by Letterboxing, Pillarboxing, and Blur Padding with New Spark Media Transcoders
When your users upload videos in a variety of aspect ratios — portrait, square, or ultra-wide — it’s important to preserve their original framing without awkward cropping or distortion.
New Spark Media Transcoders offer three powerful options to gracefully adapt any video to your desired output dimensions: Letterboxing, Pillarboxing, and Blur Padding.
What It Does
When a video doesn’t match your target aspect ratio, the transcoder can automatically pad the video to fit — without stretching or losing important content.
- Pillarboxing
Maintains the original aspect ratio by adding black bars on the left and right. Great for converting vertical or square videos to standard widescreen. - Letterboxing
Adds black bars to the top and bottom of the video. Ideal when a wide-format video is being scaled to a more vertical layout. - Blur Padding
Uses a blurred version of the video itself to fill the padding areas. This creates a more modern, polished look — especially useful in social media formats.
⚙️ How to Enable It
Enabling these features in your transcoder profile is simple:
- Under “Enforce Target Size”, choose:
Pillarbox– for side padding with black bars.Blur– for dynamic side padding using a blurred background.None– to scale the video to the closest dimension without padding.
- For horizontal padding:
- Select
Letterboxto add black bars to the top and bottom.
- Select
These options can be set per profile, making them easy to apply across multiple projects or endpoints.
Example Output
| Input Format | Output Style | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Portrait video (9:16) | Pillarbox | Black bars on either side for a clean widescreen fit |
| Portrait video (9:16) | Blur Padding | Blurred background fill, perfect for reels or social posts |
| Landscape video (21:9) | Letterbox | Top and bottom bars to center the video in a 16:9 frame |
💡 Note: These settings apply to playback — thumbnails may still show the original aspect ratio until played.
Whether you’re creating short-form social video, long-form interviews, or user-submitted content, smart paddingensures everything looks professional — without extra editing steps.
✨ Try it on your next transcoder profile and instantly improve how your videos are framed across devices.