Did you know that you can submit videos that are up to 540 pixels wide? Okay, some of you knew that already. Now here's the trick question: Did you know that you can change virtually any video to be 540 pixels wide, thus making it bigger and more pleasurable to your viewing audience? Why yes, yes you can. I'm here to show you how, and I'm doing it so that we all can enjoy big videos, because bigger is better. Now that most video hosts have videos in higher resolution these days (even YouTube), we might as well take advantage of it so that we can all experience big video orgasms.

There are two ways to do this: 1. The mathematical way which keeps the video player properly proportioned, or 2. The lazy way which requires no math but makes your video player a big ol' square. More below the fold.

Method 1 - The mathematical way

Okay, let's start with your standard YouTube video, which is almost always 425 pixels wide by 355 pixels high. How do I know this? By looking at the embed code. Take this one, for example (bold for emphasis on the width and height parameters, italics to easily differentiate text from code, and [ ] replace < > so that no video will actually embed):

[object width="425" height="355"][param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zSxoKQ_sWYY&hl=en"][/param][param name="wmode" value="transparent"][/param][embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zSxoKQ_sWYY&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"][/embed][/object]

Notice that YouTube videos specify width and height in two places. Some (but not all) video hosts do the same thing. Remember that, because we'll be coming back to that later.

Now we want to use up as much space as we're allowed, so we're going to increase the width from 425 pixels to 540. Therefore we're going to increase the width by this ratio:

540/425, which equals 1.27

Thus the width has been increased 1.27 times. So to keep the height proportional to the width (or to maintain aspect ratio, for you film geeks), we multiply the height by the ratio we just found:

355 x 1.27 = 450.85, which rounds to 451

Now we take these new width (540) and height (451) dimensions to replace the old values in the original embed code (bold for emphasis, italics for yadda yadda yadda...):

[object width="540" height="451"][param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zSxoKQ_sWYY&hl=en"][/param][param name="wmode" value="transparent"][/param][embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zSxoKQ_sWYY&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="540" height="451"][/embed][/object]

So what does this give you? A video that goes from this size:



To this size:



Note that the same ratios do not apply at different video hosts. For example, Metacafe's embeds normally look like this:

[embed src="http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/1154901/eds_furry_fucking_guide_to_metal.swf" width="400" height="345" wmode="transparent" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"] [/embed][br][font size = 1][a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1154901/eds_furry_fucking_guide_to_metal/"]ED's Furry Fucking Guide To Metal!!![/a] - [a href="http://www.metacafe.com/"]The best bloopers are here[/a][/font]

540 pixels/400pixels = 1.35

Therefore 345 pixels (height) x 1.35 = 465.75, rounding to 466. Also note that Metacafe only uses width and height once in their embed codes. Therefore you would change the new embed code to this:

[embed src="http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/1154901/eds_furry_fucking_guide_to_metal.swf" width="540" height="466" wmode="transparent" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"] [/embed][br][font size = 1][a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1154901/eds_furry_fucking_guide_to_metal/"]ED's Furry Fucking Guide To Metal!!![/a] - [a href="http://www.metacafe.com/"]The best bloopers are here[/a][/font]

This makes the video go from this size:



To this size:



One site, DailyMotion.com, has made all this a little simpler when grabbing their embed codes. As an example, go to this page here. If you look right below the "Embedabble Player" code box you'll see "customize player...". Click that, and you can choose between a small, medium, or large player. The large player has a pixel width of 520, which is pretty darn close to the 540 max width. (Plus you can easily customize your player's color scheme, if you're feeling creative.)

Method 2 - The lazy way

It's simple: Change both width and height codes on all your videos to 540 pixels. Example:

Change this:

[embed src="http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/1154901/eds_furry_fucking_guide_to_metal.swf" width="400" height="345" wmode="transparent" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"] [/embed][br][font size = 1][a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1154901/eds_furry_fucking_guide_to_metal/"]ED's Furry Fucking Guide To Metal!!![/a] - [a href="http://www.metacafe.com/"]The best bloopers are here[/a][/font]

To this:

[embed src="http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/1154901/eds_furry_fucking_guide_to_metal.swf" width="540" height="540" wmode="transparent" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"] [/embed][br][font size = 1][a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1154901/eds_furry_fucking_guide_to_metal/"]ED's Furry Fucking Guide To Metal!!![/a] - [a href="http://www.metacafe.com/"]The best bloopers are here[/a][/font]

The results will change from this:



To this:


(Note: YouTube apparently auto-adjusts video height when width is modified (I think), but obviously not all sites do this.)
So if you're happy with a big-ass ugly box on the screen, then go for it, you lazy turd. However if you wish to bow to peer pressure, then make your 6th grade teacher proud and do a little math, for crying out loud. Just for ONCE, do something right in your otherwise wasted, Godforsaken life.*

Okay, I'm done. Now let's see some big videos, dammit!

*I'm talking to myself, of course. My shrink told me that a savage moral inventory would be right for this stage of therapy.