Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Motion & Video => Topic started by: Robert Roaldi on November 07, 2008, 10:26:37 am

Title: Any portrait mode video?
Post by: Robert Roaldi on November 07, 2008, 10:26:37 am
Just curious about something. With film, the framing and viewing mode has always been "landscape", that is, the horizontal is longer than the vertical. I have never seen it any other way. Because of the physical manner in which film is transported in a projector, I can't see it working any other way. But with digital, theoretically, this needn't be a limitation, other than that's the way all current desktop and theatre projection screens are built. Any moves afoot to change this, even if only experimental?
Title: Any portrait mode video?
Post by: dalethorn on November 07, 2008, 01:59:49 pm
Quote from: Robert Roaldi
Just curious about something. With film, the framing and viewing mode has always been "landscape", that is, the horizontal is longer than the vertical. I have never seen it any other way. Because of the physical manner in which film is transported in a projector, I can't see it working any other way. But with digital, theoretically, this needn't be a limitation, other than that's the way all current desktop and theatre projection screens are built. Any moves afoot to change this, even if only experimental?
Most of the digicams film according to how you hold the camera. Playback is another thing. I recently bought a HTC phone/video etc. player (screen is 640 x 480) which switches automatically when you hold it horizontally or vertically. You may remember in years past some "document" computers which had vertical displays, and some of those could be rotated 90 degrees for standard display. Laptops aren't a big problem, but we need desktop displays that can switch easily.
Title: Any portrait mode video?
Post by: Robert Roaldi on November 07, 2008, 03:08:25 pm
A long time ago, I edited FORTRAN code on one of those pre-Apple Xerox upright text processors. The screen more or less matched the way we use paper, in "portrait" mode. I liked the idea at the time.
Title: Any portrait mode video?
Post by: Christopher Sanderson on November 07, 2008, 04:33:01 pm
I often grit my teeth when I am shooting video of Michael with his camera in 'Portrait' position since on a 16:9 screen there is no good way to show the subject framed in a similar fashion. Occasionally however I will turn the video camera 90˚ and shoot 'vertical video'; it is easy in post to flip the image 90˚ leaving black pillar-box bars on either side.

Also, users of QuickTime Pro have the option of flipping the video 90˚ in either direction, leaving the play controls still at the foot of the window...