THE WEB — You look at your smartphone top to bottom. You operate apps on your smartphone top to bottom. So, it’s understandable to hold your phone vertically to record video.
Stop it!
Every device that displays video shows is oriented horizontally — except smartphones. For the life of me, I’m mystified why the geniuses who created iOS and Android allow for the recording of vertical video, but since that’s the way our phones are, it’s our personal responsibility to record video correctly. And it’s NOT up-and-down.
With the exception of Vine, when vertical video is displayed online, most of the picture is black. That’s because vertical video leaves out all the available space for the picture side-to-side.
But people don’t seem to notice that, or care. They keep taking vertical video and posting it. The results are just awful. There’s so little space on vertical video, that the subjects are constantly leaving the shot, because we tend to move back and forth, not up and down. (That’s the way the surface of the planet is oriented, if you haven’t noticed.)
And when you email vertical video, count on it getting screwed up: it usually arrives sideways. Terrific.
So pay attention to the message in this YouTube video produced by experts in the field. The field of snark.
(Edited by Darren Bower.)
