You're Doing it Wrong, Vertical Video Syndrome

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,601
The war against vertical video is now officially lost. Youtube is adapting its video format to better fit your device, mainly video shot with a vertical aspect. However, after reading up on the comments in the Youtube help forum, it seems not everyone is having a good experience.

PSA.

We launched an update to the YouTube video player on desktop – the player now automatically adapts to provide the best viewing experience based on the video’s size (aspect ratio) and your computer’s screen/browser size.
 
A sad day indeed. I guess we're lucky that by this time, George Lucas isn't in control of Star Wars!
 
I have to give my wife half credit with this one. For a while she would turn our digital camera sideways because she saw people in the movies do it. Then she was confused when we'd see the pics/vids and VVS effect was there, or Batcam as I called it. Took years to get her to break that habit. Still get a good laugh when we look at those old files.
 
It's natural to hold your phone upright. The designers need to throw down some Steve Jobs shit and make it natural to hold the phone and operate it in landscape.


P.S. Anyone who feels the urge to reply with, "I've always thought it felt natural to hold your phone sideways," has a poop-eating dog as their only friend.
 
I just gave that thread a quick read. LOL, so many learning how their 1080p/2.1 mp/1-3 Mbps video or less, look awful when scaled to full screen. That's not even taking into account all the other factors like sensors, lenses, compression, software, etc. that play into the many tricks of digital capture.

Instead of resizing to a screen, how about they make the camera's to take an image already formatted for it? If the final matched what people saw they wouldn't have as much to complain about. Obviously the camera vs screen aspect ratio concept left the building a long time ago.
 
seanreisk said:
It's natural to hold your phone upright. The designers need to throw down some Steve Jobs shit and make it natural to hold the phone and operate it in landscape.


P.S. Anyone who feels the urge to reply with, "I've always thought it felt natural to hold your phone sideways," has a poop-eating dog as their only friend.
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I've always felt it natural to hold your phone sideways if you're capturing video... since only a poop-eating dog with a potato as their only friend records video in portrait orientation.
 
capt_cope said:
I've always felt it natural to hold your phone sideways if you're capturing video... since only a poop-eating dog with a potato as their only friend records video in portrait orientation.
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I know you are, but what am I? Tap-tap, no touch-backs.


P.S. Potato? Let's not get personal, now.
 
I don't waste my time watching content produced by random people on their phone. If I watch something it's a channel with professional photographers.
 
bigdogchris said:
I don't waste my time watching content produced by random people on their phone. If I watch something it's a channel with professional photographers.
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pre·ten·tious
prəˈten(t)SHəs/
adjective
  1. attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
    "a pretentious literary device"
    synonyms: affected, ostentatious, showy
 
So stupid. Peoples eyes are side by side, monitors, movie screens, etc are all horizontal because that just simply makes sense for human anatomy. I hate vertically shot phone videos personally. I know - its racist to not be accepting of vertical phone videos. Many phones and their operators identify as stupid so we must accommodate them. :p
 
You'll actually find vertical footage on several of my videos. Reason being, they're all demos of equipment that I design and build, and are oriented in vertical racks and cases. That is the best way to show exactly what everything is doing at the same time system-wide. If that warrants a hit squad than everyone can go fuck themselves. :p

Honestly though, if I was shooting for professionalism, and not quick and dirty demos of a vertical stack of equipment, I'd use proper equipment, and do some form of panning to fit everything in. As it is though, it's just not worth my time.
 
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bigdogchris said:
I don't waste my time watching content produced by random people on their phone. If I watch something it's a channel with professional photographers.
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Even TV news organizations buy Vertical Videos shot by shmoes- so much for professionalism.

I can't stand VVS video either. But if it's a choice between no video or:

you air the VVS video. (which decided the war far earlier than YouTube did)
 
It's not them so much taking a stance or condoning the practice of shooting portrait, it's just them adapting to address the viewing experience.

I'm ok with a player upgrade that would make it so the player adapts to the video (e.g. if shot in portrait, it rearranges the layout for that video).
 
Spidey329 said:
It's not them so much taking a stance or condoning the practice of shooting portrait, it's just them adapting to address the viewing experience.

I'm ok with a player upgrade that would make it so the player adapts to the video (e.g. if shot in portrait, it rearranges the layout for that video).
Click to expand...

See, that would be the best solution. Adjust the viewing window, allow the option for something more adaptive maybe, but don't add bars. Everyone should just keep a portrait monitor connected. :p

I don't think most content should be shot portrait. I don't think anything professional should be. On someone's own personal channel, for unimportant nonsense though? Who cares?
 
