Capturing Portrait Videos and Photos

Updated January 2023

There are two of ways to achieve portrait video and photo capture with RightBooth.

Option 1 - Rotate the camera 90 degrees
This is explained in the following tutorial:

The above tutorial discusses using a webcam, but the same principle also applies when using DSLR and GoPro cameras.

Option 1 for DSLR and GoPro Cameras
Physically rotate and fix your DSLR/GoPro camera at 90 degrees, then in RightBooth Camera DSLR settings (or GoPro Settings) you need to rotate the camera feed 90 degrees by ticking the Rotate 90 checkbox (see image below).

• For video recording, make sure the video recording W and H values are set to the video landscape values of the camera.  So if your camera is recording 1920x1080 videos, set W=1920 and H=1080.  RightBooth will then automatically rotate the captured video recording by 90 degrees to 1080x1920 after the video is transferred from the camera to the PC.
• For photo capture, make sure the 'Reduce photo size' W and H values are set to the photo landscape aspect ratio size of the camera.  Again, RightBooth will rotate the captured photo by 90 degrees after the photo is transferred from the camera to the PC.

IMPORTANT: Prevent Automatic Camera Orientation
Some cameras, such as newer GoPro models and DSLR models. have the option enabled to automatically alter the orientation of the camera.  This means that if you hold the camera horizontally it will automatically record landscape videos/photos and if you rotate the camera 90 degrees it will automatically record portrait videos/photos.

If your camera has this feature, you must disable it to avoid possible problems in RightBooth.

For GoPro cameras:  on your GoPro camera menu,  choose: Preferences --> Touchscreen --> Orientation

Then set the Orientation to 'Landscape'.  This will cause all videos and photos to be captured in landscape mode regardless of how the camera is physically rotated.

DSLR camera - Canon M50 Mark II
On the camera menu, choose 'Function settings' and set the 'Add rotate info' option to 'Disable:

​Using a DSLR to take Portrait photos
In the following example I am using a Canon DSLR 1100D, physically rotated at 90 degrees and set to capture photos at S1 quality, (2256x1504 pixels), which is an aspect ratio of 1.5:1.  So I have the RightBooth photo reduction also set to 1.5:1, namely: W = 1500, H = 1000.  I have also set the video W and H to be the same as the camera's video recording size 1920x1080.
Finally, I tick the Rotate 90 checkbox and RightBooth will now ensure that the videos and photos are processed by RightBooth in portrait mode and the camera live feed input also appears in Portrait mode:

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Option 2 - Fix the camera horizontally and crop the input
Using this solution RightBooth will crop the landscape camera feed (webcam, DSLR or GoPro), discarding the left and right sections of the input to leave a central portion that is any aspect ratio you require, such as square or portrait.  With this solution you un-tick the 'Rotate 90' checkbox. Obviously this solution is not as good as the first solution (above) because you are discarding useful sections of the camera input and you are therefore effectively reducing the resolution in your captured files.

In this example I have chosen to crop both DSLR video and photo inputs. I have cropped the video to 604x1080, which is an aspect ratio that is close to a rotated HD input.  With photos I have cropped to 700x1000 which is providing a slightly wider Portrait input, as seen in the live view:

It is worth mentioning here that there are no hard and fast rules on cropping. Simply choose values that produce video and photos aspect ratios that work for you.


Applying Video Enhancements to Portrait videos
If you are applying RightBooth Video Enhancement features to your portrait video recordings, make sure that any enhancement files you use also have a portrait aspect ratio, otherwise RightBooth will stretch and possibly distort the assets to fit the portrait video recording size.

For example, if you are recording portrait HD videos and you want to add a video overlay to your recorded videos, make sure you use a video file that is sized W=1080 H=1920, or W=720 H=1280, or some other aspect ratio that matches your HD portrait video recording size.  The same rule applies when using an image overlay.