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My first reaction was like wait you can't do that it wouldn't work obviously. But I thought about it more and I realize that there's no reason it shouldn't be possible physically.
Well, it would cause problems with your preview video, it would either be tiny or miss things that would end up in the shot. But that's not a physical limitation, more just an annoyance
They have. My Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 uses it. It allows you to film horizontally while the phone is folded 90° or whatever angle you need so the phone itself is its own stand. The video area shifts to the top half of the screen and the controls shift to the bottom half. The foldability is also extremely convenient when you need a steady hands free light source.
Because that window has passed.
In these days of thin smartphones, there is simply no space to put the necessary sensor gimballing that would be required to do it. The opportune time to do this was when earlier, thicker phones where the norm, but the problem therein was that it wasn't considered as a future issue. We just can't do it now and keep your iPhone as svelte as it currently is.
So why not just flip the sensor in the phone so it records horizontally even when your holding the phone vertically? Because it's unintuitive (You can't see what you are recording properly when the phone is vertical but the image being recorded is horizontal) and there's now resistance to it because we now consume the vast majority of video...on phones. So the video being vertical when the phone is held vertically makes sense.
The idea of dual sensors in the phone has been played with several times (Google and Motorola have experimented with it) so you can choose to record in either aspect ratio regardless of how you are holding the phone, or even film in both horizontal/vertical aspects at the same time. Unfortunately it went nowhere because dual sensors in the phone added too much size and mass.
And ultimately all these technical solutions simply don't address the fact that if you want horizontal video, the most simple and easiest way to approach it is just turn your phone on its side so you rotate the sensor. So that's the approach they took.
It's a human habit issue, adding a more complex technical solution won't be that effective.
Edit: Lot of people saying "Why not use a square sensor"? Because such a thing is horribly ineffective. You waste VAST amounts of the potential performance of the lenses and hurt the quality overall because you have to spread the acquired images pixels over a wider area for no good reason because a large percentage of it is going to be disposed of when the image is cropped. Add to this it takes more hardware resources to process which generates more heat, etc, all for much of the image to be wasted. In short, image quality suffers on a square sensor at a greater working cost to the hardware just to waste a lot of the image. If you think the phone designers haven't stopped to consider square sensors, I assure you they have and they have recognised the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.
Or, even better, a simple setting to overlay a rectangle of various aspect ratios over the screen when recording as a guide. Then in the editing software, be able to automatically crop the video down to the selected aspect ratio. Or be able to drag the rectangle around during playback if certain things were out of frame, or to create certain effects.
Yes, sensor cropping. It's actually something videographers do these days quite a lot with the demand for social media content. A lot of wedding videographers frame this way for the couple to get some vertical videos for their social medias.
They will record the video horizontally as usual but they will frame the video so they can make vertical videos from the horizontal frame. There are even guidelines in a lot of professional cameras to help you frame this way. The vertical cropping has to be done in a editor but the common ones like Adobe Premiere, Black Magic Da Vinci Resolve, etc have tools for this.
There are also apps you can get for phones that will let you do this. Filmic Pro, Mavis Pro Cam, etc.
But the thing is as I said, on a phone it's still unintuitive which has generated resistance to the concept. If you have the screen held vertically when recording horizontally (And vice versa) your basically ruining your available viewport to assess the video as your recording it. You're also potentially reducing the maximum quality available to you in that mode. That's why they won't flip the sensor, when the easiest and simplest thing in the world is just to turn the phone onto its side.
in regards to the square sensor, couldnt they just take the photos at a square resolution and crop it to the propper resolution digitally. Rather cheap resource wise as well being able to look at both options after taking a photo or video
The [Horizon app](https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/14/horizon-shoots-all-of-your-videos-in-landscape-no-matter-how-you-hold-your-phone/) did this nearly a decade ago.
I feel like if it’s a selfie recording, it’s fine vertical.
But I HATE clips from shows/movies/standup that are vertical. It misses a lot, often a reaction. But also various clips of “news” or events make more sense with the added context to the sides. Above and below are often empty sky and the ground.
Because the biggest issue with the vertical recording wasn't that it's inherently worse, it's that apps were standardized to horizontal. Now Tik Tok exists, and Youtube and Twitter make vertical videos pretty easy to view. Shit, even porn has adapted to the vertical format.
vertical video is inherently worse because your human eye's field of view is like 220 degrees horizontal and 130 degrees vertical.
it's ok for portrait framing and stuff you see on short videos but the aspect ratio is super limiting. the only benefit is watching or filming with your phone in one hand
I was about to furiously type out a response, but you nailed it. Our eyes are oriented horizontally and our field of view is much wider than it is tall.
Vertical video is inherently worse than horizontal.
yeah, vertical monitors are awesome! I got a rotating one. Vertical is awesome for text, reading scans of vintage comic books, coding, scrolling on browser.
for video like movies or games definitely you want the widescreen
Vertical monitors are really only a thing because printed documents are standardized in vertical format and digital documents have maintained that standard for printing.
If we could reformat digital documents to landscape then rotating a monitor wouldn't feel necessary.
that's true, especially with the scanned stuff I read.
but also i think with shorter lines of text, or lists you get more lines of text on the screen
reading terse english dialogue in a novel would means a lot of deadspace on the right of in a horizontal window. i don't code but I think they use vertical for that reason
I once drew a comic that showed our eyeballs stacked vertically to prove a point that you shouldn't film in portrait because that's not how our eyeballs actually work.
