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 2.4.1 or later, and the embed re-added using the Shorts form of the link.
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.
This became visible on newer Shorts because of a second, separate thing: automatic YouTube conversion isn’t reliable right now. YouTube blocks automated fetching aggressively, and newer uploads in particular fail every attempt. When a fetch fails, SmartVideo leaves your original YouTube embed on the page — and that fallback embed is the one that was getting the widescreen frame. Older Shorts that converted successfully before the restrictions tightened aren’t affected. (See Can I use YouTube videos? for the current state of YouTube conversion and the recommended alternative.)
Step 1: update the plugin to 2.4.1
In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins and update SmartVideo to version 2.4.1 or later.
If the update doesn’t appear yet — the WordPress.org listing can lag a new release by a day or two — you can install it directly:
- Download smartvideo.2.4.1.zip.
- Go to Plugins, then the add-plugin screen (your WordPress version labels it Add Plugin, Add New Plugin or Add New), click Upload Plugin, and choose the file.
- When WordPress notices a copy is already installed, choose Replace current with uploaded.
Your settings, videos, and Swarm CDN Key all survive the update — nothing needs re-entering.
Step 2: re-add the affected embeds using 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 delete the existing embed block.
- Add a fresh embed block.
- Paste 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 automatic YouTube conversion is unreliable at the moment, the dependable path is to skip YouTube as the source: download the video 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.