With Smuuvr 1.15.5 comes a new feature by request of one of our users: Video Fit.

This feature allows you to change how a video fits into the video player.  This can be used to eliminate empty gaps in the player, either on top/bottom or left/right depending on the video and the player sizes, and mainly is used to zoom the video inside the player so that it will cover the entire player area with no empty gaps when Video Fit is set to “Cover”.

This can be handy to use when a video doesn’t fill the entire video player, and has black bars you want to get rid of on the sides, or all sides. For example, even though the player has been stretched to “tall player” sometimes the video stays small in the center, especially with mobile format videos.  This will size it larger to fit the entire player when Video Fit is set to “cover”.

How to Use Video Fit

Just click the button in the Smuuvr Toolbar titled “video fit” and it will change the fit style between Contain, Cover, and None. Just click again to change to the next fit style until you get the size you want.  When you click the button, the text in the button changes to the current video fit mode, such as “Contain” or “Cover” or “None”.

smuuvr-use-video-fit-cover-to-size-video-to-fill-full-player-size

Examples of Contain vs Cover:

Here’s a video from Wes Bos (Twitter @wesbos) that demonstrates the difference between Contain and Cover fit styles.

 

Video Fit Default

By default, videos are typically set to “contain” meaning they will fit inside the player without letting any of the video get cropped off by being outside the size of the player.  This is when there can be gaps on the right/left or top/bottom when the video aspect ratio isn’t exactly the same as the video player on page.

Video Fit Settings

The “Video Fit” button now in the Smuuvr toolbar will let you change from the player’s default setting, to “Cover”, “Contain”, or “None”.

  • “Cover”: sizes the video up to cover the entire player, allowing some to be cropped if necessary.
  • “Contain”: sizes the video up or down but small enough to guarantee the full video fits inside the player without any part cropped.
  • “None”: sizes the video to it’s native size without any resizing.