
Horizon – Record horizontally. Always - StavrosK
http://www.horizon.camera/
======
nbody
Installing such app almost certainly implies that the user is aware of the
problem of vertical videos. So being aware of it, they will simply rotate the
device when recording (since it provides better quality/resolution).

It seems to me that it would be helpful if such idea is applied on the system
level without the need for an app.

~~~
ctdonath
Horizon isn't just about vertical vs horizontal video, it's about either being
skewed to a diagonal. Consider how many videos (whichever general orientation)
wobble 5-20 degrees off axis; that's what Horizon solves.

Compare those professional "unsteady cam" shots where there's lots of
horizontal & vertical movement, but _never_ any tilt.

~~~
makmanalp
This is great! I'm very surprised that it isn't anywhere on the site. Instead
the focus seems to be on horizontal photos, which seems ridiculous since
anyone can flip their phone sideways.

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scotty79
Is there a video hosting site that displays vertical videos without cramming
them into horizontal frame?

I think lot of hate against vertical videos comes from the the way that
youtube displays them.

I tried to create browser extension that displays vertical videos without the
horizontal frame but I couldn't figure out how to determine orginal dimensions
of the clip.

Vertical format was picked so that two people talking fit the frame. Today we
more often see one person talk while being accompanied by non-video content
(related, comments, slides, code). When single person talks (s)he's small and
often accompanied by useless background on both sides, regardless of whether
the video was recorded vertically or not.

I think that youtube went embrace (allow to upload), extend (by useless
horizontal frame that makes the video smaller), extinguish (by the hands of
all the people enraged by vertical videos due to previous stuff and the fact
that people often use fullscreen on non-pivoting monitors).

~~~
liquidise
I'm not so sure. When i facetime with family (on phone or laptop), i find the
experience is strictly superior when in horizontal mode. There is something
about gaining the peripheral context that makes the entire experience feel
more natural.

~~~
marssaxman
The normal human visual field is broader than it is tall. Exact numbers are
hard to come by, but 4:3 is a reasonable approximation.

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mxfh
Quite the trade-off, so instead of shaky unaligned horizons you now get
irritating zooms effects [1], plus up to more than 2/3 of the original frame
missing? (at least that's what the online demo represents).

At least the constant zooming could be easily lessened by defining a safe area
of the frame as the active content while using the remaining sensor area for
compensation only.

[1] [http://www.horizon.camera/demo](http://www.horizon.camera/demo)

~~~
ctdonath
As a Horizon user, it bugged me that so much of the image was cropped to
ensure stability (portrait width in landscape orientation - grrr). The rotate-
to-zoom effect isn't perfect, but at least it gives the option to use more
pixels when available (and I'll take zoom over wobble). Otherwise you're using
an HD camera to take stable SD video.

You _do_ have the option of turning off rotate-to-zoom and stick with the
prior low-res stabilized image.

~~~
petrakeas
We have implemented a solution to the problem where the crop area zooms in/out
smoothly in Flex mode, so that the wobbling problem is reduced. It will be
available on the upcoming updates and in the Android version as well (hint!
;)).

In the meantime, you can switch between modes while recording depending on the
situation. Finally, locked mode switches automatically to horizontal or
vertical orientation in version 2.0.

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phibit
These guys strap an iPhone to a car wheel, drive at ~ 30MPH and record
stabilized video. Pretty neat.
[http://blog.evilwindowdog.com/post/88969373226/extreme-
car-e...](http://blog.evilwindowdog.com/post/88969373226/extreme-car-
experiment-horizon) Was posted on HN a few weeks back.

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skizm
What is the technical limitation that stops an app from making the camera
shoot native horizontal while holding the phone vertical?

Would the camera have to physically rotate or is it software and iOS/android
just don't give devs access to it?

~~~
lstamour
Yes, the camera would have to physically rotate or stay level. Think of a film
camera: holding the camera sideways means shooting in landscape at a 90 degree
angle = instant portrait mode, no fancy software rotation effects required.

Alternatively, if we had a completely square sensor... though that still
wouldn't help if you rotate at less than 90 degree angles.

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hengheng
Why can a software camera app be better quality than the original one, which
is just supposed to feed data from the CCD to flash? You aren't interpolating,
are you.

~~~
petrakeas
Even the original/stock camera app is a software app that processes the data
from the CCD sensor before writing the final video file. For example, for
stabilization, it interpolates the sensor input and executes image
stabilization algorithms.

Horizon, processes the video input using the same tools that the default app
uses to process video.

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nuII
Nice to see a new TLD being put to use

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pgrote
Google doesn't think so:

[https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=horizon+camera+app](https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=horizon+camera+app)

They do show up in site search, though:

[https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:horizon.camera](https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:horizon.camera)

~~~
StavrosK
I think that domain is around a day old or something. At least the site is.

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stelabouras
Thank you everyone for your support!

Here are 6 promo codes for you so you can get Horizon for free!

[http://codehookup.com/6fb173a3](http://codehookup.com/6fb173a3)

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rplnt
This is a very nice idea and should really be available in stock cameras.
Maybe they could license it to phone manufacturers to include it in their
camera apps?

Anyway, what I wanted to ask.. how do they go around the loss of quality? It's
not a simple crop? Can they somehow utilize any part of the chip they want (as
long as the maximum is the same?) since the chip is much bigger than the max
possible video it can record?

