Anyone care to chime in why portrait & square aspect ratios seem to work for photos but not for videos? I know the very first film formats were actually square for both moving & static images. Why did video quickly settle on 4:3 / 16:9 while photo explored the portrait, landscape & square formats? Is it really just because of the technical constraints (the device to 'play' the media) or is there a more fundamental, natural reason?
I figure because of the magazine format, which is portrait, and they need to show a "vertical" photo on the page. The old portrait paintings were also vertical as well, to show most of the human body.
Cinemas needed to be "landscape" because of space constraints.
It was done for exactly one reason: To be different.
Whenever video and tv got a certain aspect ratio, film "one upped" it. Part of it was also the size of 35mm film, once they moved the audio track off of the central area it made it wider, so they used that area.
Basically, there is no fundamental reason for it. But these days people are used to it and think it was done because video somehow requires it.
Now that they make lots of money from selling home video they will probably not move too far from 16/9, but it wasn't always so.
It's the same with the poor FPS of film: It makes it look like a "film". Same for graininess. It's not better, people just associate it with movies.
Thanks for the infos! I had thought I read it somewhere, but at the moment, I can't find the facts to support my views (pun not intended).
The closest I can find is (http://reviews.cnet.com/aspect-ratio-guide/)
"At comparable screen sizes, the wide-screen image is a distinct improvement: it offers a larger image, and the horizontal orientation is more akin to how your eyes--next to each other, not on top of one another--view objects."
But that's hardly scientific. Does anyone have studies or so on how widescreens are an improvement and why it's better?
What I can also find is that it's based on 35mm film from way, way in the past, because back then, it was standard material and thus cheaper.
There could also be an "unnatural" habitual reason behind it, as we are trained to be looking at widescreen, widescreen also feels more natural. Doesn't imply that it's better though.
As I mentioned above, it's not so much about our eyes being side-by-side as it is about our world being horizontally organized. Our eye muscles are optimized for horizontal movement (two muscles involved for a horizontal scan, one contract and one relax, where four are involved for vertical movement).
The fovea centralis is round (i.e. an aspect ration of 1).
And if you tell me that you can (and do) move your eyes to expand that size - well you can move your eyes to expand your vertical field of view just as easily.
For photos and video it makes little difference what you see in peripheral vision.
> well you can move your eyes to expand your vertical field of view just as easily.
Not true, our eyes are optimized for horizontal scanning. We have specialized extraocular muscles for doing this, and as a result horizontal eye scanning relatively is fast, accurate and easy compared to vertical scanning. This has less to do with our eyes being side-by-side (which is a product of our biological symmetry) and more to do with the horizontal world we live in.
The aspect ratio / vertical video (PSA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA) point is a really good one, I like the idea of "preventing" vertical video through norming/squaring the aspect ratio
I really like the idea of onesec app: solves the pb that "I suck at taking video" (// Instagram: even if my pics are crap they could look good with filter). Still imho the best comparison is not "instagram" but Twitter. Onesec = twitter for video ie: only 1 second format (or 2 or 5s) videos not more. That'll make video less of a waste of time and more appealing to me.
I played around with this idea, mocking it up in a Adobe Air app. The UI that worked best was to allow for unlimited video but if it exceeds seven seconds (that feels like enough plus it has a nice alliteration) then have a scrubber at the bottom that lets you select any number of seven second snapshots to publish ala Instagram.
For the consumption UI I would use a scrolling list like Instagram but just have start and end of video keyframes alternate in a animation - maybe use a fade in/out transition so it is not jarring to the eye. This would let you quickly browse without much interaction required.
It wasn't much - I vertically stacked a Flex VideoDisplay control, a custom scrubber control and then a Flex Button control to publish. Instead of a fixed size thumb the custom scrubber's thumb width was proportional to 7 seconds of the total video width. I did it in AIR/Flex so I could just drop a video on the app to test with it.
I never tested it on a mobile device but on my desktop I needed a lot of keyframes in the video to make it work. I'm not sure what it would look like with native video on a iOS/Android device.
