A while back I uploaded a bunch of Youtube videos in 16:9 format and found they did not display correctly. They had the black bars at the top and bottom despite being viewed in 720p which is a 16:9 format. Eventually I found out I could fix this by one of two ways, one was not to upload directly through my video editing software and the other was by adding a tag that said. This was a hidden tag but was used by the Youtube video player to adjust the video to that screen format. It worked and I used it and forgot about it, until now.

Today a subscriber let me know my videos were all zoomed in about 20% and a lot of my titles were chopped off as a result. It also really amplified any shakiness making it look it was filmed by Michael J Fox. I figure Youtube must have changed something on their site, as nothing seemed to prompt this on my end. I’ve had a few other videos get messed up when I had edited them using their in browser editor, but in this case I had not done so. Eventually I noticed it was just the videos that were using that tag and thus I removed them, which fixed the new issue but gave me back my original one. So after a bit of research I ended up back at this page which mentioned another stretch option. I did not remember this one being there before but either way it did not sound like what I wanted, but I tested it anyways. Alas, that was the solution! All you have to do is change yt:crop=16:9 to yt:stretch=16:9.

Youtube must have changed the way these worked and not told anyone. Thanks Youtube.

Brad Fettes

A seasoned Senior Solutions Architect with 18 years of experience in technology design and implementation. Renowned for innovative solutions and strategic insights, he excels in driving complex projects to success. Outside work, he is a passionate fisherman and fish keeper, specializing in planted tanks.