I think the whole argument began with terrible portrait videos and the narrative of portrait=shit was quickly adopted by the masses. In reality, a video needs to be judged more in relationship to the subject, as many in this thread have already discussed, and that viewpoint is going to continue to grow. The professionals at desktop stations will continue to lament, but the average Joe is learning which orientation is going to work best for their subject and not be held to blanketing rules that dont make any sense to them personally.
3 Likes
You mean the average Joes and their laptops, too?
Itās not just the pros who donāt use primarily the phones/tablets. While desktop use is admittedly dropping, most people I know are heavy laptop users.
This is great! Is there an explicit version? I heard lots of places where a 2-syllable expletive could be inserted for more emphasis.
However, there are some filmed movies that ā prior to the age of snarky parkers ā were printed on paper
##The Paper Print Film Collection at the Library of Congress
Most of the films featured in the American Memory presentations are from the Paper Print Collection of the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. Because the copyright law did not cover motion pictures until 1912, early film producers who desired protection for their work sent paper contact prints of their motion pictures to the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. These paper prints were made using light-sensitive paper the same width and length as the film itself, and developed as though a still photograph. Some motion picture companies, such as the Edison Company and the Biograph Company, submitted entire motion picturesāframe by frameāas paper prints. Other producers submitted only illustrative sequences.
The Paper Print Collection contains more than 3,000 motion pictures. Most are American but many are from England, France, and Denmark. The extreme scarcity of early motion pictures makes these paper prints particularly valuable. In most instances they remain the only record of early films, providing a rare insight into America at the start of the twentieth century and the beginnings of the motion picture industry in America.
You keep saying this, but neglect to point out how this applies to portrait painting, portrait scultpture, portrait architecture, and other portrait arts. Or is it only video that has a biologically-require horizontalness?
11 Likes
That would mean the light sensor would take up more room in the camera, as it would have to have the extra sensor area thatās only used part of the time. Thatās room that could be use for such things as a slightly larger battery. Or you could just remember to turn the camera.
Or perhaps given enough time, we might evolve some sort compensatory mechanism. Like a neck. But I am not an evolutionary biologist.
4 Likes
Yeah, the irony is that web video used to be more diverse in its sizes and aspect ratios - plain old embedded Quicktime, for example, could have pretty arbitrary dimensions, and now that thereās more diversity of viewing screens, itās becoming more and more constrained towards mimicking television, while orientation information for the video mostly just gets ignored.
3 Likes
Why āused to beā? Does embedded Quicktime not still do this?
My monitor pivots, so it is no inconvenience to me to watch either horizontal or vertical video.
The folks you know boot up laptops just to watch a youtube clip or to check facebook?
Im talking about Mr and Mrs Joe Average, who dont go near the laptop much outside of netflix and tax season. I would be willing to bet the vast majority of youtube and facebook videos are watched on mobile devices.
Half of all facebook users never even log in on a desktop.
1 Like
Which is also why there are no āportrait orientationā portraits, why pages are wider than they are tall, why thereās no tradition of scroll paintings, no tall sculptures, smart phones are only designed to be held horizontally, etc.
Also, apparently it is going to change soon as given the changes in film and television aspect ratios over time, that must mean the distance between peopleās eyes must have been changing over time already.
3 Likes
Woah, this threadās giving me dĆ©ja vu.
I havenāt worked with it in quite a while, so Iām not sure. I think itās still there, but itās not as easy to work with. Certainly, in terms of the most-used web video players, theyāre not supporting that.
My next monitor needs to be pivoting - I often find myself wanting to swivel it around. My current, failing monitor supports it on the technical level, but the physical support structure doesnāt.
Portraits, written pages, scroll paintings and sculptures arenāt moving images. There is no tradition of moving images being presented in a vertical orientation, except in specialized displays.
2 Likes
The difference is that those things are self-contained. If you are targeting preexisting hardware that favors some aspect ratios over others in practice, then it makes sense to take that into account.
1 Like
Compared to the traditions of portraits, written pages, scroll paintings and sculpture, thereās practically no tradition of moving images being presented at all.
Which is why television and moving images have used the exact same aspect ratios since they were introduced, millenia ago.
2 Likes
Except for things like magic lanterns, etc. What you really mean is film doesnāt have a portrait tradition - but there are specific reasons why thatās the case. E.g. the nature of its presentation (big screens), and that it was replicating the stage experience (and being shown in repurposed theatrical spaces), that filmmakers wanted to show landscapes, etc. None of those are inherent to our biology or represent the needs of modern digital video in all - or even most - circumstances.
Edit: Plus, nothing inherently differentiates still images and moving images in terms of how our eyes see them, as well.
2 Likes
Except thatās not quite true. Itās targeting one set of modern video screens, while ignoring other hardware permutations as the diversity of viewing surfaces - and the variety of their aspect ratios - increases.
1 Like
People I know who have smartphones use them at the same time as using their laptops, using their desktop PCs, watching TV, watching a movie, talking, eating, walking, driving, and quite possibly defecating.
1 Like
I have an exciting new solution to the problem: displays like YouTube get rid of their black bars, and replace them with images of shrubs*. Then for instance if I am foolish enough to video a giraffe in a way focused on the subject, it will still look like I had turned my camera to fill the view with irrelevant non-moving objects, the way god intended.
Since the main problems with this aspect ratio mono-mania have been pointed out, Iām going to mention a personal nuisance, which is editing. Iāve taken videos of little creatures like insects from above, only to find out after the fact they didnāt go the way I expected. If I wanted to present a video in landscape the way people demand, what I need to do is crop and rotate.
Well, youād be surprised how many editing tools donāt give the option. Because we all know everything must start in landscape, and stay in landscape. Human eyes are located on a horizontal axis, so while rotating still images may be handled by every program ever, rotating videos is a special effect.
I know, I know, thatās whining about something that rarely comes up. Nonetheless maybe it helps shore up the actual point, which is that assuming everyone should always do things one way because eyeballs and television ends up stifling for cases you didnāt think about.
*Also, if Chescaleigh were still unimpressed, she could sing āI donāt want no shrubs.ā
4 Likes
