Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

When Steve Jobs unveiled the first generation of iPhone in 2007, he probably didn't expect that one of the most important functions of smartphones in the future would be to watch videos. At that time, 3G and Wifi were not yet popular, the UGC video platform was still in its infancy, and the concept of "short video" had not even been born. With the exception of Apple, none of the early smartphone makers seriously considered video viewing in the design process.

Therefore, from the date of its birth, smartphones are mainly used with vertical screens. A survey conducted by the design professional community UXmatters in 2013 showed that the vast majority of users are used to holding their phones vertically rather than horizontally. I believe that this ratio remains unchanged today, because for mainstream users, the benefits of holding a mobile phone vertically are obvious:

It is easier to hold it upright. Especially in the case of one-handed operation, horizontal holding is almost impossible, so the application of vertical holding is much wider than horizontal holding.

Vertical holding is very suitable for traditional picture and text information reading. For example, e-mail, long articles, information streaming media, all the content forms that use list typesetting are naturally suitable for vertical screens.

Vertical holding allows users to attract as little attention as possible (especially suitable for touching fish). I believe most people have experience: in offices, conference rooms and other occasions, holding the phone horizontally will immediately remind people that "this person is playing a game", while holding the phone vertically looks like doing business and is less likely to be scolded by superiors.

The problem is that holding the phone upright has equally obvious limitations: it is very unsuitable for playing games and watching videos of higher standards. For game manufacturers, this problem can be solved-when users play heavy games, they often use a long "chunk of time" to prepare themselves for immersion, so they are willing to hold the phone horizontally. In essence, this is a temporary sacrifice of convenience for the immersion of the game. In casual games that do not require high immersion and technical performance, the vertical screen interface is still relatively common.

By contrast, video producers face more serious problems, especially for PUGC producers and developers of "industrial entry-level" short content (such as skits and microfilms). "horizontal VS vertical screen" has become an insurmountable but difficult problem to solve. In the past decade, this problem has been perplexing the online video content industry, and to a certain extent affected the further improvement of video content penetration. Let's explain it as succinctly as possible:

First of all, human eyes are naturally more accustomed to watching horizontal content. Human vision in the horizontal direction is much larger than that in the vertical direction, which is why the global film industry has been moving towards "wide screen" over the past 100 years-first 1.33 to 1, then 1.85 to 1, and now the most popular is 2.35 to 1. This is not over, some professional display manufacturers have even introduced 32: 9 (3.55: 1) ultra-wide resolution; we may soon see such ultra-wide content in cinemas.

Secondly, the range of human activity is subject to gravity, and the ability to expand in the horizontal direction is much greater than that in the vertical direction. In any kind of drama, the main range of activity of the character is his own height range, so most dramatic conflicts occur in the height range of ordinary people and so on. For the content of most subjects, there is no article to do vertically.

Finally, before the birth of smartphones, the entire film and television industry system of mankind was built around the horizontal screen format. If you want to make industrial-grade video with a ratio of 1:85 to 1 or 2:35 to 1, you have a strong and standardized process to use from early to late; it's a lot of trouble to make vertical-screen video. it is basically pruned based on the landscape format.

There is no denying that vertical video does have a unique advantage: focusing on the protagonist can greatly enhance the protagonist's personal appeal. Therefore, the vertical screen is especially suitable for conversation, talent and some daily video content. Most of the personal live broadcast is also vertical, because it allows the anchorman to occupy as much space as possible, makes his speech more persuasive, and makes his body language more exaggerated and more impressive.

However, the "dominant scenario" of vertical live streaming is actually very narrow. The more complex, dramatic and professional the video content is, the more obvious the disadvantage of vertical screen compared to horizontal screen is. Here are two simple examples:

"Vertical screen skits" has a history of many years and has given birth to a number of small popular styles. However, once the investment scale of a vertical-screen play becomes larger and enters the era of industrialization and IP, it often has to turn to horizontal screen. Vertical screen dramas with a length of more than 10 minutes and up to the standards of the film and television industry are very rare.

