Portrait orientation in Imovie

GeeD wrote:

You mean in the viewer?

No, I'm refering to the display that the OPs finished project will be shown on.

Matt

Well the display would have to be pysically oriented in portrait mode and set to rotate 90 deg.

I guess this would be another argument for creating the movie in landscape orientation 'on its side' and just physically rotating the display - saving the need for any rotation in software (except for text).

Geoff.

That's what I'm getting at.

Most displays (think HD televisions) don't have the ability to rotate the picture. If they are used vertically, then the content they display is created sideways so that it appears right-side up on the vertically placed screen.

Matt

True about TVs. The original poster didn't say what kind of display was going to be used - (since it was described as 'commercial' it might even be a video wall that can't be moved).

So, in summary, 2 alternative solutions have been found to the original question using FCP 10.1. iMovie could be used for one of them provided any text is created before import. That's it.

All the best for 2014!

Geoff.

Sorry, but your answer is unhelpful and needlessly belittling. The OP pointed out a serious flaw. It's COMPLETELY reasonable to try to edit a clip which, when viewed on a phone, looks the way it was recorded on that phone. No one wants black bars filling their screen, and not every phone-viewing experience is sideways. 16:9 vs 9:16 is an arbitrary distinction which any entry-level programmer on th eproject could have addressed, and it's pretty embarrassing that Apple hasn't fixed this. They own the freaking ecosystem.

Unlike the world of still photography where you can hold the camera anyway you like (and can be readily accommodated), the world of video (movies and television too) has settled on landscape. For better or worse. Better, I think.

Have you ever seen a 9:16 movie? Yet we've all seen untold still photos shot in portrait and landscape,

The standard, landscape format, for movies is not one of Apple's devising. It is born of the basic visual vocabulary of film making.

I don't say you're argument is without merit. But you are fighting an uphill battle.

Turn your phone 90º and you'll have many more options.

Matt

I know that that is the case, but I'd argue there's zero reason it should be. Mobile phones are quickly becoming the most popular way to consume any content. And for the past few years, portrait mode has been the way to interact with apps -- many, like Vine and Instagram, don't even have landscape options to begin with. Even Apple's commercials involve upright playback of video -- the distinction between "photography" and "video" is out of old technical limitations, not out of any sort of first principle. If a picture looks good rightside-up, so does one which changes.

What's funny, though, is that almost everything works just fine: recording portrait, sending to a friend, viewing in portrait. The only thing that doesn't work is their own editing software. That's just a (trivial, from any sort of image processing perspective) oversight which they either don't care enough to correct for, or are purposely avoiding to give Final Cut Pro an edge.

For the OP, here's a solution you can run on OSX without forking out for a paid service. It requires you to get ffmpeg (terminal command: "sudo port install ffmpeg" if you have MacPorts)

1. Try to export as losslessly as possible. I'll assume your video was 1080x1920 in portrait mode.. This means to preserve the pixel count in a 16:9 video, you'll want to export it as 3413x1920. Use "Export with Quicktime" and set this custom size (3413x1920) with quality Best.
2. We'll use ffmpeg to crop and rotate back into a portrait-size which will be viewed as upright on an iPhone. Copy the script at the bottom to a file called convert_to_portrait.sh
3. In the terminal, run: sh ./convert_to_portrait.sh [original_filename.mov] [output_filename.mov]
4. If you were exporting in another resolution, just take every number in this post and scale it appropriately. E.x. for 720p, multiply everything by 2/3: 1080->720, 1920->1280, 3413->2275, 1167->778

Contents of convert_to_portrait.sh:

IN=$1

OUT=$2

ffmpeg -i ${IN} -vf "crop=1080:1920:1167:0" tmp.mov

ffmpeg -i tmp.mov -vf "transpose=1" ${OUT}

How many cinemas have you visited that have a vertical screen?

How many vertically orientated TVs have you ever seen?

16:9 landscape roughly corresponds to the field of view of the human eye.

Klaus1 wrote:

How many cinemas have you visited that have a vertical screen?

How many vertically orientated TVs have you ever seen?

16:9 landscape roughly corresponds to the field of view of the human eye.

I've seen none. So in 1995 this would have been an arbitrary request.

It's now 2014, and most apps are meant to be viewed in portrait mode. I'm viewing this very thread in portrait mode on my iPhone. A phone whose desktop only supports portrait mode. Whose most popular sharing apps (Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Twitter) only support portrait mode. It's the most ergonomic way of holding a phone or tablet -- which are quickly overtaking every other style of media consumption -- and it's arbtrary to say "unless the graphics move -- then sideways is the only way."

Anyway, this can be fixed with two calls to FFMPEG (see post above). But it's an embarrasing oversight.

Suit yourself. There is no real harm in trying to do the opposite of 99% of the rest of the world! 😀

I wasn't going to comment ant more in this thread but I can't help remembering the old (and gramatically incorrect) Apple motto "Think Different"

Geoff.

GeeD wrote:

I wasn't going to comment ant more in this thread but...

me too, but ..

http://www.businessinsider.com/horizon-app-iphone-video-2014-1

😁

I guess this sums up the majority view and the rest of us are suffering from VVS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA

Hilarious!

Geoff.

Karsten Schlüter wrote:

… and on what kind of 'monitor' you're watching portrait videos WITHOUT bars?

Oh, I don't know..... maybe one of the BILLIONS of phones on this planet that get used every day and consume trillions of home videos? I know purists hate this format, but trying to call it an outlier is just ignorant.