Initially, I was absolutely convinced that one second videos would be an incredibly stupid idea. Then I watched Cesar Kuriyama's video of one second videos of a year of his life and was blown away by the storytelling potential: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyx6O_WFJhU
Excellent work. I would personally love to do something like this, but alas it looks like it takes an enormous amount of work to edit. If I had a head-mountable life recorder, I could revisit clips in my leisure time for editing perhaps.
Or perhaps living life is more important than documenting. This video is certainly inspirational like that. After all, the only people who will really care about my life videos are me, my spouse, probably my kids and maybe their kids.
You know not my personality or lifestyle. Yes, I would. Also, to get the "right" second I'd need lots to choose from. Yes, I would need a head-mountable life recorder.
If you like the idea, you can help out by spreading the Indiegogo campaign or even donating a few bucks. If you've got UI ideas you can mail me. I'll be working on that side this week.
The problem with mobile video is that there will be so much of it. If you create an Instagram for video, you're going to massively hemorrhage bandwidth as soon as the video becomes remotely popular.
If it was financially feasible, it would have happened, but as it stands any company that tried this would get obliterated quite quickly. There's no way to monetize against that much data.
Suggestion: Give the option to shoot in 8mm mode. Shooting in this mode would apply a filter reminiscant of old 8mm cameras, and would not have any sound. A lot of the reason I dislike watching other people's short videos is the intrusion of the local noise. Shooting video is hard enough to begin with, but getting the sound right is equally difficult. When you take away sound, you take away one more thing that's easy to get wrong. When you apply the 8mm film filter, you mask the typically poor lighting and filming conditions, creating something nostalgic, just like Instagram.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 53.6 ms ] threadCinemas needed to be "landscape" because of space constraints.
Whenever video and tv got a certain aspect ratio, film "one upped" it. Part of it was also the size of 35mm film, once they moved the audio track off of the central area it made it wider, so they used that area.
Basically, there is no fundamental reason for it. But these days people are used to it and think it was done because video somehow requires it.
Now that they make lots of money from selling home video they will probably not move too far from 16/9, but it wasn't always so.
It's the same with the poor FPS of film: It makes it look like a "film". Same for graininess. It's not better, people just associate it with movies.
The closest I can find is (http://reviews.cnet.com/aspect-ratio-guide/) "At comparable screen sizes, the wide-screen image is a distinct improvement: it offers a larger image, and the horizontal orientation is more akin to how your eyes--next to each other, not on top of one another--view objects."
But that's hardly scientific. Does anyone have studies or so on how widescreens are an improvement and why it's better?
What I can also find is that it's based on 35mm film from way, way in the past, because back then, it was standard material and thus cheaper.
http://www.tedmontgomery.com/the_eye/eom.html
The fovea centralis is round (i.e. an aspect ration of 1).
And if you tell me that you can (and do) move your eyes to expand that size - well you can move your eyes to expand your vertical field of view just as easily.
For photos and video it makes little difference what you see in peripheral vision.
Not true, our eyes are optimized for horizontal scanning. We have specialized extraocular muscles for doing this, and as a result horizontal eye scanning relatively is fast, accurate and easy compared to vertical scanning. This has less to do with our eyes being side-by-side (which is a product of our biological symmetry) and more to do with the horizontal world we live in.
For the consumption UI I would use a scrolling list like Instagram but just have start and end of video keyframes alternate in a animation - maybe use a fade in/out transition so it is not jarring to the eye. This would let you quickly browse without much interaction required.
I never tested it on a mobile device but on my desktop I needed a lot of keyframes in the video to make it work. I'm not sure what it would look like with native video on a iOS/Android device.
Or perhaps living life is more important than documenting. This video is certainly inspirational like that. After all, the only people who will really care about my life videos are me, my spouse, probably my kids and maybe their kids.
If it was financially feasible, it would have happened, but as it stands any company that tried this would get obliterated quite quickly. There's no way to monetize against that much data.