So you’ve got a video or two to show on your website, but how do you control how big the display is going to be?

Some of that is determined by the video’s original display size, but you can also override the default size with some settings for the display. For example the video below has been set to display at a width=”1280″ and height=”640″ when your browser is using the full size of your computer monitor. It does resize itself when not using the full size of your computer monitor proportionally.

In this case the code is typed in the post editor in the Text mode as shown below, the link to the video file location has been blurred as a security measure as it is located on a separate website.

Click to view image above larger

video original source: Vimeo

How can you determine what the height and width settings should be and keep things proportional?

In WordPress depending upon how you insert the video into your post or page things are usually automatically set, but if you need to look-up the settings use the table below.

Standard		HD		Cinema Film		Cinemascope
Aspect ratio 4:3		Aspect ratio 6:9		Aspect ratio 1.85:1		Aspect ratio 2.35:1
Width	Height	Width	Height	Width	Height	Width	Height
240	180	240	135	240	130	240	102
320	240	320	180	320	173	320	136
480	360	480	270	480	259	480	205
640	480	640	360	640	346	640	273
720	540	720	405	720	389	720	307
800	600	800	450	800	432	800	341
1024	768	1024	576	1024	554	1024	436
1152	864	1152	648	1152	623	1152	491
1280	960	1280	720	1280	692	1280	545
1360	1020	1360	765	1360	735	1360	579
1366	1025	1366	768	1366	738	1366	582
1440	1080	1440	810	1440	778	1440	614
1536	1152	1536	864	1536	830	1536	654
1600	1200	1600	900	1600	865	1600	682
1680	1260	1680	945	1680	908	1680	716
1920	1440	1920	1080	1920	1038	1920	818

Please remember that the larger your display size the higher the resolution should be of the video and that means the larger the file size is going to be. The larger your video file is then more bandwidth is required to play the video for your site visitor without buffering. Larger video file sizes can also use more of your hosting service’s server side resources, but you can most times use a third party service such as YouTube or Vimeo to host the video and just call it up from there to include in your post or page. This does not always work very well and in certain instances the video file must be on your site in the Media Library. Using a third party services also have their own limitations and you should research those as best you can.