Finally, an App that Forces Your Phone to Take Horizontal Videos Only
Usually when you film something vertically on your phone — that is, with the top of the phone pointed to the sky — two annoying black bars show up on both sides of the footage when you play it back later.
The community of people who hate these black bars is so large that there’s even a clever, muppet-narrated PSA about it. Their reason for despising vertically-shot videos so? They’re distracting, and make your recording look amateurish.
But today is a glorious day! A new iOS app named Horizon is here to spread the joy of well-shot mobile video, letting you change the orientation of your phone while you’re filming without having to worry about how that will reflect in the video. Effectively, the Horizon app bars (pun intended) your phone from recording vertically and including ugly, disruptive orientation changes.
In other words: No matter how you hold your phone, everything you shoot with Horizon will look like you shot it while holding the phone horizontally.
The only real downside? The app reduces the resolution of your footage a tiny bit. The iPhone 5S can capture 1920x1080 clips with its default camera app, whereas Horizon is limited to 1080x608 whenever its filming from a vertical orientation. But as Gizmodo notes, that’s still better than standard definition.
The app works on most modern iOS devices (iPhone 4S, iPad 3 onwards), and is only $0.99 to celebrate its launch. It’s a must for anyone who’s looking to up their home video game. Get it here.
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