How to change how a video should be fit inside a container

This question is asked by developers who want to alter how a video should be sized inside the video's frame. By default, a video player respects the aspect ratio the video.

• For example, due to size of the container/frame, black pillars appear on the sides of the container. Instead, you want your video to cover these black pillars, even though this
• Cuts out content outside the box.
• Or deforms the content, and causing misalignment with the aspect-ratio.

SDKs

Web SDK	Android SDK	iOS SDK	tvOS SDK	Android TV SDK
Yes	Yes	Unverified through CSS/JavaScript injection	No	Yes

Code example

The snippets below help you understand how you could attempt to implement this use case.

Web SDK

The CSS object-fit property serves this use-case.

.theoplayer-skin video {
  object-fit: contain; /* default */
  /* object-fit: cover; // content outside of the container, hence some content might be missing from the container */
  /* object-fit: fill; // all content inside of the container, but the content might be deformed to be fitted inside of it */
}

/*
// if you are doing object-fit: cover, and you don't want to show the content outside of the container, then do:
.theoplayer-skin {
    overflow-y: hidden;
}
// additionally, the object-position CSS property can help position the content, e.g.
.theoplayer-skin video {
    object-position: top;
}
*/

Alternatively, if you cannot use CSS for some reason, you could try to achieve the same through JavaScript.

const videos = document.querySelectorAll('.theoplayer-skin video');
for (let i = 0; i < videos.length; i++) {
  videos[i].style.objectFit = 'cover';
}

Legacy Android SDK (4.12.x)

For SDK version 3.6.1 and above, you can use the API described at Player#setAspectRatio(AspectRatio) to set the AspectRatio values.

The snippet below demonstrates how you could use this API:

theoPlayerView.getPlayer().setAspectRatio(AspectRatio.FIT);

If you are using one of minApi21, androidTV or fireTV SDK with version below 3.6.1, the Web SDK code above should be included in your Android (TV) project .

The article at How to add CSS or JavaScript files to an Android/iOS project explains how you can add CSS and JavaScript files to your project. The sample project at How to insert a button demonstrates this.

iOS (tvOS) SDK

You can use the API described at THEOplayerFullscreen to set the video gravity values.

The snippet below demonstrates how you could use this API:

theoplayer.fullscreen.setAspectRatio(aspectRatio: AspectRatio.fill)