Solution to vertical video ‘problem’ – but what about T videos?

Allen Murabayashi writing on PetaPixel:

It’s clear that vertical video isn’t going away. Mobile-native content rules the day on mobile devices. But for people who want to shoot horizontally while holding vertically, there is a simple fix that manufacturers could make: Allow the camera to shoot horizontally in the vertical orientation by taking advantage of the fact that the sensor is more than large enough to accommodate this.

The 8-megapixel iPhone6 camera has a pixel dimension of 3264 x 2448. Full HD video is 1920 x 1080, and 720P (which is more than adequate) is an even smaller size of 1280 x 720. A virtual switch on the camera app could switch orientations without having to hold the phone any differently.

Another solution would be to make phone sensors square. In the case of Apple, imagine if the next version of the iPhone camera didn’t have any more pixels (unlikely), the same number of pixels in the current 3264×2448 sensor would result in a 2826 square sensor – good enough for oversampled and software steadied footage for both vertical and horizontal video.

T-video?

In the 2006 film Children of Men, their vision of the future London buses had video based advertising on their sides.

At the moment UK print designers have the opportunity to design bus adverts that have both horizontal and vertical aspect ratios at the same time. From bus ad booking agency TransportMedia:

Bus T-side advertising is the most premium standard of bus side advertising. The additional coverage on the bus space allows the advertiser more creative space and a more eye-catching ad to the consumer and provides instantly noticeable publicity on the high street.

Maybe one day filmmakers it will be have to make T-video versions of commercials and other videos.

17th August 2015

Apple presenting at FCP EXPO in Amsterdam in September

18th August 2015

UK TV delivery standards: 2015 Title safe area specifications