Railfan Technology > Rookie video filming question with smartphone

I rode the TexRail from the DFW North Station to the T&P Station and back this Sunday afternoon. I made 4 short videos with my ZTE982 smartphone.But something very curious happened when I went to cast the videos onto my flatscreen TV. I shot the 4 train videos holding the smartphone horizontally. 2 of the videos display horizontally and filled up the screen on the flatscreen as I would have expected. But the other 2 videos displayed only vertically, and I mean the image was vertical, with balck bars on either side. No adjustment I made changed that on the TV. The 2 videos that wouldn't go horizontal on the flatscreen TV, were able to be viewed on the smartphone fullscreen horizontally, but, the phone info and play button display was on either side of the horizontal view on the phone.On the 2 "good" videos, when viewing horizontally, the phone info and play display runs across the top and the bottom of the horizontal view.

First of all, "Thanks for at least trying to use the landscape, or horizontal mode."  I hate it when there s a good video except for the black bars on both sides.

I don't know what the problem is but one thing comes to mind.  If the phone was in portrait mode when you hit the record button, the phone will lock onto that position and no matter what you do after that first frame, the phone will record it as though you were recording everything in portrait mode.  That's just a thought.  When they are displayed vertically, I suspect the trains are running up or down rather than from side to side.

John
 

iMovie (Mac) and Movie Maker (Microsoft) can both rotate portrait videos to landscape.