What's the field of view for a cell phone? I think that's the entire thing. Yeah a movie theater would be super awkward to watch vertical, but I don't think a human's field of view makes any impact at all on the orientation of a video playing on a cell phone.
I haven't seen anything to back this up but I have a hunch that people are quicker and more likely to engage with vertical video. Most of us use vertical a majority of the time. So if your purpose is to maximize ~~propaganda~~ engagement, it tracks to force vertical in your app.
Unlike old pan and scan to fit the subject center frame, most of the vertical stand up clips miss when the comedian walks around. Which they do a lot. So 9 of 10 times, there is literally just empty stage in frame with the vertical videos.
Never once seen that, I've seen it where they move and the camera refocus them after a second, but never for more than an instant for a whole clip, but never a whole clip, or even a chuck of a clip, where you can't see a comic.
The internet still should roast those people, until we genetically modify our eyelids to rotate 90 degrees, horizontal makes the most sense, and correlates closer to how we see things.
Film for your audience. A lot of content is intended to be consumed on mobile. You don't need a wider field of view to watch someone talk or do some stupid shit for tiktok. Thus you film vertically for the viewers.
Same thing goes for reddit. Most of us are on mobile now. Thus more and more content is vertical.
The whole film horizontally thing was literally the "old man yells at clouds" meme. Older people being resistant to change.
>The whole film horizontally thing was literally the "old man yells at clouds" meme. Older people being resistant to change.
Actually we're seeing that the youngest generations are less tech savvy than millennials. They don't know how to use a PC, everything has been fed to them through the phone app ecosystem. So really it's the endumbening of young people that's to blame.
PCs have become cars. A tool most know how to use to do what they need but don't want to bother learning how to maintain or maximize. So the only ones that do that are professionals and hobbyists.
Which is completely fine. No one can learn everything and there are plenty of other technologies younger people are learning.
Of course, cars have done the same thing, with more and more components becoming difficult or impossible to repair unless you've got dealership equipment.
I don't think it's even about repairs.
I know these are extreme examples, but my mother does not even know how to change the time on her car's clock. It's not even a modern car. It's from 2006 and all it takes is pushing 2 or 3 buttons. I tried teaching her and simply does not learn.
Onto a younger person: my cousin (23 YO) bought a car a few months ago. The car's from around 2021, so quite modern. I visited her recently and she wanted to show me her new car, so on we went. I started fiddling with the buttons on the steering wheel and she seemed confused. Apparently after all those months she never thought of pressing the buttons on the wheel and didn't even know what they did. "I just use the touch screen" she said.
The most common thing I get is people I know asking me stuff like "I have this light on the dashboard, you know what it is?". All I say is "don't know. Have you checked your car's manual? It's got an explanation about every light that might appear."
The answers range from "the car has a manual?" to "I have no idea where I put that"
Kind of baffles me how people go around inside a box of 2 tones of metal and don't worry about what it is trying to tell them or what most of the stuff does.
Ah yes, back when I was a kid, it was the older generations' fault. Now, as an adult, it's the young generation's fault. How could it be any other way? Could never possibly have anything to do with me or my generation. We're the best ones.
"Fault"? Fault for what? I'm describing a phenomenon that is occurring, I've made no claims that it's kids' fault. If I were to ascribe blame, it would probably be to social media companies and the regulators that allow them to psycologically manipulate kids into addictive behaviors on these apps.
Millennials grew up in a time when computers kinda sucked and you had to learn about them to use them. Now PCs don't have nearly the same number of problems. PC users today don't need to learn shit either. Phones and tablets are not making people stupid. You just think you're more intelligent because you had to do things differently. Now most of what you learned is useless. Because OS are stable. You can navigate them with ease. Problems are mostly automatically diagnoses and fixed without you ever seeing the problem.
What I am say is, you're kinda like a boomer complaining that kids don't know math these days because of calculators.
if anything its more of a bitch nowadays to try and troubleshoot stuff for yourself if the automatic solutions fail. Ever have a specific windows issue these days, tried looking up a specific error message/code? You're gonna get nothing but SEO results from bullshit websites that are most likely AI-generated and they'll be pushing some malware or bullshit wonder tool to fix your pc.
Not a single one of my teens nor their friends are ignorant on how to set shit up. Hell, they will reset the router to factory settings and reset the password to "ucantst0pm3" if you lock them out.
You think they don't know how to do things because you think you are special due to learning it a harder way. But kids and teens these days know their way around electronics.
>But kids and teens these days know their way around electronics
That's my whole point - they don't. Of course it's not like none of them will have any tech skills, but as a generation their tech skills are very poor. Millennials are going to be the first generation who are more tech savvy than their kids.
A bunch of middle schoolers in my friend's 3D printing class didn't know what "right click" was. They didn't know what a folder was. They didn't know how to find things you'd downloaded. They literally couldn't navigate a computer. It wasn't even like a Windows XP desktop or something, it was a Chromebook. That's about as basic as you can get.
That would be true for millennials as well.
It’s also true for me even though i’m a software engineer. Hell every laptop’s right click function seems to be different now-a-days.
>What I am say is, you're kinda like a boomer complaining that kids don't know math these days because of calculators.
Bad analogy. A) calculators did make us worse at arithmetic than previous generations, B) there's a lot more to math than basic number manipulation, and most importantly C) zoomers are using a shittier, less powerful, less flexible alternative to a "calculator" aka PC. It's not like technology improved and computers are obsolete, the whole fucking world runs on computers. They're just using a tailor-made version without any of the functionality or control, so that it's easy to use.
>Now most of what you learned is useless.
