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Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

horizon.camera

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Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#41

Post by hrktb »

AVTizzle wrote: post #33
petrakeas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having a square sensor or a sensor rotating physically is a big tradeoff in cost or complexity. Until now no one cared to make these tradeoffs for large scale selling cameras, and the few attempts to fill the niche didn't seem to be so successful. I think in the photo world it's the same niche level as for true B&W sensors.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#42

Post by skizm »

What is the technical limitation that stops an app from making the camera shoot native horizontal while holding the phone vertical?

Would the camera have to physically rotate or is it software and iOS/android just don't give devs access to it?

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#43

Post by zwily »

davehalladay wrote: post #38
judk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I'm watching a video on my phone, I'm always glad when it's vertical so I don't have to disable orientation lock and rotate.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#44

Post by makmanalp »

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.

This is great! I'm very surprised that it isn't anywhere on the site. Instead the focus seems to be on horizontal photos, which seems ridiculous since anyone can flip their phone sideways.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#46

Post by jamesbritt »

Kequc wrote: post #39
judk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Vertical video simulates the effect of straining to see through a partly closed door it is tangibly horrible.

Horizontal video simulates the effect of straining to see through a partly closed Venetian blinds it is tangibly horrible.

Now, is this any more correct? Or is it an equally arbitrary personal opinion?

The move to "wide" screen was also the move to short screen. I don't find anything natural about it; I expect to be able to move my eyes up and down as well as left and right.

A preference for short and wide screens seems more cultural than natural. Even granting that humans have better peripheral visions along the sides than top and bottom the current screens fall short in capturing this range.

My beef with most vertical videos is that people typically do not make good use of the format; there's nothing intrinsically bad or wrong about it.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#47

Post by lstamour »

skizm wrote: post #42

What is the technical limitation that stops an app from making the camera shoot native horizontal while holding the phone vertical? Would the camera have to physically rotate or is it software and iOS/android just don't give devs access to it?

Yes, the camera would have to physically rotate or stay level. Think of a film camera: holding the camera sideways means shooting in landscape at a 90 degree angle = instant portrait mode, no fancy software rotation effects required.

Alternatively, if we had a completely square sensor... though that still wouldn't help if you rotate at less than 90 degree angles.

Re: Horizon – Record horizontally. Always

#49

Post by scotty79 »

Is there a video hosting site that displays vertical videos without cramming them into horizontal frame?

I think lot of hate against vertical videos comes from the the way that youtube displays them.

I tried to create browser extension that displays vertical videos without the horizontal frame but I couldn't figure out how to determine orginal dimensions of the clip.

Vertical format was picked so that two people talking fit the frame. Today we more often see one person talk while being accompanied by non-video content (related, comments, slides, code). When single person talks (s)he's small and often accompanied by useless background on both sides, regardless of whether the video was recorded vertically or not.

I think that youtube went embrace (allow to upload), extend (by useless horizontal frame that makes the video smaller), extinguish (by the hands of all the people enraged by vertical videos due to previous stuff and the fact that people often use fullscreen on non-pivoting monitors).

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