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Square streaming resolutions (1:1 in addition to 4:3 and 16:9)
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This request is driven by the increased used on livestreams viewed on smartphones. One way to look at it comes from a person working at Facebook, with lots of live streaming experiences, who said "people don't understand that they can rotate their phones". Another way is that a square video gives room for conversations below. See screen shots at live.fb.com/tips. I guess 720x720 would be the most obvious choice. Although other ones like 480x480 would be nice. And that vMix would simply crop the sides off from the original 4:3/16:9/whatever resolution.
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Interesting comment, Richard. Agreed on a square format. What's the smallest resolution that looks good on a phone? On a tab? On an iPad?
- Tom
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This is just my opinion for what it is worth,
Not a fan of Square videos. Poor software design is what has caused this issue we face today on mobile devices.
When a phone is held vertical or horizontal as it takes/views video it should always be in 16:9 format. This should have been a mobile development standard from day one!
-s
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Nice to have room for chat/posts, though.
- Tom
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sinc747 wrote:Nice to have room for chat/posts, though.
- Tom Yah I agree 100%, if software developers keep the video 16:9 when the camera is turned vertical, this creates even more room for comments and conversation. ;) SHMD attached the following image(s):  IMG_1310.PNG (331kb) downloaded 38 time(s).You cannot view/download attachments. Try to login or register.
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SHMD wrote:if software developers keep the video 16:9 when the camera is turned vertical, this creates even more room for comments and conversation. ;) Sorry, have to disagree. On a smartphone the room for comments and conversations are below (or above) the *square* video. Take a look at the screen shots I linked to in my first post. And I can't believe more vMix users are discussing square formats. Given the apparent interest for live video on for exemple Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just google square facebook video and you see what I mean. It is indeed possible to set the streaming resolution to 720x720, but the result is a squeezed image, not cropped as I would like to see. On a side note. If I set a rectangular format, vMix's (18.0.0.63) auto generated description in the "Quality" field only contains the vertical resolution. Which differs for example between UHD and 4K. In other words, the horizontal resolution cannot be assumed.
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I think SHMD is right anyway (as shown on his screencap), there is more room for comments in vertical position with a 16/9 video than with a square one. Besides it gives users the choice to switch to full screen when in horizontal position if they are not interested in following comments.
We can still use external outs to feed another encoder like FMLE which allows to stream a cropped source. I prefer this as I can also stream and record 16/9 in vMix at the same time.
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Well, one can look at this from a technical engineering, or from a consumer behavior, perspective. I am looking from the latter. And it seems that people (consumers) simply don't turn their smartphones. And when I spoke to a marketing guy at Facebook he clearly advocated square - just for this reason.
If you want to use FMLE, then you have to buy (an expensive) plugin for AAC audio. In addition it complicates production.
I still want to produce (and record) in 16:9. I just want to also be able to send one (or more) streams in square resolution.
So, if it is not too complicated for vMix to tell FFMPEG to crop if the streaming resolution is smaller than the production, then (at least) I hope we might have this feature in the future.
ps I for sure appreciate everyone's comments and truly respect different views :)
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Before vMix can do it, and without FMLE, use external to another instance of FFMPEG Here are examples for using crop filter in a script for FFMPEG: http://video.stackexchan...crop-a-video-with-ffmpegI once did such a production (16/9 + square). It is very complicated and frustrating (depending on the nature of production). You cannot use optimized framing based on full width, you cannot use multiviews for slides or multi inputs, even titles have to be designed specifically, you cannot put a logo in right corner, etc... Basically unless it's a press conference or an interview you always risk to have your talents badly framed or even cut. If you produce for square, then 16/9 is lame. If you produce for 16/9 then you are likely to get an awful square version. I hate this! ;o)
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I noticed that last week, when Livestream Studio started to support live streaming to Facebook they offer 16:9, 4:3, and 1:1, and wrote: Quote:Tip: When selecting 1:1, you can choose to display a yellow safe area in either all of your sources, or in only the Preview and Program monitors so you can easily frame your shots properly. On a side note, they also support a "Post As" dropdown, where one can choose between one's personal profile, any pages one admin, or any groups one admin.
