**Experimenting with Adaptive Video Playbacks**

When it comes to video playback, many of us are familiar with the standard 16:9 aspect ratio that dominates most screens today. However, what if I told you there's a way to make your videos adapt to different screen sizes and aspect ratios seamlessly? In this article, we'll explore an idea for a feature that would allow YouTube to dynamically adjust video playback to match the viewer's screen.

**Retro 4:3 Segment**

Imagine being able to upload a single video file, but instead of uploading a standard 16:9 video, you can create a "retro" segment with a fixed aspect ratio. For example, if you want to do a retro-inspired 4:3 section in the middle of your video, you could simply upload that as a separate part of your video and have it automatically adapt to fit different screen sizes. This would allow viewers to see the full retro 4:3 frame when they watch on devices with a smaller aspect ratio, like an iPhone or a laptop.

**Cinematic Experiences**

One of the coolest aspects of this idea is how it could enhance cinematic experiences. Think back to movie theaters, where previews are often shown in a 16:9 format but then move to a wider aspect ratio when the main feature starts. Similarly, with adaptive video playback, you could have your video start off in a standard 16:9 format but then transition seamlessly into a wider aspect ratio when it's time for a cinematic sequence. This would be especially impressive on devices with wide screens or ultra-wide monitors.

**The Technical Feasibility**

While the idea might seem daunting, many of YouTube's existing features already rely on dynamic adjustments to fit different screen sizes and aspect ratios. For example, the platform is already able to adapt video playback to different screen types, such as mobile phones or laptops. So, in theory, this feature wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

**Potential Issues**

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility, and there are potential issues that could arise if this feature were implemented. For example, some viewers might intentionally abuse the system by uploading multiple videos with different aspect ratios, creating a "video graveyard" of distorted frames. However, similar concerns exist with other features like annotations, which can be both useful and abused.

**Exporting Individual Frames**

For those who want to take it up a notch, someone could potentially export individual frames from their video file and then use software to automatically resize them as needed. This would require some technical expertise, but the result could be a truly seamless transition between different aspect ratios.

**Conclusion**

The idea of adaptive video playback that adjusts to different screen sizes and aspect ratios is an exciting one, and it's definitely worth exploring further. While there are potential challenges to overcome, many of YouTube's existing features already rely on dynamic adjustments, making this feature theoretically feasible. Whether or not you think this would be useful for your own content, it's always interesting to imagine new possibilities for the platforms we use every day.

**The Author's Experiment**

As I was testing out this idea, I decided to try using a new microphone that's popular among streamers. While I have some post-processing applied to make my voice sound better, I'm curious to hear what you think – should I stick with my trusty Rode NT-USB or try something new? In the comments section below, let me know your thoughts on the audio quality of this microphone.

**The Author's Equipment**

As a side note, I do have to mention that I've been experimenting with different equipment settings in my DBX 286s box. While it seems like my processing settings might be okay, I've received some complaints about how my voice sounds recently – and that's just baffling to me! Maybe I'll explore this further in a future video...