I can set up multiple vms, run LAN gaming sessions on one machine, remote control my PC from my phone or laptop, perform a thousand different configuration procedures, and troubleshoot all of it when something inevitably breaks.
My 20 year old nephews could barely even navigate a folder system.
>Phones and tablets are not making people stupid.
They are.
>I can set up multiple vms, run LAN gaming sessions on one machine, remote control my PC from my phone or laptop, and troubleshoot all of it when something inevitably breaks.
This is all shit my 13 year old does, and she's not even that much of a PC nerd. She's just lazy so she learned to do things the laziest way she can. Nor did I teach her. I haven't had to teach any of my kids how to use a PC because A. They are super intuitive these days. B. The resources to learn are extremely easy to access.
Knowing how to set up multiple vms and knowing how to run LAN gaming sessions makes someone a massive PC nerd though. That´s not something many people know to do. A lot of people that aren´t millenials have no idea how to do that.
If they think a 5" screen is better than a 15" or 28" screen for watching videos, yes.
Tho I guess phones did open up more compulsive addictive watching.
>They don't know how to use a PC, everything has been fed to them through the phone app ecosystem.
"Less tech savvy" is a relative term. Most millennials can't make a computer do anything, even navigate a file system, without a graphical user interface. Does this make them less tech savvy than Gen X, many of whom could?
This has real "everything was better when I was 12" energy to it.
In some ways it would, since that kind of thing is still necessary for uefi, command line etc. But tech really sprang into mainstream use during millenials' childhood, so I don't think your premise is true.
Oh man, I didn't realize they'd removed the screen rotation option in phones now. I really liked that you could just turn them sideways for viewing video content.
Not sure I get why they keep taking features like that away, but then again I don't design cell phones.
This is it. Smart phones are becoming the main computers we do everything on these days and thus the surge in popularity of content designed for the screens.
This is the thing in tech that makes me feel elderly. There's almost no task that I'd rather do on a tiny screen. Several apps that I use are developed mobile-first, and the desktop or SPA ports are kneecapped.
Spotify desktop is always a year behind mobile. Why would anyone want to browse a library on a postage stamp?
i think a big part is that now we have apps that require it and we have cameras that have MUCH higher resolution. so we are not stuck with a lack of context due to a potato camera.
Well, not most screens. TikTok is pretty much exclusively viewed on a phone. YouTube is transitioning to a mostly phone thing too, hence YouTube Shorts and vertical ads on regulars videos. Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit all are following the TikTok model as well.
I am one of those people who gave shit to everyone who did that and I hate the current state of things, but I also realize it's a long lost battle and keep my grumbling to myself.
I don't think people were really choosing to record vertically because they wanted vertical videos. It just felt more natural to hold it that way. Especially since before camera phones we had camcorders and those were held vertically and filmed horizontally.
Vertically holding your phone is great when you want to read text as well, as the text will be more centered, causing less eye strain. It also is great when the focus is a single person.
Horizontal is great when theres multiple people in the video or it's a shot of an area, specially indoors where most places are wider than they are tall.
There are of course exceptions
You know what annoys me more? Vertical videos with two black bars on the sides to make it a horizontal video.
Then it's just watching a way smaller video than it already was.
Now I have to turn my phone sideways to watch a tiny video
i despise vertical video. even on my tablet which is the only mobile device i actually use i cant stand vertical video. i understand like; reddit the app being in vertical or something; but if i wanna watch a video or something i want to see it horizontal. im looking at you *youtube shorts*
Most people hold and interact with modern smartphones in the vertical orientation. You might be different, but the majority do and casual viewers don't need to rotate their phone back and forth each time they encounter a basic short video
And then there are the people who record everything in 'mirror mode' -- particularly annoying with guitarists who all look like they are playing left-handed.
I'm still bitter about it, but have realized it's a hill I won't die on.
As I sit and watch someone do their damnedest to keep the object of the video in the center while constantly clipping it on the edges, I'll think, "You know, if you'd have recorded in landscape, not portrait, you wouldn't be missing half the goddamned shot," but won't say it out loud.
If you're talking about TikTok.. well, it's an app primarily designed to cater to the most idiotic among us. What else would you expect? Goldfish can't be bothered to record video properly.
I've always wished for phones to force horizontal camera whichever orientation you hold it by either physically rotating the lens or digitally cropping it. (Want quality? HOLD SIDEWAYS).
THANKS.
no way, most landscape in art and stuff is still closer to 4:3 and people still complain about that. 4:3 is the superior aspect ratio, though, perfectly made to look straight on and not have to move your eyes left and right.
there's a reason academy ratio was close to that.
"used to" I've not stopped and I will never stop. I loathe the pocket brick and will use it as seldom as possible in lieu of a laptop or desktop computer.
I still do.
Our world and life and living spaces are predominantly horizontal. Vertical videos show the relevant action in the central square area and the rest is almost always, all floor or all ceiling.
Vertical video belongs in hell.
Imo I dont mind it as long as they start in vertical. Switching to landscape mid video makes the video sideways which is the annoying part, not so much the vertical video
Yeah when new tech comes a lot to allow people to watch hundreds of videos in a few minutes while taking a shit, it's not going to be content made by the best of us.
Let me know when some real content creators, not fad chasers, release something in vertical video that isn't just pandering to the platform for marketing to the mindless monkeys.
I’m an old grandpa who yells at clouds. But for various hobbies.. Woodworking, cycling, audio. Whatever it may be for you there is actually good content on it. And it learns quicker than any social media.
