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Thinking Outside the Square: Landscape and Portrait Formats on Instagram

21 points by gwintrob 11y ago

jewel 11y ago
I've often wondered if youtube should abandon the fight and allow for portrait videos. After all, a lot of viewers are probably on mobile where they'd rather view it in portrait orientation anyway.
- dublinben 11y ago
  Portrait videos don't work properly on mobile though. When you fullscreen the video, it forces your screen horizontal leaving massive black bars on either side.
  - lcswi 11y ago
    Which is a trivial, minor symptom of stupid services and stupid software. There is no reason to hate portrait video at all.
  - Andrex 11y ago
    Not anymore: http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/07/21/our-long-national-nightmare-is-over-youtube-on-android-now-shows-vertical-videos-properly-in-full-screen/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/07/21/our-long-national-ni...
- signaler 11y ago
  I think this is what Periscope tries to solve. You might want to watch the the Vertical Video Syndrome PSA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA Periscope https://www.periscope.tv/ https://www.periscope.tv/
- pjbrunet 11y ago
  I didn't realize there was a fight. As far as I remember, YouTube allows uploading any aspect ratio you can dream of and they automatically add the black bars for you. Maybe you're comparing to Vimeo? YouTube's video player is annoying, but I don't see them as biased against portrait videos.
  - jewel 11y ago
    What I mean is that it shouldn't have those black bars if I view on mobile in portrait orientation. It should fill the whole screen, just like it does for landscape videos if the phone is rotated to landscape. Also, the web interface could rearrange itself to better fit the description, comments, and related videos to the right of the video if the video is portrait instead of black bars. I don't want to have to go full screen just to be able to see what is happening. Finally, taking a 1080x1920 video and fitting it to 1920x1080 means that there's a loss of data.
    - nemothekid 11y ago
      IIRC The android version of YouTube supports this http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/07/22/you-can-now-watch-vertical-videos-in-full-screen-on-youtubes-android-app/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/07/22/you-can-now-watch-vert...
spike021 11y ago
Personally, I think this is the wrong decision. I prefer freedom of photo dimensions/format, but on the other hand keeping photos on IG restricted to square crops gave them more personality on a social media format. We can already upload photos of whatever size/crop onto Twitter, Facebook, etc.
signaler 11y ago
It is not that I especially fear change, but when it comes to services like Instagram, you don't want to mess up your secret sauce. This reminds me of when Coke changed their recipe and churned away vast swathes of their customer base. Is this feature creep? If it is feature creep, then users should be able to 'peel back' advanced options like this instead of being bombarded with choice when they take a photo.
pjbrunet 11y ago
Or they should have used Masonry in the first place :-/ Now that I have no reason to play the 1:1 game, I can go back to loooong photos that work better everywhere else.
bkmartin 11y ago
YAY! I started on instagram not too long ago... and being forced into the square was my number 1 problem with their service... I think this is going to be great!
acjohnson55 11y ago
Isn't it kind of absurd that this is news? On one hand, I totally get it that a multibillion dollar company is altering one of the defining aspects of its user experience, and that's a really big deal. But if you erase that context, it's also a little ridiculous. My mind is also drawn to making a parallel with struggling Twitter, where you have "essays" composed of indexed sequences of 1-2 sentence thoughts and where people resort to taking screenshots to make quotations of other content. At some point, you have to wonder if the medium is still serving the content as well as it could. Will they be bold/risky enough to break out of their arbitrary constraints?
- CardenB 11y ago
  Just like you said, a multibillion dollar company is changing a defining feature. Does that not seem newsworthy?
  - acjohnson55 11y ago
    It does, and I feel I acknowledged that. I just wonder if it says something about our economy as a whole that something so trivial could be so important. I'm a huge fan of the progression toward simplification, represented by Instagram, Twitter, etc. over the incumbents they displaced. I just think the missing piece is how to also provide basic adaptability without sacrificing that core of simplicity.

21 points by gwintrob 11y ago

jewel 11y ago

I've often wondered if youtube should abandon the fight and allow for portrait videos. After all, a lot of viewers are probably on mobile where they'd rather view it in portrait orientation anyway.

dublinben 11y ago
Portrait videos don't work properly on mobile though. When you fullscreen the video, it forces your screen horizontal leaving massive black bars on either side.
- lcswi 11y ago
  Which is a trivial, minor symptom of stupid services and stupid software. There is no reason to hate portrait video at all.
- Andrex 11y ago
  Not anymore: http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/07/21/our-long-national-nightmare-is-over-youtube-on-android-now-shows-vertical-videos-properly-in-full-screen/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/07/21/our-long-national-ni...
signaler 11y ago
I think this is what Periscope tries to solve. You might want to watch the the Vertical Video Syndrome PSA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA Periscope https://www.periscope.tv/ https://www.periscope.tv/
pjbrunet 11y ago
I didn't realize there was a fight. As far as I remember, YouTube allows uploading any aspect ratio you can dream of and they automatically add the black bars for you. Maybe you're comparing to Vimeo? YouTube's video player is annoying, but I don't see them as biased against portrait videos.
- jewel 11y ago
  What I mean is that it shouldn't have those black bars if I view on mobile in portrait orientation. It should fill the whole screen, just like it does for landscape videos if the phone is rotated to landscape. Also, the web interface could rearrange itself to better fit the description, comments, and related videos to the right of the video if the video is portrait instead of black bars. I don't want to have to go full screen just to be able to see what is happening. Finally, taking a 1080x1920 video and fitting it to 1920x1080 means that there's a loss of data.
  - nemothekid 11y ago
    IIRC The android version of YouTube supports this http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/07/22/you-can-now-watch-vertical-videos-in-full-screen-on-youtubes-android-app/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/07/22/you-can-now-watch-vert...

spike021 11y ago

Personally, I think this is the wrong decision. I prefer freedom of photo dimensions/format, but on the other hand keeping photos on IG restricted to square crops gave them more personality on a social media format. We can already upload photos of whatever size/crop onto Twitter, Facebook, etc.

signaler 11y ago

It is not that I especially fear change, but when it comes to services like Instagram, you don't want to mess up your secret sauce. This reminds me of when Coke changed their recipe and churned away vast swathes of their customer base. Is this feature creep? If it is feature creep, then users should be able to 'peel back' advanced options like this instead of being bombarded with choice when they take a photo.

pjbrunet 11y ago

Or they should have used Masonry in the first place :-/ Now that I have no reason to play the 1:1 game, I can go back to loooong photos that work better everywhere else.

bkmartin 11y ago

YAY! I started on instagram not too long ago... and being forced into the square was my number 1 problem with their service... I think this is going to be great!

acjohnson55 11y ago

Isn't it kind of absurd that this is news? On one hand, I totally get it that a multibillion dollar company is altering one of the defining aspects of its user experience, and that's a really big deal. But if you erase that context, it's also a little ridiculous. My mind is also drawn to making a parallel with struggling Twitter, where you have "essays" composed of indexed sequences of 1-2 sentence thoughts and where people resort to taking screenshots to make quotations of other content. At some point, you have to wonder if the medium is still serving the content as well as it could. Will they be bold/risky enough to break out of their arbitrary constraints?

CardenB 11y ago
Just like you said, a multibillion dollar company is changing a defining feature. Does that not seem newsworthy?
- acjohnson55 11y ago
  It does, and I feel I acknowledged that. I just wonder if it says something about our economy as a whole that something so trivial could be so important. I'm a huge fan of the progression toward simplification, represented by Instagram, Twitter, etc. over the incumbents they displaced. I just think the missing piece is how to also provide basic adaptability without sacrificing that core of simplicity.