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso for today's video I had a kind of weird idea to potentially improve YouTube videos in a way that would benefit a lot of people especially the more cinematic lifestyle travel vlog or kind of people and people who like different aspect ratios but it could also make videos incredibly like obnoxious if people abused it it's a weird experiment and I just wanted to share too buddy is the best tool you can get to manage your YouTube channel you can update videos in bulk optimize your SEO syndicate to social media backup your metadata and more all with a simple browser extension head to e post voxcom / to buddy to learn more and download it for free so bacterium the heyday of PC file-sharing in the early 2000s the days of LimeWire and frostwire I encountered a video file that did something I'd never done before when I played it in my media player of choice and back then it might have still been VLC which isn't my media player choice now but that probably was back then the video file actually changed size while I was watching it so I was watching the main video I honestly have no clue what it was at this point probably some funny comedy thing or something like that you know it was a 4x3 800 by 600 I'm just making this up but you know resolution and then for a little like branded outro kind of thing that whoever uploaded the file added on to it it shrunk the media player the actual physical dimensions of the video file actually shrunk for the second clip I'd never seen anything like this before and every time I bring it up with people I never really hear anyone who encounters us very often or ever at all and it's always stuck in my head is something that I found super interesting and something I wanted to try to recreate one day or check out and use for something cool in the future specifically more recently I thought this would benefit people who like to implement black bars to make a more cinematic aspect ratio in their videos I make fun of this from time to time and I get really annoyed when videos do this and I've made a few videos kind of talking about ways that if your entire video is letterboxed you can make it a better viewing experience for people on non sixteen by nine displays by just uploading in the native aspect ratio and here recently two by one or 18 by 9 aspect ratio videos have become more common to optimize for a mobile audience that as mobile phones these days mine is still sixteen by nine because mine's older and budget oriented but phones these days are moving towards that 18 by 9 and 19 by 9 aspect ratio wider screen and if you wanted your video to get more cinematic in the middle of the video you could potentially have it change sizes in the middle of the video I thought that would be really cool so I put together an experiment trying to look for software that would let me do this because traditional video editing software you have a static dimension set for the resolution of your video file set and your project settings and your sequence settings and your render settings you only get one option for what the final entire video file is so I needed a way to put basically two different size videos together my first stop was a program called avi d-max which has been recommended to me a few times at the very old tool for basically splitting up files based on the keyframes in the file to be able to split them up or do different things with them or trim them off or combine them without having to re-encode because it put just puts the files back together in the file container without having to re-encode because file containers are almost like folders for the actual video codecs inside and more often than not you can literally just do like a file copy between them this is how remark seen in OBS studio works where you take the MKV recorded file and turn it into an mp4 file it's just a file copy between those two containers so I thought this might be the next step it does have an append option which I've been using for my old mini DV and 8 millimeter tape backups when they get split up into multiple files I can use the append option to put them together and then use the trim off an option to chop off the glitchy start and ends of the tapes and be good to go so I thought okay so I could just sit here and take a file of one resolution and a file of another resolution and append them together because it's not doing any Rhian coding so I rendered out a few sample clips at 9 by 16 aspect ratio 16 by 9 2 by 1 and then 4x3 I believe and when to a Vig MUX and immediately it gave me an error saying you cannot append files that have different dimensions it is not an option but it pointed me to the right direction which was that ffmpeg has an option for concatenate concatenate I never say that right concatenate which lets you basically string multiple video files together in one final video file which is different than appending basically it makes one giant video file that has multiple video files kind of chapters and so your media player switches between them instead of treating it as one video file I'm not entirely sure of 100% of the differences here but I'll have the ffmpeg documentation linked below but this is what I need is ffmpeg is concatenate capabilities I'm still probably saying that totally wrong so with the ffmpeg command what you first need to do is gather your different video files in a folder that you wish to combine basically and then make a text file and I just called it my list txt and then you put file and then the path to the file that you wish to combine on each line so file sixteen by nine mp4 file 9 by 16 dot mp4 file four by three dot mp4 and you can either use the global path or the relative path since I'm keeping everything in one folder I'm using the relative path so I don't have any folders I just have the file names and then save that and then open up ffmpeg and your command prompt navigate to that folder so for me that's G slash renders and then ffmpeg dash F concat and then - I my list dot txt or whatever your txt file is - C copy