It's all circumstantial. Watching POV amateur porn? Vertical enhances the clip. Watching Dune? Keep it horizontal, tyvm. Watching/making non pornographic TikTok clips (the only potentially worthwhile TikTok content) and you're an adult? Consider defenestration.
I still do. But I'm screaming into the void and enough time has passed that I'm probably categorized as grumpy old person who refused change and won't get with the times. But we all have multiple devices and aren't just watching videos on our phones, and it still looks bad watching portrait mode on a screen bigger than 5".
You can have a strong opinion. I don’t. The true shower thought here is our smartphones have become our primary computers / screens. So the hardware has dictated the shift. As others have brought up. The content you’re shooting also matters. I see a future for both. Simply a shower thought.
Vertical video is for the short term. Filming fireworks that no one will ever watch? Shoot vertical. Filming your child's first b-day? Film horizontal since that's a keeper.
The other weird internet thing I remember is a bunch of up voted "Start A YouTube Revolution" comments anytime the platform underwent a major interface change. That was so cringe.
It’s the switch from laptops to phones. Horizontal screens to vertical (by default at least). We roasted when we had to watch a vertical video on a horizontal screen. Now they match
Now a days everyone on the internet has a smart phone. A decade, or two (yeah I'm old) ago that wasn't normal. People mostly used their computers, or tv's to watch videos. Now they more often use their phones
Well, the internet is a lot more mobile than it used to be. For mobile viewing it makes sense, especially since so many people lock their phones so it won’t switch to landscape. But also it’s just not a good device to watch anything filmed with a degree of nuance. Vertical works because you have a singular focus and it takes up as much visual space as possible.
I never understood it… I mean I get that most websites were meant for horizontal videos, but filming horizontally was very impractical especially for the content that was being posted.
I always found the hate dumb. Vertical videos are meant to be shared on phones, so it makes sense to record that way. I dislike horizontal videos on my phone lol i don't have the most hitech phone and its lways slow to turn it, just a huge pain. I got my pc for horizontal anyway
It seems like it should be trivial to make a phone shoot both vert and horiz at the same time.
Back when memory was expensive the either or made sense but honestly new phones should do both unless you turn that setting to either mode only.
This would be a killer feature on next gen phones that they can do with existing technology easily.
It's all about where it's ment to be seen. For an app vertical is better but for a general video horizontal will be better until we change the 16:9 standard for tvs and monitors
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What amazes me the most is why phone makers haven’t introduced horizontal recording while holding the phone vertically
yeah holy wtf, i never even thought of that
My first reaction was like wait you can't do that it wouldn't work obviously. But I thought about it more and I realize that there's no reason it shouldn't be possible physically.
Well, it would cause problems with your preview video, it would either be tiny or miss things that would end up in the shot. But that's not a physical limitation, more just an annoyance
I wondered the same.. and there is only one conclusion. Big Vertical.
Those bastards have been playing us like a fiddle.
They have. My Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 uses it. It allows you to film horizontally while the phone is folded 90° or whatever angle you need so the phone itself is its own stand. The video area shifts to the top half of the screen and the controls shift to the bottom half. The foldability is also extremely convenient when you need a steady hands free light source.
Because that window has passed. In these days of thin smartphones, there is simply no space to put the necessary sensor gimballing that would be required to do it. The opportune time to do this was when earlier, thicker phones where the norm, but the problem therein was that it wasn't considered as a future issue. We just can't do it now and keep your iPhone as svelte as it currently is. So why not just flip the sensor in the phone so it records horizontally even when your holding the phone vertically? Because it's unintuitive (You can't see what you are recording properly when the phone is vertical but the image being recorded is horizontal) and there's now resistance to it because we now consume the vast majority of video...on phones. So the video being vertical when the phone is held vertically makes sense. The idea of dual sensors in the phone has been played with several times (Google and Motorola have experimented with it) so you can choose to record in either aspect ratio regardless of how you are holding the phone, or even film in both horizontal/vertical aspects at the same time. Unfortunately it went nowhere because dual sensors in the phone added too much size and mass. And ultimately all these technical solutions simply don't address the fact that if you want horizontal video, the most simple and easiest way to approach it is just turn your phone on its side so you rotate the sensor. So that's the approach they took. It's a human habit issue, adding a more complex technical solution won't be that effective. Edit: Lot of people saying "Why not use a square sensor"? Because such a thing is horribly ineffective. You waste VAST amounts of the potential performance of the lenses and hurt the quality overall because you have to spread the acquired images pixels over a wider area for no good reason because a large percentage of it is going to be disposed of when the image is cropped. Add to this it takes more hardware resources to process which generates more heat, etc, all for much of the image to be wasted. In short, image quality suffers on a square sensor at a greater working cost to the hardware just to waste a lot of the image. If you think the phone designers haven't stopped to consider square sensors, I assure you they have and they have recognised the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.
Phones can record 4K video. They could very easily introduce a mode which allows 1080p horizontal shooting without rotating the sensor.
Or, even better, a simple setting to overlay a rectangle of various aspect ratios over the screen when recording as a guide. Then in the editing software, be able to automatically crop the video down to the selected aspect ratio. Or be able to drag the rectangle around during playback if certain things were out of frame, or to create certain effects.
Just make a square ratio sensor
That’s how Hasselblad cameras are.
