I hate black bars on video. So we're killing them for good.

#ai #machinelearning #showdev #startup

Today, you can only shoot video for one screen at a time.

Go landscape and it won't fit a phone. Go vertical and it looks awful on a laptop. And without a super specialized lens, forget about the big screen.

We've all seen the black bars you slap around a video to force it into a new aspect ratio. I hate them with a passion. My favorite movie, Lord of the Rings, was shot in 2.39:1. It doesn't fit a single TV out there.

So we're on a mission to end black bars for good. Every video should fit every screen.

Today we're launching Ad Reframe

Ad Reframe turns winning vertical UGC ads (9:16) into CTV ready placements (16:9). Send us your UGC ad and get back a TV and desktop ready version within days.

Advertisers test endlessly to find a winning UGC video, then want to squeeze every bit of value out of it, including running it on TV. But today, going from vertical to horizontal for the big screen leaves you with one of two bad options:

Pillarboxing: black bars on either side of the frame
Side blur: a smeared, stretched copy of the video filling the gap

Both scream "this was not made for this screen."

What outpainting does instead

Instead of hiding the gap, we fill it. We generate new content where the black bars used to be, matched to the motion, lighting, and subject of the original, so the frame looks like it was shot natively for the screen it's playing on.

In our CTV format test, outpainting won on everything advertisers measure:

Engagement: skip rate falls to 17%, the lowest we tested
Quality: 55% say it looks professionally produced, versus under 40% for the alternatives
Brand lift: consideration at 51%, favorability at 58%

Filling the screen with real content beats hiding the gap behind bars or blur.

How it works

We generate net new content where the black bars used to be, then keep it temporally consistent across every frame so nothing flickers or drifts. It is format agnostic by design: