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Comment by SmellyGeekBoy | Hacker News Reader

> "...it’s built for how you actually use your phone, so videos are full screen and vertical."

Oh dear.

I don't understand why vertical video always gets this response, mostly from people who do anything with film.

I get it, it's not the most cinematic experience but who actually wants to hold their phone sideways while scrolling through a feed, or switch apps etc? It just doesn't make sense to do it any other way. Also as most video is even filmed in portrait mode.

Vertical video is awful because it doesn't capture any of the surroundings of the subject, and instead wastes those pixels it on filming what's above & below the subject (which 99% of the time is irrelevant).

For traditional media yes, but for influencers it fits their face and the product just fine and landscape is actually a waste.

A sad reality.

Depends what those "influencers" are about. A lot of successful Youtube influencers actually show off something else besides their face and for those the mandatory vertical video wouldn't cut it.

Compatibility with an installed base of several billion televisions, for starters. Periscope handles this like a champ imho, even their recorded .ts streams encode orientation switching so that it works flawlessly either way and you can switch midstream.

I'm not sure how much IG Stories or Snapchat accounts you follow - but at least the ones I usually follow don't need any compatibility with traditional TVs. It's mostly people talking (portrait mode works well for...portraits) or showing something while holding their phone with one hand. Widescreen video isn't really necessary for that.

Fundamentally human vision is landscape. We live in a landscape. Interesting things are generally to the left and right of us, not above and below.

I think one day phone cameras will have square or cross-shaped sensors and you'll be able to easily shoot landscape video while holding your phone vertically.

For viewing, I think it isn't the physical rotation of the phone that is a pain - it's selecting the full-screen option, or the rotate controls. The latest Android makes this better, but I hope in future apps will just play landscape videos in landscape irrespective of the phone rotation.

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