We all love the way YouTube lets you embed videos, right? It’s pretty easy: You go to the video’s YouTube page, grab Embed code and paste it into your website or blog. Boom. Done.
But what about when the page’s dimensions don’t match the videos? You can get strange effects, such as overlapping videos, shrunken or distorted videos and a less-than wonderful aesthetic experience.
Luckily, YouTube has come to the rescue. Their new embed customization center allows you to configure how the video (and the player!) will display on your page. To test it out, find a YouTube video and click on the Embed code on the right column. You’ll notice the page will unfurl a new section that will allow you to select between 4 different sizes and 9 different color schemes for the player.
For regular 4:3 aspect ratio videos there is finally a 320 pixel width version! That’s great news for people who need to squeeze a video into a small chunk of digital real estate. And for those who love it big and bigger, there’s a 640 pixels wide version! Finally, we’re approaching DVD resolution! Of course, most videos will look blocky at this resolution, but YouTube is saving higher quality versions of all uploaded videos now. HD and 16:9 videos have different aspect ratio to choose from and 320 wide is not an option on these.
You also have the option of whether or not to include “related” videos — a great option for corporations or advocacy groups intent on controlling the message. End users will still be able to click on the video and dig deeper if they are so inclined.
Overall, a worthy upgrade and something that, in retrospect, they should’ve done a long time ago!