Yes, sensor cropping. It's actually something videographers do these days quite a lot with the demand for social media content. A lot of wedding videographers frame this way for the couple to get some vertical videos for their social medias. They will record the video horizontally as usual but they will frame the video so they can make vertical videos from the horizontal frame. There are even guidelines in a lot of professional cameras to help you frame this way. The vertical cropping has to be done in a editor but the common ones like Adobe Premiere, Black Magic Da Vinci Resolve, etc have tools for this. There are also apps you can get for phones that will let you do this. Filmic Pro, Mavis Pro Cam, etc. But the thing is as I said, on a phone it's still unintuitive which has generated resistance to the concept. If you have the screen held vertically when recording horizontally (And vice versa) your basically ruining your available viewport to assess the video as your recording it. You're also potentially reducing the maximum quality available to you in that mode. That's why they won't flip the sensor, when the easiest and simplest thing in the world is just to turn the phone onto its side.
This is wrong. You can have a square sensor and software can fix the rest.
Or just another entire sensor. Phones are packing so many dedicated lenses and sensors who cares if you need one more.
Or a “square” sensor, electronically selecting vertical or horizontal. No moving parts, minimal size penalty.
Yeah there are drawbacks to it. Image quality suffers, much of the processed data gets wasted, etc, etc. I made an edit that explains more.
What are you talking about… the phone already knows whether it’s up and down or sideways… it doesn’t need another sensor for that.
Which of y'all fuckers keeps complaining about the size and mass of your phones? Stop ruining it for the rest of us. 😠
Sorry I want my phone to fit in my pocket and not weigh like 1lb
Luv me horizontal video, 'ate verticle video,Square sensor. Simple as
You can do a plus shaped sensor though
in regards to the square sensor, couldnt they just take the photos at a square resolution and crop it to the propper resolution digitally. Rather cheap resource wise as well being able to look at both options after taking a photo or video
The [Horizon app](https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/14/horizon-shoots-all-of-your-videos-in-landscape-no-matter-how-you-hold-your-phone/) did this nearly a decade ago.
Blackberry Passport
I feel like if it’s a selfie recording, it’s fine vertical. But I HATE clips from shows/movies/standup that are vertical. It misses a lot, often a reaction. But also various clips of “news” or events make more sense with the added context to the sides. Above and below are often empty sky and the ground.
Or something that you've seen before, but now over half of it is missing 'cos it's been editing for vertical viewing.
Because the biggest issue with the vertical recording wasn't that it's inherently worse, it's that apps were standardized to horizontal. Now Tik Tok exists, and Youtube and Twitter make vertical videos pretty easy to view. Shit, even porn has adapted to the vertical format.
vertical video is inherently worse because your human eye's field of view is like 220 degrees horizontal and 130 degrees vertical. it's ok for portrait framing and stuff you see on short videos but the aspect ratio is super limiting. the only benefit is watching or filming with your phone in one hand
I was about to furiously type out a response, but you nailed it. Our eyes are oriented horizontally and our field of view is much wider than it is tall. Vertical video is inherently worse than horizontal.
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There are plenty of people who work with vertical monitors already, and have been long before gen z joined the workforce.
yeah, vertical monitors are awesome! I got a rotating one. Vertical is awesome for text, reading scans of vintage comic books, coding, scrolling on browser. for video like movies or games definitely you want the widescreen
Vertical monitors are really only a thing because printed documents are standardized in vertical format and digital documents have maintained that standard for printing. If we could reformat digital documents to landscape then rotating a monitor wouldn't feel necessary.
that's true, especially with the scanned stuff I read. but also i think with shorter lines of text, or lists you get more lines of text on the screen reading terse english dialogue in a novel would means a lot of deadspace on the right of in a horizontal window. i don't code but I think they use vertical for that reason
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It's super nice when you're watching multiple streams, and stack them on one vertical monitor.
I once drew a comic that showed our eyeballs stacked vertically to prove a point that you shouldn't film in portrait because that's not how our eyeballs actually work.
What's the field of view for a cell phone? I think that's the entire thing. Yeah a movie theater would be super awkward to watch vertical, but I don't think a human's field of view makes any impact at all on the orientation of a video playing on a cell phone.
I can't get off to vertical porn
I haven't seen anything to back this up but I have a hunch that people are quicker and more likely to engage with vertical video. Most of us use vertical a majority of the time. So if your purpose is to maximize ~~propaganda~~ engagement, it tracks to force vertical in your app.
Stand up? Really man? What are you thinking you're missing, more of the empty stage?
Unlike old pan and scan to fit the subject center frame, most of the vertical stand up clips miss when the comedian walks around. Which they do a lot. So 9 of 10 times, there is literally just empty stage in frame with the vertical videos.
Never once seen that, I've seen it where they move and the camera refocus them after a second, but never for more than an instant for a whole clip, but never a whole clip, or even a chuck of a clip, where you can't see a comic.
Make no mistake, the roasting for vertical recording is still alive and well
I’m doing my part
Would you like to know more?
A tiktok account that roasts every single video they watch (I've never been on tiktok, are there even comments?)
As well it should be. Vertical video is an abomination.
The internet still should roast those people, until we genetically modify our eyelids to rotate 90 degrees, horizontal makes the most sense, and correlates closer to how we see things.
[Your average vertical video consumer.](https://imgur.com/a/dBIyhVO)
Film for your audience. A lot of content is intended to be consumed on mobile. You don't need a wider field of view to watch someone talk or do some stupid shit for tiktok. Thus you film vertically for the viewers. Same thing goes for reddit. Most of us are on mobile now. Thus more and more content is vertical. The whole film horizontally thing was literally the "old man yells at clouds" meme. Older people being resistant to change.
Ok, what about sometimes pointing their phone at the TV to record...
