I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Because the sensors are landscape 4:3 and you would lose resolution when doing so.
AFAIK there's no other reason other than that and giving people the option might confuse people.
Many camera sensors in phones are so high resolution nowadays, you could fit 4K video in any orientation
I agree! I wonder if there's already camera apps that do this?
In any case, unless it's in the default camera app and a default option, it will likely do nothing to reduce the plague of vertical video. I would guess that most people filming something that would be better in landscape didn't even think about it, so won't think about turning an option on.
There is and has been for a while: https://horizon.camera/
Love this app, used it for years. I'd love to see them get picked up as a standard camera app on a big brand manufacturer so all the others would create their own version.
I used to have a phone with a special camera that took 16:9 landscape video while the phone was in portrait mode. Good times.
So it's definitely possible for the phone manufacturers to implement they just choose not to.
Many sensor are 3:2 or non trivial ratios because of how the color filter pattern is aligned. Why do you think the sensors are 4:3?
I realise sensors come in other aspect ratios, but I didn't want to spend the time researching and listing them all. Some sensors are 4:3 (like the IMX363).
But that's irrelevant to my point that the sensor is not square which means you lose more resolution cropping to 16:9 in one orientation (usually portrait) than the other.
They'd figure it out real quick if manufacturers could ask agree to build sensors turned 90 degrees and disable recording in portrait. Obviously keep the possibility to take photos, but disable video recording.
Then I sit back and watch to see what happens next. I see a few possibilities.
1- Highly unlikely, but newer phone sales go in the toilet, while the second market goes crazy with people trying to get phones that still have the portrait camera. People will be confused at first, but most people tend to pick it up quick and just incorporate it as the new normal. It would have to be coordinated as a big launch at once, to force quick adoption.
2- People just kind of shrug and move on with it, like they did with changes like headphone jack removal, or charger non-inclusion. Except this time, it's a good thing.
3- TikTok dies a horrible death, and YouTube shorts jumps on the market, finally becoming an actual thing that's not just a backup copy of TikTok content. I don't think I've ever seen a short that was made for YouTube, not for TikTok.
I think someone will make an app that overrides the IMU measurements so the phone thinks it's in landscape when it's portrait, then use another app to rotate the video to be vertical.
If you did that, then your video feed would always be using less pixels than it could have otherwise if the orientation of the camera and display matched though, the result could be seen at better resolution after shooting, but that would be pretty tedious