and then your output file name so for me that was just output mp4 if the paths are not relative you do need - safe zero thrown in there before the - I just for file path information and what this will do is string your files together into one bigger video file and this worked for me now granted in MPC Black Edition I think it's the one I have installed on my computer at the moment this did not work it was all I believe a 16 byte no it was all a two by one aspect ratio file which I guess was the first or the last file in the string and everything else was stretched out to fit that aspect ratio and it looked horrible I thought I was defeated I thought this was not the option that I was looking for but by opening up in VLC which seems to be more competent at handling different pixel aspect ratios and different aspect ratios in general because my 720 by 480 4 by 3 files show up as a stretched pseudo 16 by 9 and MPC as well so VLC seems to handle this better opening up in VLC and you can see every time it switches files it is changing the physical aspect ratio and size of the video it knows what it's doing however if you upload it to youtube the same thing that happens in MPC happens here YouTube displays it as a single I believe just 16 by 9 video file and every other instance of the videos are stretched and skewed out to fill the frame instead of automatically adapting now this is what I expected I got kind of hopeful because YouTube's video player is actually pretty adaptive to other aspect ratios which is why I recommend uploading native aspect ratios instead of cropping off your black bars but I thought this might be a cool idea so instead of discovering a cool hidden feature that YouTube can do I'm simply kind of submitting it as a feature request that I would like to see YouTube implement in their video player and they would have to change how they interpret video files on the whole so that for example I can have a 4 by 3 segment of my video where I'm doing like a retro 4 by 3 thing and it changes to true 4 by 3 for viewers and for example again if I'm having a normal 16 by 9 vlog and then I want to do a cinematic b-roll sequence I cut to 2 by 1 or 21 by 9 or 2.3 5 to 1 and it adjusts the video player to that lower aspect ratio and squeezes that out of it and adapts better and for example if you're watching a 16 bike think think about the movie theater experience if you've ever gone to a movie theater with a true widescreen screen or that just wasn't lazy typically the previews they edik Wyatt previews before the real previews start as a sixteen by nine frame and they have like curtains covering the sides of the screen so that you only see the sixteen by nine frame that those previews are playing yet and then when the movie starts the curtains move to the side the projector gets wider and then you see the full widescreen movie previews and then the movie at that wider screen and it's a really cool experience and it looks really cool you could do that with this video player you could have it set up so that especially on wider screens if you're watching on an ultra wide or a phone that has an 18 by 9 2 by 1 or 19 by 9 screen you have a normal you know sixteen by nine video happening and then when you get to a cinematic part it basically just widens on the phone to fill out your phone screen or on an ultra wide monitor to fill out the ultrawide monitor screen that would be a really phenomenal effect and something you could implement even on you know cinematic kind of TV show s content like say planet Earth you start out with like an air narrator part that's normal bit and then you get to the nature animal part and it opens up widescreen and gets all super fancy and cinematic I think that would be really phenomenal and basically all I have to do is make the video player adapt to these multiple concatenated video files as it goes and I think it's within the realm of possibility given that it's already adaptive to aspect ratios in the first place but I say just make it adapt to that as if it's a very simple step and it could very much likely not be and I understand that but this is a feature suggestion and just a cool thought experience experiment and tech experiment that I wanted to explore let me know what you think in the comment section down below could you see this being useful of course it could be totally abused because he have people who have like every other video part be something different and just make it all glitchy and stuff but that's with every feature I mean annotations were abused but they were also super useful at the same time also someone could get when I talk about it opening up to widescreen typically with just throwing some video files together that would just have to be like cut you know it would have to be cut from one frame to another but if someone wanted to get really fancy and export each individual frame and I'm in the middle of researching how to do this with like an automatic resize script that cuts off of video cuts off an image file up to a certain point then you could strain together each individual frame for a few seconds and have it smoothly transition transition from one aspect ratio to another and have that be like a transition spot or it opens up and then be the widescreen which would be really freakin amazing let me know what you think again in the comment section down below hit the like button subscribe for more tech education my name is Eva Fox and I will see you in the next video by the way this video is a test of a new on camera microphone for streamers I do have a little bit of post-processing applied to make it sound a little bit nicer for my voice but I am curious to hear what you think it also keeps microphone out of frame here it's obviously not gonna sound good as my re 20 typically does although I've gotten some complaints about how it sounds recently which is just baffling to me and makes me question what's wrong with my processing settings in my dbx 286s box but hey that's okay let me know what you think in the comment section down below my name is Egil's box