The Problem With Mobile Video
fr.anc.is
Why hasn't anyone succeeded at "Instagram for Video", yet?
fr.anc.is
Cinemas 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.
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.