How To Embed Widescreen YouTube Video

{.update} Update: YouTube now allows you to select dimensions when customizing embed code.
Simply click the Customize icon next to the embed code, and select the size you want: the embed code will be updated to match!

YouTube recently announced a change that modifies their video player to a widescreen format. Unfortunately, the default code provided for embedding videos still defaults to a 4:3 size (450x355). It’s easy to modify the dimensions to match the player on YouTube.

In the embed code provided, change the the width parameters to 640, and height parameters to 385.

<object width="640" height="385">
	<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rs-jAImScms&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"></param>
	<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
	<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
	<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rs-jAImScms&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"
			type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
			allowscriptaccess="always"
			allowfullscreen="true"
			width="640"
			height="385">
	</embed>
</object>

Make sure to change the dimensions in both places. Hopefully YouTube will update the options for customizing their embed code to do this automatically. For now, it’s easy enough to edit by hand.

Note: For those that wish to keep the original width of the YouTube player with a widescreen format, use a width of 450 and a height of 271. This might be useful for sites that were designed around the original player width.