Eli5: Why are so many videos online inverted from their original perspectives like they went through a mirror?
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If you’re referring to clips of movies or Tv shows, it’s because that defeats some of the automatic copyright checking software. The software spot checks certain parts of the video to see if they match the pattern of a copyrighted work. If you flip it, this doesn’t match so the software isn’t triggered. I assume programmers are working on that…
If you are talking about TV shows, movies, or anime kinds of videos, that can be done (along with slightly adjusting crop or video speed) to avoid being flagged by content recognition software and the like looking for stolen/reuploaded content.
There’s two reasons
The main reason is that the cameras in a lot of phones and tablets reverse the image.
A lot of people have a habit of taking pictures of themselves in the mirror with the main camera instead of the selfie camera, and this is so common place that cellphones have options to reverse the image of the camera automatically.
A lot of people either film themselves with the camera backwards or forget to turn the mirroring option off.
The second reason is copyright.
If you flip the image there’s a chance the automated copyright bots won’t be able to read a logo or text, reducing the chances that your video will get taken down.
If you’re talking about videos people take of themselves, phone cameras actually flip the image for selfies so it matches what you’re used to seeing in the mirror. It’s less disorienting and makes it easier for you to position yourself in the frame. Videoconferencing software like Zoom also does this for the same reason – the thumbnail of yourself that you see is mirrored, but the video other people see is not mirrored.
Faces are asymetric. When you look at yourself in the mirror you are used to seeing a certain “side” in one direction. Camera lenses capture the other side and the resulting images feel “weird” to most people as they are used to seeing the version they see on the mirror. Some people even feel they look less attractive like that.
So, people like to flip the image to “correct” this effect and get a more familiar image. Some cameras these days even auto-flipped by default.
Trying to beat copyrights for whatever they are publishing. For example a friends video might be flagged, but less sophisticated copyright checkers might not pick it up if it is mirrored. It is easy to mirror and the uploaders can get some benefit – views, exposure, ad revenue,etc.. while actually stealing the content. Usually youtube and similar sites pick it up eventually and block it.
It was almost definitely stolen by a robot at some point that did that as a lazy way to avoid getting detected for reposting
Either that or it was clipped from something like a YouTube video where the uploader did that to try and avoid copyright detection
Would like to add on to the copyright reasons. This is the same reason why a lot of videos, especially ones with songs, are edited with a bit higher of a pitch, so it sounds like a “chipmunk” almost
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