16:9 video still has black borders on YouTube!

September 21, 2013 9:19 AM

I am making a video composed of still photos that I'm finding on the internet. I want to put the final video on YouTube, so I'm converting them into 16:9 aspect ratio because I've been told that that's what YouTube needs in order to fill the whole screen with no black bars. But the video still has vertical borders!

I've put my pictures in InfanView and done everything possible to get these pictures into 16:9. Sometimes I stretch them and sometimes I make a 16:9 rectangle of the appropriate size and crop the photo so that it'll be in 16:9 without distortion.The result is always that InfanView confirms that the final photos are, in fact, in 16:9 ratio.

Then I put in the photos in Windows Movie Maker. I set the settings to 16:9. The photos fill the whole WMM viewing screen just fine, nice 16:9-ish-looking rectangles.

Then I export the movie in 16:9. WMM confirms that the movie is in 16:9. Then I put it on YouTube, and.... I get vertical bars on the sides! (not on the top or bottom).

Okay so then I read that YouTube doesn't like my .wmv movie and will not take it without putting bars in, even in 16:9. I read that it prefers .mp4 format, and so I convert it to an .mp4 and put that version on YouTube.

And STILL, the bars! Here is one photo-movie, an example of all of this, for your viewing, an .mp4 version I uploaded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qof8xYvnH2k&feature=youtu.be

Is there some other format I should be converting my photos to instead of .wmv or .mp4 that will fix this problem? Or is something else needed?

Any ideas at all here? I've been working on this and reading forums etc. for many hours but I'm just not getting the info I need.

Thanks.

posted by DMelanogaster to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Your linked video has a resolution of 540x360. That's 13.5 : 9 or 3 : 2, 16 : 9 is 640x360. Maybe you just entered the wrong digit.
posted by Gyan at 9:36 AM on September 21, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks, Gyan, but I've done a bunch of them and they really are 16:9 in my computer. It's very interesting that you did that computation (thanks again!) because it leads me to believe that YouTube is changing the size of the videos.

So wondering if this is a "known" thing that happens for some reason.
posted by DMelanogaster at 9:56 AM on September 21, 2013

If you can upload your mp4 to a site like Dropbox or WeTransfer, one can check the raw video.
posted by Gyan at 11:30 AM on September 21, 2013

This sounds like a potential pixel aspect ratio problem. Is there a way to check or adjust the pixel aspect ratio in the image editor you're using? For most dimensions to clock out properly, I believe you'll want to make sure you're using square pixels (this isn't as dumb as it sounds).

This link: Exporting Video for YouTube: Pixel Aspect Ratio Basics has a little more explanation, especially in the section "The Pixel Aspect Ratio Problem".
posted by myrrh at 12:40 PM on September 21, 2013

Response by poster: Geez, I think I just fixed this! I continued searching around and I found a YouTube video that is a tutorial for how to fix this -- with tags -- so, following the instructions, I went to Settings, and in the Tags box I typed

yt:crop=16:9

and the borders seem to have miraculously disappeared!

Here's the link again for anyone who happens to be interested in this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qof8xYvnH2k&feature=youtu.be yt


I guess it's a little distorted now but I'm so happy that the bars are gone!
posted by DMelanogaster at 3:06 PM on September 21, 2013

It's distorted because the source resolution is still 540x360. Mediainfo will tell you about the source MP4 on your computer.
posted by Gyan at 9:02 PM on September 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Well, just to follow up, I took my photos that IrfanView assured me were in 16:9 ratio and, instead of putting them into Windows Movie Maker and then to YouTube, this time I stuck them into iMovie on my iPAD and then to YouTube, and voila, no bars.

So I guess Windows Movie Maker is the culprit.

Thank you, Gyan! that was informative about the different types of pixels, etc. I'm still exploring.
posted by DMelanogaster at 2:29 PM on September 22, 2013