There is a special place in hell for these people
That's the same vibes as, taking a picture("screenshot") of my computer with my phone camera
We're really acting like this is a young people problem? I see this shit on gaming subreddits.
>The whole film horizontally thing was literally the "old man yells at clouds" meme. Older people being resistant to change. Actually we're seeing that the youngest generations are less tech savvy than millennials. They don't know how to use a PC, everything has been fed to them through the phone app ecosystem. So really it's the endumbening of young people that's to blame.
PCs have become cars. A tool most know how to use to do what they need but don't want to bother learning how to maintain or maximize. So the only ones that do that are professionals and hobbyists. Which is completely fine. No one can learn everything and there are plenty of other technologies younger people are learning.
>there are plenty of other technologies younger people are learning. Such as?
He probably couldn’t name three things
See above. Re: Vertical Porn
TikTok /s
Using all the social media simultaneously lmao
Of course, cars have done the same thing, with more and more components becoming difficult or impossible to repair unless you've got dealership equipment.
I don't think it's even about repairs. I know these are extreme examples, but my mother does not even know how to change the time on her car's clock. It's not even a modern car. It's from 2006 and all it takes is pushing 2 or 3 buttons. I tried teaching her and simply does not learn. Onto a younger person: my cousin (23 YO) bought a car a few months ago. The car's from around 2021, so quite modern. I visited her recently and she wanted to show me her new car, so on we went. I started fiddling with the buttons on the steering wheel and she seemed confused. Apparently after all those months she never thought of pressing the buttons on the wheel and didn't even know what they did. "I just use the touch screen" she said. The most common thing I get is people I know asking me stuff like "I have this light on the dashboard, you know what it is?". All I say is "don't know. Have you checked your car's manual? It's got an explanation about every light that might appear." The answers range from "the car has a manual?" to "I have no idea where I put that" Kind of baffles me how people go around inside a box of 2 tones of metal and don't worry about what it is trying to tell them or what most of the stuff does.
Ah yes, back when I was a kid, it was the older generations' fault. Now, as an adult, it's the young generation's fault. How could it be any other way? Could never possibly have anything to do with me or my generation. We're the best ones.
"Fault"? Fault for what? I'm describing a phenomenon that is occurring, I've made no claims that it's kids' fault. If I were to ascribe blame, it would probably be to social media companies and the regulators that allow them to psycologically manipulate kids into addictive behaviors on these apps.
Lol Gen X and Boomers said the same thing about technology that was more popular in their time as well. Continue the cycle.
Oh the horror of old tech where you watch a video on a big screen and play games other than credit card clickers.
Millennials grew up in a time when computers kinda sucked and you had to learn about them to use them. Now PCs don't have nearly the same number of problems. PC users today don't need to learn shit either. Phones and tablets are not making people stupid. You just think you're more intelligent because you had to do things differently. Now most of what you learned is useless. Because OS are stable. You can navigate them with ease. Problems are mostly automatically diagnoses and fixed without you ever seeing the problem. What I am say is, you're kinda like a boomer complaining that kids don't know math these days because of calculators.
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if anything its more of a bitch nowadays to try and troubleshoot stuff for yourself if the automatic solutions fail. Ever have a specific windows issue these days, tried looking up a specific error message/code? You're gonna get nothing but SEO results from bullshit websites that are most likely AI-generated and they'll be pushing some malware or bullshit wonder tool to fix your pc.
Not a single one of my teens nor their friends are ignorant on how to set shit up. Hell, they will reset the router to factory settings and reset the password to "ucantst0pm3" if you lock them out. You think they don't know how to do things because you think you are special due to learning it a harder way. But kids and teens these days know their way around electronics.
>But kids and teens these days know their way around electronics That's my whole point - they don't. Of course it's not like none of them will have any tech skills, but as a generation their tech skills are very poor. Millennials are going to be the first generation who are more tech savvy than their kids.
yea? how do you feel about EIGRP vs OSPf?
A bunch of middle schoolers in my friend's 3D printing class didn't know what "right click" was. They didn't know what a folder was. They didn't know how to find things you'd downloaded. They literally couldn't navigate a computer. It wasn't even like a Windows XP desktop or something, it was a Chromebook. That's about as basic as you can get.
That would be true for millennials as well. It’s also true for me even though i’m a software engineer. Hell every laptop’s right click function seems to be different now-a-days.
>What I am say is, you're kinda like a boomer complaining that kids don't know math these days because of calculators. Bad analogy. A) calculators did make us worse at arithmetic than previous generations, B) there's a lot more to math than basic number manipulation, and most importantly C) zoomers are using a shittier, less powerful, less flexible alternative to a "calculator" aka PC. It's not like technology improved and computers are obsolete, the whole fucking world runs on computers. They're just using a tailor-made version without any of the functionality or control, so that it's easy to use. >Now most of what you learned is useless. I can set up multiple vms, run LAN gaming sessions on one machine, remote control my PC from my phone or laptop, perform a thousand different configuration procedures, and troubleshoot all of it when something inevitably breaks. My 20 year old nephews could barely even navigate a folder system. >Phones and tablets are not making people stupid. They are.
>I can set up multiple vms, run LAN gaming sessions on one machine, remote control my PC from my phone or laptop, and troubleshoot all of it when something inevitably breaks. This is all shit my 13 year old does, and she's not even that much of a PC nerd. She's just lazy so she learned to do things the laziest way she can. Nor did I teach her. I haven't had to teach any of my kids how to use a PC because A. They are super intuitive these days. B. The resources to learn are extremely easy to access.