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richardgatarski wrote:I noticed that last week, when Livestream Studio started to support live streaming to Facebook they offer 16:9, 4:3, and 1:1, and wrote: Quote:Tip: When selecting 1:1, you can choose to display a yellow safe area in either all of your sources, or in only the Preview and Program monitors so you can easily frame your shots properly. On a side note, they also support a "Post As" dropdown, where one can choose between one's personal profile, any pages one admin, or any groups one admin. Sounds like a Feature Request in the making... - Tom
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I too have run into the cell phone conundrum on a Facebook stream. I have been tasked with bringing a Facebook Live stream for a business online. It has been running from a tablet to this point. Vertically. They want to up their frequency from 2 nights a week to 3 and greatly increase their production value.
The owner of the Business wants all of the features of switcher. Multiple cameras, Bottom thirds, video cutaways, product sheet overlays etc.
I conducted a poll this past week on what devices the consumers are using. More than 90% of the users are using Cell Phones vertically. This feature would make a huge difference in my Production Design.
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Hi Richard,
just to ad my 0,02 ct:
talking the bbc app as a benchmark, they also use upright vertical 16:9 video's with top bottom slitscreen and all. that s mainly because people not only view / use an smartphone vertical but also record clips vertically.
so it would be good to be able to tap in this trend and vmix should be able to offer more output formats. square or vertical 16:9 would be handy if producing facebook live streams with user input, p.e. via nda directly to vmix.
besides that, its just nice and challenging to have this option, also for projection in a conference or so, and being able to produce a creative output.
will try to find the bbc example and post it later.
stefan
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yes, well after this i am cured!! thanks. very funny.
the point with the bbc vids is probably the fact yout using the app vertically for reading and dont want to turn it over all the time.
but for vmix it would just be an other option. should not be too complicated.
stefan
ps i use vertical video all the time when recording presentations. the speaker is in the left or right part of the 16:9 scare with the powerpoint overlay in a 4:3 overlay leaving a vertical video space for the speaker...
but i guess that does not count.
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+1, for the sake of flexibility I support adding 1:1 and 9:16 aspect ratios 100%.
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h2video.nl wrote:yes, well after this i am cured!! thanks. very funny.
the point with the bbc vids is probably the fact yout using the app vertically for reading and dont want to turn it over all the time.
but for vmix it would just be an other option. should not be too complicated.
stefan
ps i use vertical video all the time when recording presentations. the speaker is in the left or right part of the 16:9 scare with the powerpoint overlay in a 4:3 overlay leaving a vertical video space for the speaker...
but i guess that does not count. Do you have an example of that vertical video with the power point?
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Just one person's opinion, but vertical video is an abomination. It's the result of complete lack of forethought by mobile vendors. Their thought process is more, "wow, that's cool" than considering how it fits into the broader world.
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I think that this is getting more important as FaceBook Live are now recommending a square video format (https://www.facebook.com/facebookmedia/get-started/live). Is there any news as to whether we might be able to have this as an option?
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I think there might be some confusion in regards to the Facebook specifications. I haven't found any documentation to suggest they officially support a 1:1 aspect ratio, but am willing to be proven wrong. The reference on that particular page is for "Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square." which is a different type of aspect ratio. Pixel Aspect Ratio refers to the "shape" of each pixel, for example in the old days of HDV, the number of pixels was 1440x1080, so to conform this to 16:9 required stretching the pixels horizontally, hence a non-square pixel aspect ratio. So in this sense, 1280x720 is a square pixel aspect ratio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_aspect_ratioThat said, if anybody happens to track down any official documentation for how square or even vertical video formats should be handled on Facebook, YouTube etc, that would go a long way to helping us fulfil this feature request!
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