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Video has become a very important part of our hobby. Documenting the construction of your layout, sharing scenes of your favorite engine, showing off a special structure, and a hundred other things are all ways in which video plays a critical role in the enjoyment of our hobby these days.

I've produced thousands of corporate and special interest videos in my career, starting back in the 70s. As a “video veteran” it has always bothered me to see what has come to be called “Vertical Video.” That is a video scene shot on a smart phone with the phone held vertically. I can understand how this happens, because we hold our phones vertically for almost everything we do when using the phone. But we should never shoot video while holding the phone vertically.

Take a look at the computer screen you are reading this on, or the wide-screen TV in your den, living room, or man cave. That screen is a horizontal screen, not a vertical screen. To use a printing term, the screen is in “landscape” mode, not the vertical “portrait” mode.

Video should always be shot in “landscape” mode, with your phone held horizontally. Why?

Watch this video, and I think you'll get the idea...

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@Tom Tee posted:

How come when I do see a vertical photo in the center third of the shot there is frequently a faded out 1/3 image on either side of the center third??

Because the video editor decided that he can't have just a black screen on either side of the video (HORRORS!) so they expand and blur the vertical video so that something fills the screen on the sides. It's ridiculous.

I am ashamed to see what passes for "professional" video these days. The craft that I learned to respect as a young man has been dumbed down to the point where jump cuts are now OK, vertical video is OK, bad audio is OK, etc.

I am very sad to see what has happened to the profession I was once so proud of. 

OK Rich, ever so slightly off target but do you remember a film made in the 1960's called "How the West Was Won"?  I believe it was the first widespread use of Panavision.  I saw it in Pittsburgh at the Nixon Theatre - an old style movie house with wide screens, balconies, velvet curtains, the whole 9 yards.  The movie was shown with 3 projectors.

There's a scene where the Indians stampede a herd of buffalo through the camp of the railroad workers (building the transcontinental railway).  It's such a terrific effect that you think you are in the middle of the stampede.

George

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