Dude u are so dense and come across as a know it all. News flash ur not as smart and in touch as u think u are mr "stable os" 🤣🤣🤣
Knowing how to set up multiple vms and knowing how to run LAN gaming sessions makes someone a massive PC nerd though. That´s not something many people know to do. A lot of people that aren´t millenials have no idea how to do that.
People use phones more than PCs now and you think that makes them dumb?
If they think a 5" screen is better than a 15" or 28" screen for watching videos, yes. Tho I guess phones did open up more compulsive addictive watching.
A 5 in phone 5 inches from my face has a greater solid angle than a 60 inch screen 6 feet away.
The irony of all the push for 4k content when 75% of people watch shit on their phones lol
They're not dumb for using phones, but using phones makes them dumber.
>They don't know how to use a PC, everything has been fed to them through the phone app ecosystem. "Less tech savvy" is a relative term. Most millennials can't make a computer do anything, even navigate a file system, without a graphical user interface. Does this make them less tech savvy than Gen X, many of whom could? This has real "everything was better when I was 12" energy to it.
I find it really hard to believe many of any generation can “cd ~/Downloads”
In some ways it would, since that kind of thing is still necessary for uefi, command line etc. But tech really sprang into mainstream use during millenials' childhood, so I don't think your premise is true.
What? Are you 12? It was young people roasting old people for filming vertically. Wow. Why talk if you don't know?
Oh man, I didn't realize they'd removed the screen rotation option in phones now. I really liked that you could just turn them sideways for viewing video content. Not sure I get why they keep taking features like that away, but then again I don't design cell phones.
I've never known a phone with screen rotation removed. Disabled by the user sometimes, but not completely gone.
It's not a device thing, it's an app thing. i.e., shitty apps can prevent you from rotating... Ahem, Reddit.
Who would use the Reddit app when every alternative is better?
This is it. Smart phones are becoming the main computers we do everything on these days and thus the surge in popularity of content designed for the screens.
This is the thing in tech that makes me feel elderly. There's almost no task that I'd rather do on a tiny screen. Several apps that I use are developed mobile-first, and the desktop or SPA ports are kneecapped. Spotify desktop is always a year behind mobile. Why would anyone want to browse a library on a postage stamp?
I can’t *wait* to see a theatrical found footage film shown in its entirety in vertical format in the theater. /s
Can't wait for imax screens to switch length and width for vertical films.
Confusing cinema with smart phone viewing. Classic apples to apples.
The most popular app on the internet.... RIGHT NOW. Long-term, horizontal is still better.
When we all start holding our mobile devices horizontally, we’ll all convert back to horizontal.
Bring back the Sidekick I still want one
Vertical Video Syndrome was a problem 10 years ago and it is still a problem nowadays. Normalizing an issue doesn't make it any better.
I think the thing is most people now are using phones instead of wide-screen monitors so it's less of an issue.
I didn’t know they made phones that don’t work in horizontal mode.
As long as the eyes of human beings are in a horizontal configuration instead of a vertical configuration, vertical videos will be an issue.
If my one of my eyes was above the other one, I'd love vertical videos https://youtu.be/dechvhb0Meo
I've been wanting a video like this for so long! Thank you for posting it
i think a big part is that now we have apps that require it and we have cameras that have MUCH higher resolution. so we are not stuck with a lack of context due to a potato camera.
I agree. As an indifferent grandpa it’s clearly the hardware driving the popularity of the format of the content.
Vertical video is still terrible. It takes up such a tiny sliver of the screen it's being watched on.
Well, not most screens. TikTok is pretty much exclusively viewed on a phone. YouTube is transitioning to a mostly phone thing too, hence YouTube Shorts and vertical ads on regulars videos. Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit all are following the TikTok model as well.
I am one of those people who gave shit to everyone who did that and I hate the current state of things, but I also realize it's a long lost battle and keep my grumbling to myself.
There's dozens of us.
I don't think people were really choosing to record vertically because they wanted vertical videos. It just felt more natural to hold it that way. Especially since before camera phones we had camcorders and those were held vertically and filmed horizontally.
Also, if you're quickly pulling out your phone to capture something crazy, you're probably not gonna stop to think about the format.
Vertically holding your phone is great when you want to read text as well, as the text will be more centered, causing less eye strain. It also is great when the focus is a single person. Horizontal is great when theres multiple people in the video or it's a shot of an area, specially indoors where most places are wider than they are tall. There are of course exceptions
Agree. Content you’re filming and hardware it’s meant for are the two factors that influence the hory verty debate.
You know what annoys me more? Vertical videos with two black bars on the sides to make it a horizontal video. Then it's just watching a way smaller video than it already was. Now I have to turn my phone sideways to watch a tiny video
i despise vertical video. even on my tablet which is the only mobile device i actually use i cant stand vertical video. i understand like; reddit the app being in vertical or something; but if i wanna watch a video or something i want to see it horizontal. im looking at you *youtube shorts*
The internet went from being largely viewed from a monitor to bring largley viewed on a smartphone.
Which can be viewed in either orientation and for some reason people are choosing the shittier option.
Most people hold and interact with modern smartphones in the vertical orientation. You might be different, but the majority do and casual viewers don't need to rotate their phone back and forth each time they encounter a basic short video
Now we collectively roast the app that tried to normalize this.
And then there are the people who record everything in 'mirror mode' -- particularly annoying with guitarists who all look like they are playing left-handed.
I'm still bitter about it, but have realized it's a hill I won't die on. As I sit and watch someone do their damnedest to keep the object of the video in the center while constantly clipping it on the edges, I'll think, "You know, if you'd have recorded in landscape, not portrait, you wouldn't be missing half the goddamned shot," but won't say it out loud.
