Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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  • timquinn

    you should get mad at youtube for not accommodating a new and unavoidable format. Video can now be any size or ratio you want. 

    • http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin

      but it’s WRONG! wrong wrong wrong
      and i’m right right right

      • timquinn

        me too.

        • timquinn

          I’ll apologize for thread jacking. It is a bad habit.

          Thing is, Xeni, you have an outlet to hundreds or thousands of people and some of them quite influential. This is a pet peeve of mine, those big black un-necessary bars at each end of the video. I’ve seen a few people complain recently about the vertical format, which is elegant and appropriate in some case (like this one.) It is handled badly by youtube. Maybe if I take this chance to say something a dialog will start that could lead to a change. It might take a good coder twenty minutes to fix it. Realistically, it isn’t a hard problem to fix. Why haven’t they done it?

          • ocker3

             How would they Fix it? In this case, the vertical perspective makes sense, are you suggesting a new layout option in YT? I don’t think the bars are that ugly, perhaps my brain just edits them out

          • Antinous / Moderator

            As soon as I saw that it was vertical, my first thought is, “Get the telescope.” How can it not be bad to discard two thirds of your viewing area?

          • timquinn

            if there is any aesthetic sense to it why is the whole thing surrounded by white but the two bars black? It is just stupid masquerading as standard.

          • timquinn

            Oh wait, Antinous can you see if it will post with a vertical orientation if you change the resolution in the embed link which has {width=”600″ height=”337″.} what if you just reversed them? 

            ‘scuse my minding your business . . .

          • http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

             Yep, the embedded YouTube player can be set to any aspect ratio via sizing.

          • bcsizemo

            Like ocker3 said, what exactly is there to fix?  Remove the black bars and have just the webpage background?  The problem isn’t the fact youtube uses 4:3 or 16:9, it’s the fact that a lot of people take video with a fixed format “camera”, like a phone.  A real video camera could have just zoomed out or even a DSLR with the right lens could have captured the whole scene in a more standard layout.

            The problem will sort itself out anyway once everyone moves to a tablet.  You’d just rotate the screen to accommodate the video layout.

          • timquinn

            Maybe you just don’t care about how the work looks on the page. Of course they should remove the black rectangles and allow the page designer to decide how to fit it into the page. If you don’t care you don’t care. All the tech you are talking about is beside the point. We now have vertical video showing up with some regularity and youtube has not made an effort to accommodate. we used to happily watch blurry 640×480 analog video and think nothing of it. Now we have all these possibilities and you are talking about “standard layout” Haven’t you realized there are a bunch of horizontal formats now and we don’t blink or ask for 640×480 because “standard.” Pictures, moving or not, can be landscape or portrait. It is only the ghost of the past insisting otherwise.

          • L_Mariachi

            I don’t like it either, but consider that maybe the original video was encoded with the pillarboxing.  You wouldn’t want Youtube arbitrarily stripping out portions of uploads, even pillar/letterboxing; sometimes there are subtitles or annotations in those areas.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

    This . . . this is why we put up with all the unpleasant dog stuff.

  • nvlady

    The way Simon guards her neck to hold her up in case she falls at the end is so precious! Total big brother/little sister looking out. Super cute.

  • John Whalen

    Actually, the vertical aspect ratio is perfect for shooting vertical stairs. The right tool.

    • RadioSilence

      I’m normally against vertical video, bit in this case I think the framing fits. Now if only the youtube app on my phone would display it to its fullest, instead of including the black bars at the sides.

  • BillGlover

    This is greater than or equal to 5 unicorn chasers.

  • Kenmrph

    The vertical format is not nearly as distressing as the fact that even in cute and touching puppy videos, you can’t read 3 youtube comments without someone calling someone else a f*g.

    • http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11

       Why is it distressing to be called a fig?

      • http://twitter.com/daniloberga Danilo Albergaria

         Fog.

        • http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11

           I’ve seen that movie, and that WOULD be terrifying.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        Jesus cursed one.

        • euansmith

          Jesus was British on his father’s side, so he probably cursed most “foreign” things.

      • Velocirapt42

        God hates figs.

  • Andy Beamish

    I just got a swift shove from old dad.

  • Damian Barajas

    It brings to mind how much of what we think of as exclusive to humans is just par for the course for a lot of other animals as well. :) Love it!

    (Also, if I ever watch that Cyriak spirit of Christmas video again, this would be the perfect unicorn chaser for that)

  • B A

    Thank you Xeni.
    This just made my day.

  • http://twitter.com/khangt1 khangt1

    Contrast that with cats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=V3GJycgu-cs

  • Bucket

    Just say no to old Mila Kunis, just say no to Vertical Video Syndrome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA

    • euansmith

      “Vertical Video Syndrome”? Wasn’t that the title of a track by the Fall?

  • Shibi_SF

    I just narrated their entire dialogue in my head.  It was awesome.

  • Jake0748

    I  think this whole discussion is why they coined the terms geeks and nerds.  —> People who are incapable of experiencing/appreciating the content and only notice the medium/formatting/skill of the person recording the event. 

    Killjoys. Buzzkills. Whatever you want to be called, sometimes your observations are not necessary. 

    • timquinn

      that is like saying that, oh never mind.

  • euansmith

    Thank you. That was great. 

  • http://egypt.urnash.com Egypt Urnash

    Vertical format video is just about perfect for this subject. It’s just that Youtube is stupid about playing it.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6GX5HRY46LA766VPVTA7YMCX2U Squirrelleigh

    Jeeze, guys – it’s a cute video, not “Citizen Kane.”  Get over yourselves and enjoy the movie!

  • bkad

    Meanwhile, I just saw the cute video and didn’t even notice it was letter boxed…. I guess it is a good thing I don’t work in the visual arts. Because I wouldn’t be working for long.