Picking a large image or video for your homepage

Do you want to include a large hero image or video on your homepage?

The image or video will need to work on a wide variety of screen sizes — from the wide (landscape) screens on laptop computers, desktops, and TVs, to the tall (portrait) screens on mobile devices and tablets. This can make choosing a properly sized image/video challenging.

Option 1

Use a landscape image/video that also looks good when cropped to portrait mode. That is how the cat video on this website is handled. It is a landscape video with the cat smack dab in the center.

On mobile devices and tablets, the space on the left and right sides gets cropped out like this: 

So, the trick is to select a wide/landscape image or video where the focal point is in the center of the screen.

As to size, the image or video should be at least 1800 pixels wide, or up to 2500 pixels wide if you need a clearer image on large screens.

Videos should also be landscape orientation, under one minute, have no sound and be hosted on YouTube.

Option 2

If you have trouble finding one image or video that looks good when cropped, we can setup one image/video for tall screens and a second for wide screens. This option gives us more control, but costs more as it requires two images/videos and two distinct setups.