Given the wide variety of devices out there, it’s impossible for everyone to use the same kind of device to record and watch video. That presents a user experience challenge for a service like YouTube which happens to be the world’s largest online video website. YouTube says that its mission is to show off videos in the best possible way, no matter what format they’ve been shot in and what device they’re being viewed on. This is why the next update for the YouTube app will enable it to dynamically adapt videos to fit the screen size.
“Who cares if they’re vertical or horizontal? Shot on a mobile phone or DSLR? Square, 4:3 or 16:9?,” writes Susan Wojcicki, CEO, YouTube on the company’s official blog. She announced that a new YouTube mobile app is going to be released in the coming weeks.
The new app will dynamically adapt to whatever size the user chooses to watch video in. What this means is that the player will seamlessly adapt itself to fit the screen exactly the way it should regardless of whether a square, vertical or horizontal video is being watched.
Wojcicki also revealed that more than 1.5 billion logged in viewers visit YouTube every single month. That averages to one in every five people around the world and doesn’t take into account the countless YouTube users who don’t log in when viewing content.