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Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

horizon.camera

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Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#31

Post by judk »

Kequc wrote: post #15
AVTizzle wrote: post #4

Great product, but a question about the trailer video... Since the app seems to seamlessly adjust the picture so it doesn't rotate when you change the actual smartphone's physical orientation, what's the point of rotating the phone mid-shot? Take the example of the two women sitting for coffee... why does the camera-person bother rotating the phone to horizontal in the middle of the shot? Why not just stay in place?

It feels like an attempt to battle the plague of vertical video and for that I'm thankful. Otherwise it's a great way to end up with a horizontally stable shot while allowing you to hold the phone any way that feels comfortable. I can't think of any time when that isn't what I want.

I don't understand why otherwise savvy techy people ate so Luddite about vertical video. Adding an extra 200% of worthless landscape to a video of a person is an ancient plague that smartphones provided a cure for.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#32

Post by judk »

higherpurpose wrote: post #9
rplnt wrote: post #2

This is a very nice idea and should really be available in stock cameras. Maybe they could license it to phone manufacturers to include it in their camera apps? Anyway, what I wanted to ask.. how do they go around the loss of quality? It's not a simple crop? Can they somehow utilize any part of the chip they want (as long as the maximum is the same?) since the chip is much bigger than the max possible video it can re…

License it? Is this such a revolutionary idea that other companies can't "invent it" themselves without licensing it? This is an obvious idea that everyone has been craving for, and I don't think such ideas deserve patents. If stock cameras adopt this idea, tough luck, they'll just have to compete like everyone else and add more differentiation. It's not the implementation that matters here, it's the idea. And compan…

Google+ already does something something similar, but not exactly. Ideas are obvious, implementation is everything. This product may or may not be a better implementation, and worth paying for. Inventors of advanced camera algorithms tend to get bought out or hired.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#33

Post by AVTizzle »

petrakeas wrote: post #17
nbody wrote: post #16

Installing such app almost certainly implies that the user is aware of the problem of vertical videos. So being aware of it, they will simply rotate the device when recording (since it provides better quality/resolution). It seems to me that it would be helpful if such idea is applied on the system level without the need for an app.

This argument makes sense. However, it is more comfortable to hold the phone vertically even if you are aware of the Vertical Video problem. So, Horizon helps in these cases as well. And even if you do hold it horizontally, you won't manage to shoot a perfectly aligned shot easily by yourself. For example, if you try to get a shot of a sunset.

This. I am completely aware of the problem of vertical videos, but constantly take them out of wrist/grip convenience.

I'm baffled as to why iPhone/Android doesn't offer a feature that allows you to toggle horizontal video from a vertical phone. I feel like that'd make 50% of smartphone videos infinitely more watchable.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#34

Post by fidlefodl »

AVTizzle wrote: post #4

Great product, but a question about the trailer video... Since the app seems to seamlessly adjust the picture so it doesn't rotate when you change the actual smartphone's physical orientation, what's the point of rotating the phone mid-shot? Take the example of the two women sitting for coffee... why does the camera-person bother rotating the phone to horizontal in the middle of the shot? Why not just stay in place?

I would want to rotate simply to get more resolution.. but then i'd wonder why i wasn't using the highest resolution from the start.. and then bam, i'm back to using the a normal camera app and holding it sidebars haha.

Though, i think i'd prefer this style app if it just picked portrait or landscape, and adjusted between just those two states dynamically. That would be nice if you accidentally shoot in one, and decided you wanted the other. Which happens quite frequently for me.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#36

Post by wmeredith »

ctdonath wrote: post #20
nbody wrote: post #16

Installing such app almost certainly implies that the user is aware of the problem of vertical videos. So being aware of it, they will simply rotate the device when recording (since it provides better quality/resolution). It seems to me that it would be helpful if such idea is applied on the system level without the need for an app.

Horizon isn't just about vertical vs horizontal video, it's about either being skewed to a diagonal. Consider how many videos (whichever general orientation) wobble 5-20 degrees off axis; that's what Horizon solves. Compare those professional "unsteady cam" shots where there's lots of horizontal & vertical movement, but never any tilt.

Now this is a feature I would pay for. I think marketing it as fixing vertical video may be a miss, but marketing it as steady cam for your phone is killer.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#37

Post by petrakeas »

ctdonath wrote: post #22
mxfh wrote: post #19

Quite the trade-off, so instead of shaky unaligned horizons you now get irritating zooms effects [1], plus up to more than 2/3 of the original frame missing? (at least that's what the online demo represents). At least the constant zooming could be easily lessened by defining a safe area of the frame as the active content while using the remaining sensor area for compensation only. [1] http://www.horizon.camera/demo

As a Horizon user, it bugged me that so much of the image was cropped to ensure stability (portrait width in landscape orientation - grrr). The rotate-to-zoom effect isn't perfect, but at least it gives the option to use more pixels when available (and I'll take zoom over wobble). Otherwise you're using an HD camera to take stable SD video. You do have the option of turning off rotate-to-zoom and stick with the prior…

We have implemented a solution to the problem where the crop area zooms in/out smoothly in Flex mode, so that the wobbling problem is reduced. It will be available on the upcoming updates and in the Android version as well (hint! ;)).

In the meantime, you can switch between modes while recording depending on the situation. Finally, locked mode switches automatically to horizontal or vertical orientation in version 2.0.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#38

Post by davehalladay »

judk wrote: post #31
Kequc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like an attempt to battle the plague of vertical video and for that I'm thankful. Otherwise it's a great way to end up with a horizontally stable shot while allowing you to hold the phone any way that feels comfortable. I can't think of any time when that isn't what I want.

I don't understand why otherwise savvy techy people ate so Luddite about vertical video. Adding an extra 200% of worthless landscape to a video of a person is an ancient plague that smartphones provided a cure for.

The only problem I have with vertical video is that most screens are horizontally oriented, so vertical video always looks bad with tons of wasted screen space when viewed on anything other than the vertical smartphone it was recorded on.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#39

Post by Kequc »

judk wrote: post #31
Kequc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like an attempt to battle the plague of vertical video and for that I'm thankful. Otherwise it's a great way to end up with a horizontally stable shot while allowing you to hold the phone any way that feels comfortable. I can't think of any time when that isn't what I want.

I don't understand why otherwise savvy techy people ate so Luddite about vertical video. Adding an extra 200% of worthless landscape to a video of a person is an ancient plague that smartphones provided a cure for.

Goes back to why we switched to widescreen displays.

Area of vision man. It is not wasted space to see a horizontal plane, as that is what we expect to see when looking at anything. Vertical video simulates the effect of straining to see through a partly closed door it is tangibly horrible.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#40

Post by quarterto »

mxfh wrote: post #19

Quite the trade-off, so instead of shaky unaligned horizons you now get irritating zooms effects [1], plus up to more than 2/3 of the original frame missing? (at least that's what the online demo represents). At least the constant zooming could be easily lessened by defining a safe area of the frame as the active content while using the remaining sensor area for compensation only. [1] http://www.horizon.camera/demo

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