DEV Community: Daniel Habib

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

Daniel Habib — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 19:25:54 +0000

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:

Any aspect ratio, not just 9:16 to 16:9
Resolutions up to 8K
Any frame rate
Any color space

So whether it lands on a phone, a laptop, or a connected TV, the output looks like it was made for that screen.

Try it on your own video

Send us a video you want reframed and we'll send back a free sample so you can see it for yourself. We'd love to hear what you think.

See Ad Reframe: https://outpaint.com/ad-reframe

Grab 15 minutes with me: https://cal.com/daniel-habib/15min

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

Create a Simple Splat Video with spatialstudio

Daniel Habib — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 19:56:25 +0000

This tutorial assumes you have a basic understanding of Python. If anything is unclear, feel free to ask in the comments below!

Install spatialstudio

pip install spatialstudio

This library offers low‑level utilities that help you easily create splat videos—3D videos you can walk around in. These videos use the .splv file format, short for SPatiaLVideo.

In this guide, we'll build a simple splat video that displays a cube toggling between red and blue every second.

Initialize the encoder (`main.py`)

from spatialstudio import splv

width, height, depth = 8, 8, 8
encoder = splv.Encoder(
    width,
    height,
    depth,
    framerate=1.0,
    outputPath="color_cube.splv"
)

We define the resolution of our 3D video—think of it like going from 1080p to 8p, but in 3D.
Then, we create the encoder, which collects frames, compresses them, and writes them to a .splv file. We also specify the framerate here.

Create the frames

frame_total = 300  
red = (255, 0, 0)
blue = (0, 0, 255)

for frame_index in range(frame_total):
    frame = splv.Frame(width, height, depth)
    voxel_color = red if frame_index % 2 == 0 else blue
    frame.set_voxel(4, 4, 4, voxel_color)
    encoder.encode(frame)

Here’s what’s happening:

frame_total: Total number of frames we’ll generate.
red and blue: RGB tuples defining the colors.
Inside the loop:

We create an empty Frame (3D grid).
Pick red or blue depending on whether the frame index is even or odd.
Set a single voxel at (4, 4, 4) to that color.
Encode the frame with encoder.encode(frame).

You’re free to populate more voxels per frame as desired!

Finish encoding and write to disk

encoder.finish()

This final step tells the encoder to compress all collected frames and write the .splv file. You’ll end up with color_cube.splv in your working directory.

Preview your splv file

Use the free browser‑based preview tool—no login required:
https://splats.com/preview

If you run into issues, drop a comment below or hop into our Discord!

Can’t wait to see your 3D creations—share them on the subreddit or Discord!

Full code

from spatialstudio import splv

width, height, depth = 8, 8, 8
encoder = splv.Encoder(width, height, depth, framerate=1.0, outputPath="color_cube.splv")

frame_total = 300  
red = (255, 0, 0)
blue = (0, 0, 255)

for frame_index in range(frame_total):
    frame = splv.Frame(width, height, depth)
    voxel_color = red if frame_index % 2 == 0 else blue
    frame.set_voxel(4, 4, 4, voxel_color)
    encoder.encode(frame)

encoder.finish()

print(f"Created color-changing voxel animation: color_cube.splv")

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Let me know if you'd like to adjust anything or add visuals, diagrams, or links!

Splashgen: Create splash pages in less than 20 lines of python for free.

Daniel Habib — Thu, 20 May 2021 17:28:29 +0000

Github package repo
Github repo using Splashgen
Example splash page

What

SplashGen is a free and open source project that lets you rapidly build simple splash pages as easily as you can build a simple command-line application.

How

You write this:

and get this:

Why?

The main motivation behind this project is that backend developers don't like to write CSS, so I wanted to give them a way to get around that. When I was a backend engineer at FB we had a bunch of tools that let backend developers build UIs by leveraging predefined but flexible components without ever leaving PHP. When I left FB, I couldn't find anything similar, so I kicked off this project.

While this isn't super compelling today,(we are just giving people a single splash page that they can go and create), we plan to add a ton of templates and eventually a component system. If you are looking to deploy a splash page that requires a template we don't currently have, let me know and I can spin it up for you super quickly.

Any/all feedback is welcome :)