on youtube, Does it care? or can you put whatever aspect ratio you want, I guess my complaint is that I don't see nearly enough (none) square video on the site.

[ErroneousBosh]

I think it will show in whatever aspect ratio you upload.

It cares about overall pixel size, and for example standard 720x576 standard def 4:3 video will be brutally compressed compared to the exact same video upscaled using any non-AI upscaler (even nearest-neighbour) to 1440x1080.

I dug into this a bit a while ago, and could probably post my finding here if anyone was interested.

[IdiotSavage]

YouTube, as well as any decent player, plays any aspect ratio video, even portrait mode.

As an uploader you should never add black bars (if they are in the source, crop them out before uploading) and of course never distort the video. This ensures the best playback experience for all devices.

[nananana9]

> As an uploader you should never add black bars

In an ideal world yes. In practice, the YouTube layout looks weird on aspect ratios that aren't 4:3 or 16:9. If you upload any vertical video it gets categorized as a short, so that's out of the window - and even for things like 21:9 you get a teeny tiny player on desktop since it just fits the width.

[IdiotSavage]

Yes, there are some YouTube-manufactured issues. However it bothers me more when I try to watch a 21:9 video fullscreen on my 21:9 display and get black bars on all four sides.

[otikik]

What do you do if you want to combine several sources with different aspect ratios? Surely black bars are acceptable in that case?

[the8472]

I don't know if YT can, but browsers do handle variable-AR videos.

https://litter.catbox.moe/1x93zdib04wu50kc.webm

[sigmoid10]

Ah yes, the good old "shot in portrait mode, converted to 16:9 with added black bars, and then displayed under YT shorts in portrait mode again" category on youtube. This is almost artistic at this point. Sometimes I wonder how small can the content of a video get before people will stop watching it. Is there any research on this?

[pjc50]

You can. I've even seen intentional 4:3 used as an "80s" signifier.

Quick googling suggested that square video under 3 minutes will be automatically classed as "shorts", which much of HN hates and may never have seen.

[weinzierl]

Not YouTube but regarding the period signifier:

Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" has every section of the movie shot in the time appropriate aspect ratio.

[ErroneousBosh]

But the presentation format is actually 1.85:1 so the 1930s part is pillarboxed slightly and the 1960s part is heavily letterboxed.

If you buy the Blu-ray it's presented in 16:9 and 1920x1080 throughout, it's just masked to suit.

[OliverGuy]

AFAIK youtube will stretch the player window to match the aspect ratio of the source media, lots of cinematic content that's a wider than normal (21:9 I think?) ratio that youtube adjusts the player window to fit around without black bars.

They won't ever squash or stretch video though, so this means the original uploader stretched the 4:3 content to 16:9 at some point before upload