Videos: Portrait vs Landscape Mode

[Ratsima]

One of the things that trouble this old man is the nearly universal trend for people to use portrait mode when making videos with their phones. The other day the morning news showed a user-taken video of monkeys on a rampage in Lopburi. The video was in portrait mode so most of it was either sky or pavement with the monkeys spread out in a thin band in the center of the frame. If the videographer had simply rotated their phone 90º we would have had a much broader and better view of the monkeys gone wild.

My wife posits that this is because it's easier to take a smart phone video with the device held upright.

Perhaps that's true, but it seems to fly in face of over a century of video production and presentation from wide screen cinemas to Super 8 home movies to 16:9 TV and computer screens; not to mention the landscape mode visuals produced by the human eye/brain. (What would life be like if our eyes were stacked one above the other instead of side by side?)

Do people not care that by orienting their phone upright to take videos they are missing significant content or is everything now simply geared toward Tik Tok?

[Big Boy]

Does Landscape Mode put the video on it's side when you upload it to another media, and you have to go through the nausea of adjusting manually for replay? If it is possible without that nausea, please post how to do it.

[Ratsima]

I’m not sure I understand the issue. I only make landscape mode videos and have never had any platform rotate a horizontal video to vertical orientation. I don’t sing or dance well enough to chance TikTok, but a little research revealed that they accept both vertical and horizontal videos.

[Big Boy]

Maybe I gave up years ago because of the technology, but I see so many videos on their side, I just assumed it was still an issue.

[Ratsima]

Examples?

[STEVE G]

Portrait mode works well for snakes climbing trees.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BnN7pAYs_Ss

[Ratsima]

Portrait mode works well for snakes climbing trees.
https://youtube.com/shorts/BnN7pAYs_Ss?feature=share4

Indeed, I fully admit that there are times when portrait mode is suited to the tasks. Yosemite Falls, for example.

[Big Boy]

Examples?

I don't think you need examples - the OP says it all.

I'm away from home at the moment, but when I return home I will try it. I know my son suffers the same problems as me, and he does a lot of mobile phone video posting. If it can be done, it will be fantastic. OK, I haven't done it for a while, but it can take several hours to change the orientation.

Many Thai football clubs use mobile phones for live feeds. If they use Landscape mode, you need to turn your TV on its side. There must be millions of us who don't realise Landscape is possible.

[buksida]

People are so used to using their phones for selfies (portraits) that they seldom bother to look in the settings to figure out landscape mode.

[Ratsima]

Landscape and portrait mode depend entirely on how you're holding your phone when you shoot a video. There's nothing to do in settings. If you hold your phone horizontally, then the video will be in landscape mode. If you hold your phone vertically when you shoot a video, it will be in portrait mode. At least that's the way it is on iPhones.

Clearly, I'm not understanding what you're asking.

[Ratsima]

portrait.jpg (10.57 KiB) Viewed 2105 times

This is a screenshot of a video taken while I was holding the phone vertically.
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landscape.jpg (14.32 KiB) Viewed 2105 times

This is a screenshot of a video taken while I was holding the phone horizontally.

[buksida]

Does beg the question then as to why most people only shoot in 'selfie mode'. I seldom use my phone for videos so wouldn't know but most of my photos are landscape.

[hhinner]

Examples?

I don't think you need examples - the OP says it all.

I'm away from home at the moment, but when I return home I will try it. I know my son suffers the same problems as me, and he does a lot of mobile phone video posting. If it can be done, it will be fantastic. OK, I haven't done it for a while, but it can take several hours to change the orientation.

Many Thai football clubs use mobile phones for live feeds. If they use Landscape mode, you need to turn your TV on its side. There must be millions of us who don't realise Landscape is possible.

I'm confused. Why would you turn your TV (already a landscape orientation) on its side to watch a landscape video?

[Ratsima]

I have to apologize. This was intended to be a humorous post that might make people laugh, or at least smile.

Instead it has devolved into a semi-acrimonious discussion that I don't understand at all.

I'll leave this thread and leave it to rest of you to hash out.

[STEVE G]

Examples?

I don't think you need examples - the OP says it all.

I'm away from home at the moment, but when I return home I will try it. I know my son suffers the same problems as me, and he does a lot of mobile phone video posting. If it can be done, it will be fantastic. OK, I haven't done it for a while, but it can take several hours to change the orientation.

Many Thai football clubs use mobile phones for live feeds. If they use Landscape mode, you need to turn your TV on its side. There must be millions of us who don't realise Landscape is possible.

In MV a couple of months ago I saw a TV for sale that you could orientate into portrait. At the time I thought that was a neat trick but completely useless but maybe it's for watching Thai football!