For Better or Worse, YouTube Now Adapts to Multiple Aspect Ratios (gizmodo.com)

Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein writes: YouTube very quietly made a very cool and rather major improvement in their video players today... YouTube is now adjusting the YT player size to match videos' native aspect ratios. This is a big deal, and very much welcome.
YouTube provided some before-and-after screenshots Friday, and acknowledged that "We launched this update on mobile awhile back (both Android and iOS) so this change also aligns the desktop and mobile viewing experiences."

Gizmodo writes: Until now YouTube forced all videos into a 16:9 ratio by windowboxing them, meaning surround them with black vertical or horizontal bars like the old days of watching widescreen movies on VHS. In that sense, this isn't a huge change -- white space instead of black -- although the location of player controls moves to fit the video's size...

The aspect adjustments are apparently automatic, retroactive to all uploaded video, and if there's a way to turn the feature off in Creator Studio it's non-obvious... Update 7/27/18 7:48pm: A YouTube spokesperson has since clarified to Gizmodo that currently there is no way to disable this feature.

Comments

Vertical video rubbish.

[Going_Digital]

They should have just told anyone trying to upload a vertical video that they are an idiot and they should learn how to hold their phone.

Sign of the end times

[OrangeTide]

Because we're doomed once society accepts portrait videos as OK.

Re:Sign of the end times

[bjwest]

Because we're doomed once society accepts portrait videos as OK.

Can't wait till we're doomed, then. You really need to rotate one of your monitors -- portrait is drastically better for working with code, sysadmin/etc work in a terminal, web page reading, etc. I keep one monitor in landscape only because some crap assumes that bad orientation.

Why does one need to rotate one monitor to portrait mode, especially with multiple monitors? I have duel 23" monitors, and I have no problem editing code in a window of appropriate size on one monitor, a terminal or two on the "empty" space on that monitor (unless I'm using an IDE, in which case portrait mode would really suck) and documentation, web browser, or whatever I need on the other monitor. If you need to full screen your code editor, you're doing something wrong, because on a decent sized monitor, even in portrait mode, you have a lot of dead space if utilizing proper line lengths.

I purchased large monitors for this reason. Plenty of room in both directions without having to worry about, as you put it, "some crap assumes that bad orientation".

Another problem is that 16x9 monitors are unfit for rotation, and to get one with a sane aspect ratio you pretty much need to buy used.

How are they unfit for rotation? The only thing they would be unfit to rotate would be videos and games. Text/code editing, web browsing (unless you go full-screen on a video) and shell windows do just fine in portrait mode on 16:9.

How can I browse comments without losing video?

[bogaboga]

For me and as far as the desktop version of YouTube is concerned, I would rather be able to scroll through comments or even related video without losing visual of a playing video.

Is this possible at all, or through an extension or hack?

Re:Why for better or worse?

[DarkVader]

From the article, that's not at all what's happening. It's adapting the window shape to the content, so a 4:3 video gets a 4:3 player box, and a 16:9 video gets a 16:9 player box.

I would assume you still get black bars if you fullscreen it and the video aspect ratio doesn't match your monitor's aspect ratio. But it's absolutely the correct behavior if it's playing in a window to adjust that window to the source aspect ratio.

Re:Why for better or worse?

[Marc_Hawke]

If you read the comments on the thread with the pictures, one of the top ones says, "the new 16:9 window is too large. I like the smaller window better." Same shape...just a little bigger, but they don't like it.

And that's called 'hating change.'

Re:Why for better or worse?

[lannocc]

I'm curious about the headline. Why would adjusting to different aspect ratios be a bad thing? Is there a downside to having videos adjust to aspect ratio?

This will be a worse experience for me because, according to Gizmodo, "the location of player controls moves to fit the video's size..." I generally keep one browser window open in the corner of the screen for playing various videos and currently, all controls and UI features remain consistently in the same place no matter which video I'm watching. If things start moving around depending on the video, it's only going to slow down navigation and aggravate users like me.