dooganized

blog of epiphanized

Just found this. They don't seem to have published it very well cause no one seemed to know about it! I imagine they will in time, but until then, i'm reposting it here so more people know ^_^

New Video Tag Options for Uploaders

May 01, 2009, 08:54 AM

We've listened to your feedback and, as a result, today we are rolling out some changes to provide you with even greater control over how your videos are viewed on youtube.com and the YouTube embedded player. Specifically, upon upload you will now have additional options to optimize the appearance of your content. For example, you will have the option to properly crop and scale videos, as well as default to a high quality viewing experience (where available). A complete list of options is directly below; just insert any of the hint tags described into the tags field of your video and you'll be off and running.

We are now able to support the following video tags:
  • yt:crop=16:9: This tag will remove windowboxing by zooming in on the 16:9 area
  • yt:stretch=16:9: This tag will fix anamorphic content by scaling to 16:9
  • yt:stretch=4:3: This tag will fix 720x480 content that is the wrong aspect ratio by scaling to 4:3
  • yt:quality=high: This tag will default playback of a video to high quality, depending on availability

When uploading, you can insert the appropriate video tags in the "Tags" field, which is just below the "Description" field. See the image below for more details.




As you can see, these changes provide you with tremendous flexibility. For example, if you have a standard definition master file which is letterboxed or windowboxed, you will not need to edit the master file before upload. Rather, you can upload the master file and simply attach the yt:crop=16:9 tag to the video; as a result, the YouTube player will zoom in on your 16:9 content, effectively removing the black bars and optimizing the viewing experience for users.

We believe these video tags will save you time by encouraging you to always upload master files, rather than spend time editing these files before upload. We also believe that by leveraging these new video tags you will put yourself in the best position possible to take advantage of (and optimize your videos for) future YouTube player changes and modifications.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, great tip! thnx for sharing...

JDO0909 said...

THANKS MAN!!!! I knew it was possible, but I didn't know how, until now. Thank you!!

Anonymous said...

If there's a video already uploaded with black bars and I want to remove them afterwards manually, isn't that possible too? I remember adding a line at the end of the adress, something like "&f18" and it removed the black bars. For some reason this doesn't work anymore.

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