If a vertical video — a YouTube Short, or anything taller than it is wide — appears shrunk into the middle of a widescreen box with empty space on either side, this is a known bug and it’s fixed. You need two things: plugin version 2.4.2 or later, and the embed using the Shorts form of the link. You don’t need to delete and re-add an existing block.
What was going wrong
Our WordPress plugin was wrapping the video in a 16:9 widescreen frame regardless of the video’s real shape. A normal landscape video fills that frame perfectly, so nobody noticed. A vertical Short can’t — it fits inside the frame at reduced size, leaving bars either side, which reads as “the video is tiny.” The same thing affected 4:3 videos, less dramatically.
SmartVideo replaces a YouTube embed with its own player right away, before conversion finishes, and the player takes the size of the frame it replaces. So a Short in a widescreen frame played small whether or not its conversion had succeeded; fixing the frame fixes the player. (See Can I use YouTube videos? for the current state of YouTube conversion and the reliable alternative.)
Step 1: update the plugin
In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins and update SmartVideo to the latest version. Version 2.4.2 added the fix for already-saved embeds.
Step 2: use the Shorts link
Check your pages after updating: an embed added with a youtube.com/shorts/... link picks up the correct shape on its own. An embed added with a youtube.com/watch?v=... link won’t, because WordPress only learns that a video is vertical from the Shorts form of the link — a watch link reports the video as 16:9 even when it isn’t.
For each Short that’s still showing squeezed after the update:
- Edit the page or post and change the existing embed’s URL to the full Shorts URL —
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID— not the watch link and not the share link. - Update the page and check it on the front end.
Videos added this way from now on pick up the correct shape automatically.
Still not right?
If a vertical video still renders widescreen after both steps, clear any caching plugin or CDN cache for that page and reload — a cached copy of the old markup will keep showing the old frame. If it persists after that, email support@swarmify.com with the page URL and we’ll take a look.
A more reliable route for YouTube content
Because YouTube conversion is best-effort — some videos convert and some don’t — the dependable path is to skip YouTube as the source: bring the video into your SmartVideo library. Download it and upload the MP4 directly, either through your SmartVideo Library or with the plugin’s own uploader (How to upload a video with our WordPress plugin). Direct MP4 uploads process normally, and the video plays through the SmartVideo player at its true aspect ratio with no YouTube branding attached.