~~~
higherpurpose
License it? Is this such a revolutionary idea that other companies can't
"invent it" themselves without licensing it?

This is an obvious idea that everyone has been craving for, and I don't think
such ideas deserve patents. If stock cameras adopt this idea, tough luck,
they'll just have to compete like everyone else and add more differentiation.

It's not the implementation that matters here, it's the idea. And companies
can do their own implementations of it. They don't have to license it.

~~~
ctdonath
They may not have to license it, but for a reasonable price I'd rather use a
well-implemented library that excels at what I need it to do and goes beyond,
than spend time hacking up something equivalent but inferior (hey, I've got
other stuff to do too).

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AVTizzle
Great product, but a question about the trailer video...

Since the app seems to seamlessly adjust the picture so it doesn't rotate when
you change the actual smartphone's physical orientation, what's the point of
rotating the phone mid-shot?

Take the example of the two women sitting for coffee... why does the camera-
person bother rotating the phone to horizontal in the middle of the shot? Why
not just stay in place?

~~~
Kequc
It feels like an attempt to battle the plague of vertical video and for that
I'm thankful. Otherwise it's a great way to end up with a horizontally stable
shot while allowing you to hold the phone any way that feels comfortable.

I can't think of any time when that isn't what I want.

~~~
judk
I don't understand why otherwise savvy techy people ate so Luddite about
vertical video. Adding an extra 200% of worthless landscape to a video of a
person is an ancient plague that smartphones provided a cure for.

~~~
Kequc
Goes back to why we switched to widescreen displays.

Area of vision man. It is not wasted space to see a horizontal plane, as that
is what we expect to see when looking at anything. Vertical video simulates
the effect of straining to see through a partly closed door it is tangibly
horrible.

~~~
jamesbritt
_Vertical video simulates the effect of straining to see through a partly
closed door it is tangibly horrible._

Horizontal video simulates the effect of straining to see through a partly
closed Venetian blinds it is tangibly horrible.

Now, is this any more correct? Or is it an equally arbitrary personal opinion?

The move to "wide" screen was also the move to short screen. I don't find
anything natural about it; I expect to be able to move my eyes up and down as
well as left and right.

A preference for short and wide screens seems more cultural than natural. Even
granting that humans have better peripheral visions along the sides than top
and bottom the current screens fall short in capturing this range.

My beef with most vertical videos is that people typically do not make good
use of the format; there's nothing intrinsically _bad_ or wrong about it.

~~~
marssaxman
There is no personal opinion in the observation that normal human field of
vision is wider than it is tall.

~~~
jamesbritt
No one said it was, so I'm not getting your point.

In another comment you said that 4:3 is a reasonable approximation of normal
human visual field. 19:9 screens don't map to this; this restricted height
works well for consuming certain current entertainment offerings but I don't
see that a preference for it is objective.

If area of vision were guiding screen design we would likely see more of what
the current Surface 3 offers.

~~~
marssaxman
Well, why are movies horizontally oriented? Why is the screen rectangular at
all, and not square? Why were wide-screen movies such a big deal when they
came out? Obviously it's because filling the viewer's visual field creates a
more intense, immersive effect; engaging more of your peripheral vision makes
you feel more like being there.

Vertical-format video has the opposite effect: you might call it anti-
immersive. It boxes the subject up in an intrusive frame and makes you feel
like you're looking through a hallway or some other obstruction.

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ryanong
Hrm, great idea but not in practice?

This is a demo from youtube. Looks even more shaky than the default camera
app.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2-S5SgQFVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2-S5SgQFVg)

~~~
StavrosK
Obviously, rotating your phone is going to be shakier than keeping it still.

~~~
ryanong
I don't think they were rotating it. I think they were trying to keep it
stable.

~~~
StavrosK
What would be the point of that? It says "rotate-only", it's the mode where
you rotate the phone and it stays horizontal.

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NicoJuicy
I came accross this problem recently (while using Google Autoawesome for a
compilation of videos and photos)..

Suddenly vertical videos are zoomed in and create ugly compilations :(

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fgvb
Better idea: make a phone with camera rotated 90 degrees!

When I had old Nokia phone I didn't have to rotate phone to take horizontal
photos.

~~~
StavrosK
"Horizon: Take videos by holding your phone vertically!"

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automatthew
World Star Hip Hop will never be the same.

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chasing
Or just hold the phone horizontally?

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randunel
Extremely shaky result, see unedited demo video on
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/14/horizon-shoots-all-of-
your-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/14/horizon-shoots-all-of-your-videos-
in-landscape-no-matter-how-you-hold-your-phone/)

For those wondering, it's not free. It used to be $1, now it's $2.

~~~
stelabouras
Hey randunel, this is Stelios from Evil Window Dog :)

The TechCrunch post you are linking to was posted back on our initial launch
at January 14th. This video was shot with the first version of Horizon that
didn't feature any stabilization. Moreover, our straightening algorithm has
improved a lot since back then (6 months ago). Plus we are always working on
updates to improve it even further!

Concerning the price, Horizon was always $1.99 but had a -50% off launch sale
in the first month of its release.

The 2.0 update is a free update for all our of existing users!

~~~
ctdonath
Yay free updates! Nothing kills my interest in an app like having to buy it
again, and manage multiple versions in my app collection.

