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Samsung's vertical Sero TV brings Insta Stories to a big screen
Samsung has unveiled "The Sero," a 43-inch quantum-dot QLED TV with an attention-grabbing gimmick. It can be flipped around 90 degrees, letting you watch Instagram, Snap and other smartphone videos in their native vertical configurations. Samsung said it wanted to diversify its lineup and came up with the idea by studying the tastes of mobile-loving millennials. "Samsung will continue introducing screens that respect personal consumer tastes," said display president Han Jong-hee.
Adobe's AI auto-crops for vertical video
You might hate vertical video, but with Instagram and Snapchat mobile users in the hundreds of millions, there's no way to ignore it. Unfortunately, if you originally shot regular 16x9 horizontal video, making it smartphone-friendly in Adobe Premiere Pro CC can require a lot of work. In an exclusive Sneak, Adobe showed Engadget a prototype feature called "Smooth Operator," a Sensei AI-powered cropping system that would help a lot. After shooting a regular video, you just need to select the type of device to output to (smartphone or tablet) and click a single button. The system then figures out which part of the image to focus on and automatically formats for that.
YouTube's web player adapts to vertical videos
YouTube has acknowledged the popularity of vertical video in its mobile apps, and now it's embracing the format on PCs. The streaming behemoth has updated its web player with better support for different aspect ratios. If you're watching a taller-than-usual clip, YouTube will both enlarge the video appropriately and scrap the dreaded black bars. This won't make you forget that you're watching footage originally intended for phones -- it will, however, make the experience slightly less jarring.
Instagram’s IGTV could soon challenge YouTube’s dominance
Instagram was born as a simple photo-sharing app in 2010, but it began moving into video in 2013, when it started letting users upload short clips. Now, five years after making that initial push into the space, the company plans to take its efforts even further with the launch of IGVT. It's a stand-alone app that'll feature vertical videos up to an hour long, which is a major shift from the one-minute time limit on Instagram. IGTV will also have a dedicated space in the main Instagram app, in case you want to watch these videos in the same place you look at pictures and Stories. With creators including Fortnite champ Ninja and singer Lele Pons on board, it's clear Instagram wants to lure internet personalities like them to IGTV -- even if it can't pay them just yet.
'Impact' is the best vertical video we've seen this year
I normally hate vertical videos. Why shoot with an upright phone when so many people will watch the finished article on their laptop, TV or PC monitor? After pressing play on a YouTube or Facebook clip, I don't want to see a tiny slither with swathes of black on either side. Slowly, however, I'm starting to appreciate the portrait format. Periscope and Snapchat use vertical video to great effect, and now there's the short movie Impact by French director Jean-Charles Granjon. It's a beautiful snapshot which uses the inherent shape of a vertical video to better express its subject matter: Lionel Franc, a world champion cliff diver plunging into the ocean.
Breaking up is painful, so is this vertical music video
If it's been a while since you've had your heart broken, and you forgot the feelings it can provoke, watching the vertical video for Harrison's song "How Can It Be (feat. Maddee)" will bring up that distinct combination of disbelief, loss, regret and nausea all over again.
YouTube for Android will play vertical videos in full screen
There comes a time in every person's life when they realize that they can't get people behave properly. As much as we all might want to stop people from recording vertical videos, the Periscopes and Snapchats of this world have made these clips so prevalent that, sadly, they're just not going to go away. Giving in to the inevitable, YouTube's Android App is getting the ability to play vertical videos in full screen, rather than constraining them to an awkward letterbox designed for landscape clips. The feature was found by AndroidPolice in version 10.28 of the app, which is likely to hit Google Play at some point in the near future. Before you sprint to download the APK ahead of its official launch, however, just remember that this means that the bad guys have won.
