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Forums » Help » YouTube video dimensions

Hi, all!

Normally if I had a curiousity like this I’d right-click the video and “inspect element” to figure it out, but I currently only have access to my mobile devices and they lack that function! Poot.

I’ve seen a lot of people embed YouTube videos in profiles/character pages such that only the name of the video and a play button are visible, and that seems way less clunky than keeping the original dimensions! Does anyone have access to a handy list of commonly-used sizes?

Also, historically, is having multiple videos embedded in a page likely to make it load very slowly, or am I pretty much safe? I guess I’m curious about the limit of videos before this happens, but I generally plan to restrict myself to no more than 3, if even that.

Sorry for any trouble, but I appreciate your time. Thank you! ^o^
Inspect element doesn't work for figuring out BBCode. Anyway. ^^;

If you look at the Help page about BBCode, the bottom of the section on YouTube videos mentions how to control the size! It's just under the example, right before the Vimeo section. :)
MainlyPango Topic Starter

Novalyyn wrote:
If you look at the Help page about BBCode...

Aw, yeah, I saw that! Thank you so much, that page is an absolute godsend for reminders and styling ideas. <3

As a side note, may I please just say that, glancing through your characters, they seem beautifully considered and well-thought-out? They are truly impressive constructs!




So, I finally managed to get home and break out my laptop. It's slow - like, slooooow - but, using it, I was able to suss out some workable dimensions!

If anyone comes looking for this same info, here's what I've found:

If you just want to show the youtube logo, I'm having good luck with height=40 width=55. As of this date, their logo just looks like the classical "play" button (a right-pointing triangle), and these dimensions show the logo but leave out the edges and the rounded corners. (Nice and neat, but you can kinda see the user icon of the person who posted the video behind it, though; the logo is translucent.)

If you want a long strip, height=24 is the tallest it looks like you can go without the title showing. If you want the title to be fully on display, I'd suggest at least height=40, which leaves a little buffer around the text. As for width, I think width=255 is good-looking without being too long, but you can push it wider for sure. width=325 also seems lovely.

So that's all my scientific experimentation done for the day! Yaaay! :D

TL;DR:
  • Play button/logo: height=40 width=55
  • Strip (no title): height=24 width=(dealer's choice)
  • Strip (with title): height=40 width=(go with your gut)
  • Strip (with all main UI elements): height=50 width=(at least 173; I'd suggest longer but I trust you)
if you want my opinion, I feel like height=22 width=255 looks so nice and would probably display beautifully in columns if that's how you roll never mind, videos and columns don't seem to play nice together
Thanks for posting this and figuring out the dimensions that look the best! <3
Oh, thank you for sharing the dimensions you sussed out! That's very thoughtful of you!

And thank you for the compliment.^^
MainlyPango Topic Starter

damnationfromafar wrote:
Thanks for posting this and figuring out the dimensions that look the best! <3

Of course! I see everyone's beautiful character profiles with well-aligned elements and sometimes I just want a little bit of that for myself, y'know? The tiniest modicum of style!

XD
MainlyPango wrote:
Also, historically, is having multiple videos embedded in a page likely to make it load very slowly, or am I pretty much safe? I guess I’m curious about the limit of videos before this happens, but I generally plan to restrict myself to no more than 3, if even that.
...Well, I do have a page on one of my characters with (at current count) seven embedded youtube videos on one page (because it's a journal/updates page, and I tend to throw songs at individual entries). All but two are currently hidden under collapse tags, but collapse tags are still fully loaded before they're opened, so.

I haven't had any complaints and it loads just as fast for me. But I suppose embedded videos must only load the thumbnail/timestamp ahead of time.

(At any rate, these are very useful dimensions to have, thank you!)
I have noticed an influx of images/emojis profile that open the youtube link in a new tab.
I can't display the video in the comments. Maybe I messed up myself when I was fixing the size of the video.

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