And if you watch the video, you know it was the wrong artistic choice. We lose the subjects of the film to the sides frequently.
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I took that as a poignant comment on the fragility of existence: people we know and love can slip out of our lives at any moment. Even monkeys.
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Iâd be equally unhappy if the group shot was in portrait with auditorium roof and floor taking up most of the image. Portrait mode works for many things, but generally not video. Movement tends to be lateral (cliff diving, prachuting and base-jumping notwithstanding).
I absolutely agree about autodetect for video that IS shot in portrait mode. An obvious step. But the vast majority of video should be in landscape anyway.
Iâd argue that âexpected aspect ratio of the playback deviceâ is an important thing about aspect ratios as well. And, for basically all laptops and most desktops (along with any tablets or desktops that do have a portrait option; but are software-limited to displaying a nasty little strip of video with huge black bars on each side).
People can shoot as they will; but that doesnât change the fact that either a majority or a substantial minority of potential viewers are using landscape-oriented screens, mostly 4:3, 16:9, or 16:10, and that even the ones who arenât are at nontrivial risk of receiving a thing sliver of portrait-oriented video black-barred out to landscape dimensions unless every step of the process accepts the validity of portrait orientation.
If you get to scream at the curator of your very own exhibit about which way the displays of your Art are hung, this isnât a big deal. If you are slinging video on the intertubes, it is.
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Of course Iâm being silly. Iâll agree that static images are as likely to be best portrayed in portrait as in landscape. Many of my favourite artworks are in portrait mode. Especially portraits. But it is almost always the wrong choice for video.
But consider this: while PC screens may be landscape, the content we generally consume on them is portrait.
99% of web pages scroll vertically, not horizontally. In my word processor, new pages are added below the current page, not to its right.
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By contrast though, videos shot on portrait-oriented phones are perfect for viewing onâŚportrait-oriented phones! Phones are both the creation and consumption medium in many cases. Given that every handheld device seamlessly switches itâs display depending on how the viewer is holding the device, and âresponsive designâ is all the high-falutinâ rage in web design, Iâd say weâre about due for a video player that can accommodate both orientations. Particularly from the by-all-measures dominant video service for casual and home-shot videos on the web. If they can map the world, they can figure out how to show gosh-darned portrait videos.
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Although try describing the black bars in the letterbox format of films from the old 4:3 TVs as âannoying black sliversâ and watch a film geekâs head explodeâŚbetter yet were the times when the uninitiated would remark âwhy does it look all squished?â
Letâs get over the whole portrait vs. vertical video nonsense and address the more important subject of âWHY THE HELL DOES THE MONKEY DO THIS?!â
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I just wish it was shot in Esperanto.
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OR⌠people of all ages could pull their heads out of thier asses and learn how to see the scene in front of them.
Leave it to Boingboing to watch a moment of profound interspecies contact, then proceed straight to the technical arguments about the one objectively correct way to orient a camera.
Itâs like going to the Louvre, but spending the whole visit fiddling with their âincorrectâ air conditioner settings. Or going to a gourmet restaurant and forgetting to eat, in favor of bitching about the cheap cotton bond the menuâs printed on.
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Incidentally⌠This works much better in museums with more cryptic modern stuff; but good fun can be had by locating a hygrothermograph unit, ideally a nice vintage all-mechanical one, and seeing how many people will join you in examining this piece and trying to find the placard giving the artistâs name and information about the work.
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This is true (and why the move in laptops to âHi! Iâm a very expensive DVD player!â cheap 16:9 displays is so obnoxious); but itâs also an effect of how humans deal with text (not well, if itâs too wide), rather than some universal rule of content.
Where possible, I like to have at least one display in each orientation(or a widescreen with sufficient vertical resolution for side-by-side windows, or both), for exactly such purposes; but the maximum comfortable line width for text and the maximum comfortable width for video are apparently quite different things.
Well, yeah.
Youtube videos are mostly watched embedded in webpages, same as any photo they can be either L or P and even square. It is only habit that makes them seem to need to match a TV set. This will fade with time. Eventually still photos will seem quaint. All photos will move and we will say, âRemember when we called them âvideosâ?â
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Play just fine on my portrait oriented Full HD screenâŚ
It took you this long?
I am going to guess that some human played a little prank on this monkey and did some sleight of hand crushing a leave to reveal a tasty morsel hidden underneath and the monkey has been trying to get the magic human hand to do it again ever since.
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Itâs Dr. Monkey, He didnât spend six years in Moneky School to be called âmister,â thank you very much.
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