Lost Video Island

[donna]

I know this is a dumb question but why do my vids have sidebars when I upload to youtube. I'd like them to stretch across the full screen space....

[Aislynn]

More than likely, your vids are in 320x240, which is basically a square shape, so Youtube pillarboxes it (puts bars down the sides) to keep it from being weirdly stretched and squashed.

Here's Youtube's page about the ratios to render into to keep from being pillarboxed.

What program do you use? Also, is your footage (clips or episodes) already in 320x240? If that's the case, there's not a lot you can do to change that without squashing it all out of shape, I'm afraid...

And it's not a dumb question at all; nobody starts off by knowing about all of this! We've all got to start somewhere.

[donna]

Aislynn wrote:

More than likely, your vids are in 320x240, which is basically a square shape, so Youtube pillarboxes it (puts bars down the sides) to keep it from being weirdly stretched and squashed. Here's Youtube's page about the ratios to render into to keep from being pillarboxed. What program do you use? Also, is your footage (clips or episodes) already in 320x240? If that's the case, there's not a lot you can do to change that without squashing it all out of shape, I'm afraid...

Thanks Aislynn, I use Sony Vegas and I uncheck the maintain aspect ratio in properties option because my clips vary a bit in shape. After reading the YT info, I think that might be the problem.
Thanks for replying...

[Aislynn]

Sure thing! You might be able to use a border/mask to help get all of your clips looking like they're in the same widescreen ratio, then (to stop them from popping back and forth between widescreen and full frame). Hopefully you'll figure out what will work for you and your clips!