16:9 or not?

[Mike Shaw]

There is another consideration. Old film being renovated and digitized.

A small group of us have been working on historic archive film about local events from the 30s, getting it digitized then making it into DVDs for general viewing.

Naturally (in the true sense) the videos are made in 4:3 format to closely match the original film format..

They should play in 4:3 format on a widescreen TV. But I've watched people play it back - then widen the screen display to fill the screen again, so giving people in the movies the delightful squashed fat look.

In retrospect, I should have made the movies on a 16:9 timeline then masked the pillar-box side panels - with curtains or something. The mistake was to assume that 4:3 (ish) film should be made on a 4:3 timeline.

Too late now - we have virtually finished work on all the material we had. I could go back and remake everything. But ...

[Chrisbitz]

I've noticed the police car chase series have a nice way of adapting 4:3 footage.

They take a slice of the edge of the 4:3 picture, and then duplicate it, and blur it, so you have a blurry filler at the edge of the screen, that has the same movement, and the same colours as the main 4:3 picture.

It's very unobtrusive, but stops the morons from making everone look short and fat.

However some people seem immune to even noticing the short fat look in a 16:9 film... (including the aformentioned luddite!)

[tom hardwick]

I'm now very aware that people who send me 4:3 ciné film for transfer will most probably be playing the resulting DVD on a 16:9 TV. Now if I send them a 4:3 transfer their TV will either automatically zoom it to 16:9 (so cropping their film footage) or the TV's remote will be used to stretch it to fill the 16:9 screen. I've even found some 16:9 TVs don't even have a 4:3 option.

So what I'm doing now is placing the 4:3 film in the centre of a black 16:9 rectangle. This means it will show letterboxed* on a 4:3 TV (assuming the DVD player is set up correctly) and have vertical pillarbox bars on the 16:9 screen. The best bit is that people filmed in the 60s and 70s remain slim in the noughties.

tom.

*
[Shurely "pillarboxed" - Ed]

[Mike Shaw]

Yes, in retrospect, that's what I should have done with these old archive films.

What happens though, with those who still have the 4:3 shaped CRT TVs? (yep, there are quite a few!). Many of the customers for our archive films say that's what they have - and are reticent to change to the new format flat screens. For them, our movies will be fine!

The other thing is - as I think we have discussed once before - if I did go the 16:9 route I'd replace the letterbox edges with something less 'bland' than the black borders - maybe theatrical curtains (dark of course) or something. I really don't like the appearance of 4:3 sitting blankly on a 16:9 screen. Such a gimmick (curtains) would be useful for the end of a movie - when the curtains could 'pull' across the screen. And it would make the movie 'sit' better, I feel, on a widescreen tv.

Anyway, this is hindsight at the moment. The films have been edited and used as 4:3 on a 4:3 base, and I don't really feel inclined to go through the lot again putting them down on a 16:9 base (with curtains or something).

[tom hardwick]

[quote="Mike Shaw"]What happens though, with those who still have the 4:3 shaped CRT TVs? [/quote]

No worries Mike. The 4:3 film shows perfectly normally on a 4:3 TV screen - it just doesn't fill it, that's all. Best of all there's no overscan - as happens if you do your transfer 4:3.

[Mike Shaw]

Umm, I meant what happens when a 4:3 film made on a 16:9 base is shown on an old 4:3 TV (which has never heard of 16:9): theoretically the 16:9 would have bands top and bottom. The 4:3, sitting in a 16:9 frame would also be pillarboxed. So the actual movie would be sitting in the screen with black borders all round. The poor oldie with his old 4:3 TV would probably start kicking the stuffing out of it. (Could be a good thing - if they kicked hard enough they'd have to buy a new one... which would conform...)

That's my theory anyway.

Ahh! Ooops! I see now what you mean now ... "just doesn't fill it, that's all".

OK. We're on the same page (I got there at last...).

This will all be academic in 50 years time. Films will be projected as holograms on a flat table, in full 3D, like actors on a stage. Personal theatres. They'll think our problems with tapes and disks and solid state chips and a perpetually changing format as ridiiculous as ... as .... I'lll get back to you with an as ...

[Dave Watterson]

Just a thought, Mike. Why curtains as possible side panels? In Britain, at least, most of us grew up watching movies in art-deco cinemas where the curtains all-but vanished at the sides or top of the proscenium arch. Why not reproduce the look of those old molded plaster pillars?

I discovered that there was a company which sold lots of the plaster moldings for use in cinemas - cinema owners chose their cherubs, scrolls, statuary and so on from a catalogue and ordered it by post!

Dave

[tom hardwick]

Glad you got there in the end Mike. Yes, the film transfer wouldn't fill the screen but with the technical quality of most old movies that's no bad thing. Also there'd be no overscanning - and this is important as

1) projector gates mask a big chunk of the original frame to avoid frame lines showing when different camera originals are spliced together

2) off-axis cameras have to mask the image some more to avoid keystoning

3) blurry frame edges require a hard-edged mask to be applied in post

4) CRTs overscan horribly, and the older the TV, the greater the overscan I find.

So showing the resulting image underscanned (a letterboxed and pillarboxed 4:3 image on a 4:3 CRT) is no bad thing, see?

tom.

[Mike Shaw]

Yep. I seed.

As for side 'pillars' - perhaps pillars of (this) society - one each side?
Photo session next Thursday 5 am, Bognor beach, dress informal (leotards accepted...)

[Brian Saberton]

Re "Curtains". I gather from a friend in the business that when the TV pro's transmit 4:3 footage in a 16:9 frame and apply a colour of some kind on either side instead of the black bands, the term in the trade, believe it or not is, - "Curtains". Perhaps we need a campaign of education to get the message across on the correct presentation of films. I don't know how folk can be satisfied with the distortion on 4:3 when it is expended to 16:9 and all for the sake of not having the black bands on either side. I wouldn't buy a TV or projector that couldn't show pictures in the correct aspect ratio. In days gone by people would complain if a TV picture was distorted yet now they seem happy to deliberately distort the image!

[Mike Shaw]

Agreed. I also think it odd how people will sit and watch a distorted picture, not even noticing people are thicker. (Pun wasn't intended, but it fits ...). But maybe its because there are so many victims of the mighty MacD they don't notice the extra girth ...???

[Dave Watterson]

I have sat through some festival judging sessions where the tv was set to auto and 4:3 images were stretched to fit ... not a pleasant sight.
An ex-BBC engineering friend who is normally extremely fussy about that sort of detail leaves his large-screen tv on auto. (His tv does it better than most, but people's heads are stretched sideways as they approach the edges of the picture.)
Part of the problem domestically is that people adjust the position of their chairs at what they consider a comfortable distance from the screen ... but they assess that by the width of the screen, not its height. Thus 4:3 images on their 16:9 screens feel uncomfortably small to them.

- Dave

[Brian Saberton]

I tried my TV set on auto and it was pretty awful. Now I have it set to 4:3 and it automatically switches into the correct aspect ratio as transmitted which begs the question of why "auto" is called "auto" when it plainly isn't.

[Mike Shaw]

You know what - I found exactly the same, but figured it was a 'bug' in the TV system. Mine is a Panasonic Viesta 42 inch with integral Freeview.

[daveswan]

In the last year I think I could count on one hand the number of own-produced films in 4:3. The last one I personally made was a deliberate B&W Silent movie. Our problem was to make sure our DVD player and projector could agree on the format!
Dave