J3RK said:
See, that would be the best solution. Adjust the viewing window, allow the option for something more adaptive maybe, but don't add bars. Everyone should just keep a portrait monitor connected. :p

I don't think most content should be shot portrait. I don't think anything professional should be. On someone's own personal channel, for unimportant nonsense though? Who cares?
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Did you read the thread linked in the OP?
 
Armenius said:
Did you read the thread linked in the OP?
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Skimmed it, and saw the pics. I was mainly just agreeing with Spidey329 conversationally with my own preferences for this. Personally, I don't even mind the bars most of the time, because the videos shot that way aren't exactly what I'd be expecting high quality HD professional footage in the first place.

It's like those movies that are filmed with "shaky cam" to appear amateur or like what's happening is real, because people aren't all professionals. If I see vertical footage, my brain immediately just says, yep, just some guy filming this for shits and/or giggles. As I mentioned though, I'd prefer even vertical without the bars if I had a choice.

Seems like most of the comments in this thread revolved just around saying that nobody should ever film that way, so that's kind of the aspect I decided to discuss.
 
I stop watching videos immediately that are shot vertically anyways so the change probably won't impact me much.
 
I couldn't get my wife to stop holding the phone vertically when shooting a video; I doubt expounding the design philosophy of the screen formats will convince anyone when the phone is a handle they hold to shoot a video.
 
Sometimes vertical captures the scene better. For some reason full body nudes come to mind. I don't know why.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
I couldn't get my wife to stop holding the phone vertically when shooting a video; I doubt expounding the design philosophy of the screen formats will convince anyone when the phone is a handle they hold to shoot a video.
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The fix for all of this is to resort to square sensors. That way users can film portrait or landscape irregardless of how they're holding the device!

:)
 
This is why I like the character John Wick, he knows how to properly shoot in all scenarios.

h8APE4m.jpg
 
lostin3d said:
I have to give my wife half credit with this one. For a while she would turn our digital camera sideways because she saw people in the movies do it. Then she was confused when we'd see the pics/vids and VVS effect was there, or Batcam as I called it. Took years to get her to break that habit. Still get a good laugh when we look at those old files.
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Check out this other doofus, shooting pics vertically:

5010107-U-2.jpg
 

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seanreisk said:
It's natural to hold your phone upright. The designers need to throw down some Steve Jobs shit and make it natural to hold the phone and operate it in landscape.


P.S. Anyone who feels the urge to reply with, "I've always thought it felt natural to hold your phone sideways," has a poop-eating dog as their only friend.
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Natural to hold your phone yes, natural to want to take video? No..no it isn't. Natural for dumbasses perhaps.

I hate running across vertical videos by mistake. I won't watch them, I just down vote it and move on. Sad day YT is encouraging this garbage.
 
KamelRed said:
pre·ten·tious
prəˈten(t)SHəs/
adjective
  1. attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
    "a pretentious literary device"
    synonyms: affected, ostentatious, showy
Click to expand...
 
After reading thru this thread it does become clear the old saying the right tool for the right job. There are times to shoot portrait, then times for landscape. Problems many are too dense to realize what and when.

Robin Williams once said, "There's 2 types of people in the world. Stupid people and angry people. The stupid people are too stupid to realize they're the ones that the angry people are angry at."

Point being, someone please develop an AI that identifies the correct mode for these tools, then slaps them upside the head, and finally corrects if still needed. Loved the vids from The Mad Atheist and Saturn_V as they really showed how each could apply.
 
lostin3d said:
Point being, someone please develop an AI that identifies the correct mode for these tools, then slaps them upside the head, and finally corrects if still needed.
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This is one of the underlying faults with AI that people don't recognize - as AI learns more and more about human behavior and how to assist humanity, and as AI develops the routines and oversight to keep humans from making common mistakes, I have fewer and fewer reasons to slap someone upside the head. Does anyone really want to live in a world where there's no justification for slapping someone upside the head?


P.S. <-- Thinks deeply about the future.

P.P.S. (soft, soothing piano melody) "Imagine there's ... no dumbshits ...... You can't if you try .... Imagine there's ... no fucktards ... They're all being managed ... by AI ... Imagine theeeeere's no reason .... To slap somone upside the heeeeead .... Ooooh-ooooh-ooooh "
 
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As pointed out already, cellphone manufacturers' refusal to force consumers to shoot in landscape mode by making the camera unusable when shooting vertically is the problem. It is a very simple feature to add that they refuse to do because "Nobody ever went broke catering to the lowest common denominator."
 
What I really want is to shrink this to roughly 1/3 it's size and 1/3 it's detail and include a bunch of panorama I'm not interested in:
View-of-the-Eiffel-Tower-BoulderLocavore.com-44p.jpg

url
 
Browsing through my Facebook feed, this is more common with people over 40 as they have had more time using phones like a Motorola Razr than any smartphone.
 
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