A short YouTube tutorial by David Vogel (day 6 of a 30-day video challenge) explaining how to choose video orientation based on target viewing devices. He advises vertical for smartphone-first platforms (e.g., TikTok, Instagram), horizontal for TV/computer viewing (e.g., website, YouTube), and recommends shooting horizontal and cropping to square when content will be viewed on both.
Chapters
You're ready to shoot your first video and you're now faced with a question that challenges many people. Do I shoot my video horizontally or do I shoot my video vertically? My name is David Vogel, owner of Remote Video Testimonials where we make it easy for businesses to leverage video using our remote video production services. Today is day six of my 30 day video challenge. For the entire month of April, I'm going to create a video a day with the hopes of inspiring you in your life, both personally and professionally. It is so important that you think about video orientation before you start shooting. As an example, I'm working with a client right now who has some great video content, but I can't use it because it was shot vertically and the video I'm creating will be horizontal. I can't stand when the video doesn't fill the entire frame. So which orientation is correct? Well, both are actually correct. It just depends on where you plan to share the video. So let me try to make this as easy for you as possible. Think of which devices are going to be used to watch your video. If it is only going to be watched on smartphones, then the answer is vertical. Two good examples of this are videos you plan to post on TikTok or Instagram. However, if the video you're posting on Instagram you also plan to share on on your website, on YouTube, on other social media platforms that will be watched on a computer or tv, then I recommend that you shoot horizontally. You want your video orientation to match the orientation of the device where it is being watched. So if the video will be watched on a TV or a computer that have a horizontal orientation then you need to shoot horizontally. So what's the big deal if the video is in the wrong orientation? Well, it affects the viewer experience because the video won't fill the screen and the platform will then scale the video down in size so it can fit on the screen. Now if you know the content you are creating will be watched on both computers and smartphones and you want the best viewer experience. Something that I do and I recommend to my clients is that you shoot horizontally, but then you crop it to fit into a square format. This allows you to have the biggest video size when both viewed horizontally and vertically. I hope you found this information helpful. Thanks for watching in the comments. Let me know which orientation you use and why. Please follow me and be sure to like and share this post. If you want more leads from your website or an easier time building trust, Video testimonials and profile videos will help reach out if you have any questions, and I'll see you tomorrow.