already settle this b'byeso for today's video I had a kind of weird idea to potentially improve YouTube videos in a way that would benefit a lot of people especially the more cinematic lifestyle travel vlog or kind of people and people who like different aspect ratios but it could also make videos incredibly like obnoxious if people abused it it's a weird experiment and I just wanted to share too buddy is the best tool you can get to manage your YouTube channel you can update videos in bulk optimize your SEO syndicate to social media backup your metadata and more all with a simple browser extension head to e post voxcom / to buddy to learn more and download it for free so bacterium the heyday of PC file-sharing in the early 2000s the days of LimeWire and frostwire I encountered a video file that did something I'd never done before when I played it in my media player of choice and back then it might have still been VLC which isn't my media player choice now but that probably was back then the video file actually changed size while I was watching it so I was watching the main video I honestly have no clue what it was at this point probably some funny comedy thing or something like that you know it was a 4x3 800 by 600 I'm just making this up but you know resolution and then for a little like branded outro kind of thing that whoever uploaded the file added on to it it shrunk the media player the actual physical dimensions of the video file actually shrunk for the second clip I'd never seen anything like this before and every time I bring it up with people I never really hear anyone who encounters us very often or ever at all and it's always stuck in my head is something that I found super interesting and something I wanted to try to recreate one day or check out and use for something cool in the future specifically more recently I thought this would benefit people who like to implement black bars to make a more cinematic aspect ratio in their videos I make fun of this from time to time and I get really annoyed when videos do this and I've made a few videos kind of talking about ways that if your entire video is letterboxed you can make it a better viewing experience for people on non sixteen by nine displays by just uploading in the native aspect ratio and here recently two by one or 18 by 9 aspect ratio videos have become more common to optimize for a mobile audience that as mobile phones these days mine is still sixteen by nine because mine's older and budget oriented but phones these days are moving towards that 18 by 9 and 19 by 9 aspect ratio wider screen and if you wanted your video to get more cinematic in the middle of the video you could potentially have it change sizes in the middle of the video I thought that would be really cool so I put together an experiment trying to look for software that would let me do this because traditional video editing software you have a static dimension set for the resolution of your video file set and your project settings and your sequence settings and your render settings you only get one option for what the final entire video file is so I needed a way to put basically two different size videos together my first stop was a program called avi d-max which has been recommended to me a few times at the very old tool for basically splitting up files based on the keyframes in the file to be able to split them up or do different things with them or trim them off or combine them without having to re-encode because it put just puts the files back together in the file container without having to re-encode because file containers are almost like folders for the actual video codecs inside and more often than not you can literally just do like a file copy between them this is how remark seen in OBS studio works where you take the MKV recorded file and turn it into an mp4 file it's just a file copy between those two containers so I thought this might be the next step it does have an append option which I've been using for my old mini DV and 8 millimeter tape backups when they get split up into multiple files I can use the append option to put them together and then use the trim off an option to chop off the glitchy start and ends of the tapes and be good to go so I thought okay so I could just sit here and take a file of one resolution and a file of another resolution and append them together because it's not doing any Rhian coding so I rendered out a few sample clips at 9 by 16 aspect ratio 16 by 9 2 by 1 and then 4x3 I believe and when to a Vig MUX and immediately it gave me an error saying you cannot append files that have different dimensions it is not an option but it pointed me to the right direction which was that ffmpeg has an option for concatenate concatenate I never say that right concatenate which lets you basically string multiple video files together in one final video file which is different than appending basically it makes one giant video file that has multiple video files kind of chapters and so your media player switches between them instead of treating it as one video file I'm not entirely sure of 100% of the differences here but I'll have the ffmpeg documentation linked below but this is what I need is ffmpeg is concatenate capabilities I'm still probably saying that totally wrong so with the ffmpeg command what you first need to do is gather your different video files in a folder that you wish to combine basically and then make a text file and I just called it my list txt and then you put file and then the path to the file that you wish to combine on each line so file sixteen by nine mp4 file 9 by 16 dot mp4 file four by three dot mp4 and you can either use the global path or the relative path since I'm keeping everything in one folder I'm using the relative path so I don't have any folders I just have the file names and then save that and then open up ffmpeg and your command prompt navigate to that folder so for me that's G slash renders and then ffmpeg dash F concat and then - I my list dot txt or whatever your txt file is - C copy and then your output file