August 12, 2015

"According to several app makers and media companies, many of the world’s video consumers don’t seem to think vertical videos are wrong — in fact, a lot of us prefer them."

"There is a simple explanation for the dawning preference. According to the venture capitalist Mary Meeker, we now collectively spend about 30 percent of our screen time with devices that are best held vertically, like smartphones and tablets. That time spent is growing quickly, and on tall screens, vertical videos simply look and work better than those shot 'correctly.'... If you peruse some of YouTube’s vertical videos on your phone — say, a video of an inflatable Minion rolling down a street in Dublin, or of a man with a spinal cord injury taking a few halting steps after being fitted with a mechanical exoskeleton — the argument that vertical videos are unsuited for showcasing most events falls apart."

From "Vertical Video on the Small Screen? Not a Crime."

20 comments:

Dave in Tucson said...

Our eyes (for the most part, please excuse me for being oculo-normative here) are arranged side by side, and not one above the other. Our field of view is wider than it is tall, and landscape orientation fills it better than portrait does.

> 30 percent of our screen time with devices that are best held vertically

I really wonder how well sourced this claim is. I have a tablet, and I use it virtually exclusively in the landscape orientation.

Clyde said...

Maybe not a felony crime, but certainly a misdemeanor.

tim maguire said...

I prefer horizontal because it gives better visual context to the scene. Except for a few particular types of video, how does putting in more sky or ground help?

tim in vermont said...

Maybe they interviewed flounders?

lgv said...

First, in both video and photography, the content determines whether it is better to shoot vertical or horizontal. In the past video was always shot horizontal, because turning it was impossible in the old days, unlike a photograph. The opposite trend has happened in stills. I am reshooting the same stuff landscape instead of portrait (vertical) because it will be almost exclusively seen on the web, on screens that are wide, even though artistically, portrait would be superior. Vertical images and videos are often shrunk to fit a certain max window on a page. Vertical ends up getting scrunched.

I kept watching the cop attack a teenager in McKinney thinking that we would have seen much more of the activity if they had shot horizontal. Instead we all this negative space above and below the action.

The problem is that people just want it to be one way or the other, rather than having to make a reasoned choice.

Robert Cook said...

Vertical videos are the sure sign of someone who is visually "illiterate," so to speak.

Scott said...

No they're not. That's silly. Visual literacy has nothing to do with the aspect ratio in which a video has been shot.

rhhardin said...

Maybe it's for porn.

Scott said...

Yeah. Portrait is better for gay porn, landscape is better for straight porn.

Scott said...

In any case the semiotics of "visual literacy" can't be articulated. It's a mocus concept.

Scott said...

It has conventions, but conventions don't make a grammar.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

The very fact that the two orientations are referred to as landscape and portrait is a pretty good clue that the appropriate choice depends on the subject.

Kyzer SoSay said...

Landscape is better for orgy porn. Not so much for gangbang porn.

The viewer likely enjoys seeing 4 or 5 couples having sex, but for a gangbang, would prefer not to have a horizontal view full of dudes playing with their peckers while waiting their turn.

Unless they have some hot female fluffers to keep them at attention. That is acceptable.



I am not Laslo. But I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Original Mike said...

This is ridiculous. We view the world horizontally because our eyes are on a horizontal axis. This was understood decades ago at the advent of cinema and television. This is just an example of calling something "better" because it is different. It is not better.

Mary Beth said...

A common problem I've noticed with videos shot in portrait format is that the subject keeps going out of frame.

T J Sawyer said...

Many subjects call out for a vertical format. Walk through any museum to see examples. I probably shot 20 percent of my pictures that way "back in the day" when the display medium was paper. I've just about given it up because of the loss of impact when displaying a vertical on a typical monitor.

I absolutely hate "square format," though. And I especially don't like being pushed into it for a Facebook profile. But a few people have done well with square. See
http://www.dpreview.com/articles/9462076757/square-format-not-so-weird

Smilin' Jack said...

The visual field is circular, like everything else in the eye. Screens should be round.

tim in vermont said...

if we could post images instead of links, my flounder image would have garnered at least one LOL.

damikesc said...

Vertical videos are the sure sign of someone who is visually "illiterate," so to speak.

Usually, yes. Seldom is the vertical orientation the better option.

JT said...

This says it all:

http://i.imgur.com/5jmeecy.gif