"Live broadcast of large-scale vertical events" has also become common. The most typical example is the live broadcast of the 2022 Wechat video account to the Spring Festival Gala. Although many people think that it is novel to broadcast the Spring Festival Gala on vertical screens, most people still complain that this perspective is too narrow and strange. If the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games such a larger event to be broadcast on a vertical screen, it is even more inconceivable, will lose most of the appeal of the content.

You may think that it is very simple to solve the problem of "vertical VS horizontal screen". All you need to do is to let industrial long videos (such as movies and TV dramas) choose horizontal screens and PUGC short videos to choose vertical screens, so that the well water will not invade the river, and it will be done. That's what most platform and content creators thought at first. However, with the continuous evolution of Internet video content, some more thorny problems have emerged:

From the platform's point of view, almost all video platforms are now pursuing "full coverage" of all kinds of content-Douyin is developing horizontal screen, bilibili is developing vertical screen, and YouTube is moving into professional film and television and short videos at the same time. How to seamlessly switch between landscape and vertical content within the same App? Especially in the most popular single-page information flow interface, the experience will be greatly reduced when users brush to vertical screen content and horizontal screen content. In this case, horizontal content often becomes a victim.

On the content side, the development of "long video" and "short video" is becoming inseparable, and the concept of "medium video" emerged a few years ago. So the question is, should the "medium video" be horizontal or vertical? Should the trailer, mixed cut, second creation and other content derived from long video content be horizontal screen or vertical screen? No matter what you do, there are bound to be some users who are dissatisfied.

You may notice that some "medium video" content parties have adopted a compromise: add a border at the top and bottom of the horizontal video to make it more in line with the viewing habits of vertical users. For example, the following video adds a title bar above the 1:85-to-1 original footage and a subtitle bar below, making it 1:33-to-1, barely covering both horizontal and vertical users (but not brilliant).

Some content parties go further, adding larger borders, turning 1:85-to-1 (or even 2:35-to-1) landscape material into 3:4 or even 9:16 vertical screens. This technique is even less clever, because the large frame does not provide the amount of information, but prevents users from viewing on the horizontal screen. Sadly, at present, many corporate promotional films, film trailers and documentary short films are spread vertically in such a "framed" form on the short video platform. The sacrifice of this mode of communication is too great.

The antagonistic relationship of "vertical VS horizontal screen" also hinders the flow of PUGC creators to industrialization and IP. As mentioned above, the human film and television industry is based on the horizontal screen system, and most of the professional content is also horizontal. However, because smartphone users are used to viewing short content on vertical screens, most PUGC creators have to start with vertical screens and get enough traffic with vertical thinking and production habits before they can talk about industrial upgrading-at this point, "whether to turn horizontal screen, how to turn horizontal screen" has become their nightmare.

All in all: horizontal video occupies an absolute advantage in professionalism and expression, while vertical video mainly has advantages in terms of user convenience (and personal appeal). We have not been able to find a unified framework to solve the problem of "what kind of video should be made horizontal screen and what kind of video should be changed to vertical screen", still less can we solve the problem of "how to effectively spread horizontal content in vertical video platform". To really solve these problems, I am afraid that only with the maturity of VR glasses and even brain-computer connectivity, the format of video content will no longer be subject to the hardware platform of smartphones-but this is unlikely to happen in a decade.

In any case, according to the experience and common sense of the past years, I still think that the development space of horizontal video will gradually expand, narrowing the gap between horizontal and vertical video. If "medium video" can really become an independent video form, it will still be based on horizontal screen. Now the most popular knowledge video, the best way to achieve is also horizontal screen. In addition, I always think that "vertical screen drama" is just a kind of gimmick that is bigger than the actual vertical content, and its market space will be very narrow.

No one can deny that vertical video is more suitable for smartphone users, especially for immersive "video browsing"; however, if someone advocates the application scenario of vertical video too much, he is even wrong to conclude that vertical screen will continue to replace horizontal screen. Serious content creators, especially industrial creators, should not make such short-sighted mistakes.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Internet Theft Corps (ID:TMTphantom). The author: Pei Pei, head of the Internet Theft Corps.

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