name so for me that was just output mp4 if the paths are not relative you do need - safe zero thrown in there before the - I just for file path information and what this will do is string your files together into one bigger video file and this worked for me now granted in MPC Black Edition I think it's the one I have installed on my computer at the moment this did not work it was all I believe a 16 byte no it was all a two by one aspect ratio file which I guess was the first or the last file in the string and everything else was stretched out to fit that aspect ratio and it looked horrible I thought I was defeated I thought this was not the option that I was looking for but by opening up in VLC which seems to be more competent at handling different pixel aspect ratios and different aspect ratios in general because my 720 by 480 4 by 3 files show up as a stretched pseudo 16 by 9 and MPC as well so VLC seems to handle this better opening up in VLC and you can see every time it switches files it is changing the physical aspect ratio and size of the video it knows what it's doing however if you upload it to youtube the same thing that happens in MPC happens here YouTube displays it as a single I believe just 16 by 9 video file and every other instance of the videos are stretched and skewed out to fill the frame instead of automatically adapting now this is what I expected I got kind of hopeful because YouTube's video player is actually pretty adaptive to other aspect ratios which is why I recommend uploading native aspect ratios instead of cropping off your black bars but I thought this might be a cool idea so instead of discovering a cool hidden feature that YouTube can do I'm simply kind of submitting it as a feature request that I would like to see YouTube implement in their video player and they would have to change how they interpret video files on the whole so that for example I can have a 4 by 3 segment of my video where I'm doing like a retro 4 by 3 thing and it changes to true 4 by 3 for viewers and for example again if I'm having a normal 16 by 9 vlog and then I want to do a cinematic b-roll sequence I cut to 2 by 1 or 21 by 9 or 2.3 5 to 1 and it adjusts the video player to that lower aspect ratio and squeezes that out of it and adapts better and for example if you're watching a 16 bike think think about the movie theater experience if you've ever gone to a movie theater with a true widescreen screen or that just wasn't lazy typically the previews they edik Wyatt previews before the real previews start as a sixteen by nine frame and they have like curtains covering the sides of the screen so that you only see the sixteen by nine frame that those previews are playing yet and then when the movie starts the curtains move to the side the projector gets wider and then you see the full widescreen movie previews and then the movie at that wider screen and it's a really cool experience and it looks really cool you could do that with this video player you could have it set up so that especially on wider screens if you're watching on an ultra wide or a phone that has an 18 by 9 2 by 1 or 19 by 9 screen you have a normal you know sixteen by nine video happening and then when you get to a cinematic part it basically just widens on the phone to fill out your phone screen or on an ultra wide monitor to fill out the ultrawide monitor screen that would be a really phenomenal effect and something you could implement even on you know cinematic kind of TV show s content like say planet Earth you start out with like an air narrator part that's normal bit and then you get to the nature animal part and it opens up widescreen and gets all super fancy and cinematic I think that would be really phenomenal and basically all I have to do is make the video player adapt to these multiple concatenated video files as it goes and I think it's within the realm of possibility given that it's already adaptive to aspect ratios in the first place but I say just make it adapt to that as if it's a very simple step and it could very much likely not be and I understand that but this is a feature suggestion and just a cool thought experience experiment and tech experiment that I wanted to explore let me know what you think in the comment section down below could you see this being useful of course it could be totally abused because he have people who have like every other video part be something different and just make it all glitchy and stuff but that's with every feature I mean annotations were abused but they were also super useful at the same time also someone could get when I talk about it opening up to widescreen typically with just throwing some video files together that would just have to be like cut you know it would have to be cut from one frame to another but if someone wanted to get really fancy and export each individual frame and I'm in the middle of researching how to do this with like an automatic resize script that cuts off of video cuts off an image file up to a certain point then you could strain together each individual frame for a few seconds and have it smoothly transition transition from one aspect ratio to another and have that be like a transition spot or it opens up and then be the widescreen which would be really freakin amazing let me know what you think again in the comment section down below hit the like button subscribe for more tech education my name is Eva Fox and I will see you in the next video by the way this video is a test of a new on camera microphone for streamers I do have a little bit of post-processing applied to make it sound a little bit nicer for my voice but I am curious to hear what you think it also keeps microphone out of frame here it's obviously not gonna sound good as my re 20 typically does although I've gotten some complaints about how it sounds recently which is just baffling to me and makes me question what's wrong with my processing settings in my dbx 286s box but hey that's okay let me know what you think in the comment section down below my name is Egil's box already settle this b'bye\n"