Vertical Shorts were played in a player forced to 100%x100% on a landscape
frame, so they looked wrong (pillarboxed/small). Option A: detect vertical at
ingest, persist it, and have every player honor it.
- Ingest (routes/content.js): detect a Short from the /shorts/ URL form OR
portrait oEmbed dims (oEmbed now queried with the ORIGINAL url so /shorts/
reports its true dimensions), and persist it as st_aspect=vertical on the
stored embed URL. That's the only signal players get (remote_url), so it must
be captured at ingest, not re-derived per loop. YouTube ignores the unknown
param; players read the video id, not the full URL, to build the embed.
- Players read st_aspect=vertical and center a 9:16 box (fills a portrait screen,
pillarboxes cleanly on landscape) instead of 100%x100%:
web (player/index.html), Android (WebViewSupport.youtubeEmbedHtml), Tizen
(player.js single-zone + zone paths). Dashboard library uses a static thumbnail,
so it's unaffected.
Not doing Option B (yt-dlp): runtime dep + storage/bandwidth + maintenance +
YouTube ToS; embed-disabled Shorts already skip gracefully.
Tests: youtube-shorts.test.js (4) — /shorts/ and portrait-dims tag vertical,
landscape stays untagged, /shorts/ tags even if oEmbed fails. Android compiles;
web player inline JS + Tizen player.js parse.
Note: pre-existing Shorts added before this aren't retagged (would need an oEmbed
backfill) — re-add to fix, or a follow-up migration.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