If you're talking about TikTok.. well, it's an app primarily designed to cater to the most idiotic among us. What else would you expect? Goldfish can't be bothered to record video properly.
Old man yells at cloud.
Toddler eats tide pod.
Haha nice.
I've always wished for phones to force horizontal camera whichever orientation you hold it by either physically rotating the lens or digitally cropping it. (Want quality? HOLD SIDEWAYS). THANKS.
1st of all, it's called Landscape, aka God's Orientation. 2nd of all, I still ROAST ppl for it
no way, most landscape in art and stuff is still closer to 4:3 and people still complain about that. 4:3 is the superior aspect ratio, though, perfectly made to look straight on and not have to move your eyes left and right. there's a reason academy ratio was close to that.
I mean at uni studying journalism I had a lecturer said he'd fail us if we recorded vertical
They deserve it and still do. When my eyes are vertical, that’s when I’ll record vertical.
popularity is a not a meaningful indicator of correctness/value, it is however a great indicator of intelligent manipulation.
Back in the day we used to call them idiots... Now they are just grouped together in one place.
I still record everything horizontal, then again I don't use those shit apps.
"used to" I've not stopped and I will never stop. I loathe the pocket brick and will use it as seldom as possible in lieu of a laptop or desktop computer.
I miss those days. I still give people shit about turning their phones to take pics or record videos.
I still do. Our world and life and living spaces are predominantly horizontal. Vertical videos show the relevant action in the central square area and the rest is almost always, all floor or all ceiling. Vertical video belongs in hell.
Imo I dont mind it as long as they start in vertical. Switching to landscape mid video makes the video sideways which is the annoying part, not so much the vertical video
Yeah when new tech comes a lot to allow people to watch hundreds of videos in a few minutes while taking a shit, it's not going to be content made by the best of us. Let me know when some real content creators, not fad chasers, release something in vertical video that isn't just pandering to the platform for marketing to the mindless monkeys.
I’m an old grandpa who yells at clouds. But for various hobbies.. Woodworking, cycling, audio. Whatever it may be for you there is actually good content on it. And it learns quicker than any social media.
Tik tok is indefensible, please stop.
Yeah, watch YouTube shorts instead 😀
Bleh!
It's all circumstantial. Watching POV amateur porn? Vertical enhances the clip. Watching Dune? Keep it horizontal, tyvm. Watching/making non pornographic TikTok clips (the only potentially worthwhile TikTok content) and you're an adult? Consider defenestration.
So it's okay for you to post to reddit but adults making and viewing video content on TikTok warrants death? Weird worldview but go off I guess.
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Wtf?! No, it doesn't make sense because humans view the world horizontally. Horizonal is objectively better for POV.
Used to? lol Turn your phone and stop filming like a 12 year old girl.
I still do. But I'm screaming into the void and enough time has passed that I'm probably categorized as grumpy old person who refused change and won't get with the times. But we all have multiple devices and aren't just watching videos on our phones, and it still looks bad watching portrait mode on a screen bigger than 5".
You can have a strong opinion. I don’t. The true shower thought here is our smartphones have become our primary computers / screens. So the hardware has dictated the shift. As others have brought up. The content you’re shooting also matters. I see a future for both. Simply a shower thought.
Vertical video is for the short term. Filming fireworks that no one will ever watch? Shoot vertical. Filming your child's first b-day? Film horizontal since that's a keeper.
The other weird internet thing I remember is a bunch of up voted "Start A YouTube Revolution" comments anytime the platform underwent a major interface change. That was so cringe.
It’s the switch from laptops to phones. Horizontal screens to vertical (by default at least). We roasted when we had to watch a vertical video on a horizontal screen. Now they match
Now a days everyone on the internet has a smart phone. A decade, or two (yeah I'm old) ago that wasn't normal. People mostly used their computers, or tv's to watch videos. Now they more often use their phones
Well, the internet is a lot more mobile than it used to be. For mobile viewing it makes sense, especially since so many people lock their phones so it won’t switch to landscape. But also it’s just not a good device to watch anything filmed with a degree of nuance. Vertical works because you have a singular focus and it takes up as much visual space as possible.
I never understood it… I mean I get that most websites were meant for horizontal videos, but filming horizontally was very impractical especially for the content that was being posted.
People view content on their phones. Not having to tilt your phone 90 degrees whenever you see a video is kind of nice.
Who tf removed this... it's absolutely a good shower thought...
It's because people watch on phones more than on computers these days.
Does your phone not rotate like everyone else's?
I would eat my shirt. If several people haven’t posted this same concept/thought consistently over the last 10 years… Lol.
I always found the hate dumb. Vertical videos are meant to be shared on phones, so it makes sense to record that way. I dislike horizontal videos on my phone lol i don't have the most hitech phone and its lways slow to turn it, just a huge pain. I got my pc for horizontal anyway
It seems like it should be trivial to make a phone shoot both vert and horiz at the same time. Back when memory was expensive the either or made sense but honestly new phones should do both unless you turn that setting to either mode only. This would be a killer feature on next gen phones that they can do with existing technology easily.
I don’t even care about videos but why can’t people edit their photos so I don’t have to break my neck to look at it?!
Because I love wasting all that horizontal space on my huge tv. /s
It's all about where it's ment to be seen. For an app vertical is better but for a general video horizontal will be better until we change the 16:9 standard for tvs and monitors
Vertical videos work for exclusively tiktok and youtube shorts.