Themes for YouTube widescreen size

  • Unknown's avatar
    universalgeni · Member ·

    As you probably know YouTube changed it’s video format a few weeks ago. Now it’s 16:9. This has an great impact on our blogs, I believe. Most WP themes have a main column that corresponds to the old YouTube format 4:3. So embedded videos are now squeezed. They no longer show properly.

    I know this has been said a million times in here but we need new themes. Or: we need to be able to adjust our current themes to widescreen. The latter is long overdo, actually. Most WordPress themes only uses a fraction of the space available on an average PC screen. An option that allows us to expand the width of the main column would be very welcome. Quite a lot of themes could easily be made ready for such a customization.

    I’d really like some staff comments on this but all comments are welcome. :-) Because it is important that the video material on our blog displays itself correctly.

  • Unknown's avatar
    universalgeni · Member ·

    This goes for video made in the new 16:9 format, I’d better add. New 16:9 gets cut or squeezed.

  • Unknown's avatar
    universalgeni · Member ·

    Any thoughts?

  • Unknown's avatar
    universalgeni · Member ·

    This concerns more than just the old fluent width themes discussion. This is about the presentation of all blog themes. We all need a blog design that fits the graphic standards of the embeddable medias on the market. I think.

  • Unknown's avatar
    charlau · Member ·

    In my case, the video is not squished (ie aspect ratio is preserved) but to compensate with the theme’s setting I guess, I get black bars on top and bottom. I’m pretty newbie on this, but the video box size for an embedded video through [youtube=…] is set in the template, right?

    In that point of view I totally agree with you that we need different templates or some flexibility like an option for the exact video size (or at least ratio…).

  • Unknown's avatar
    panaghiotisadam · Member ·

    @charlau: Aspect ratio of the video itself is always preserved, regardless of the theme. As for the overall box, you can change its size, but again you cannot change its aspect ratio, so you always get the black bars.

  • Unknown's avatar
    dumbwhore · Member ·

    I have to agree that more wide screen themes are needed. The reality is that we needed this before youtube made the change just because most monitors of users I’m targeting are going to be maybe a year or two behind. Not the EARLY adopters, but just a bit behind that. What I’m getting at is that every monitor I’m targeting is already setup in widescreen mode. So most themes are wasting between 30-50% of the screen space.

    I may end up having to pay for a theme design at this point as putting ads on my site is essentially impossible without destroying the look and feel.

  • Unknown's avatar
    ellaella · Member ·

    @dumbwhore – Ads are not allowed on wordpress.COM blogs and the only themes that can be used are the ones in the dashboard. If your blog is self-hosted, you need to be at wordpress.ORG.

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