Aspect Ratio for Older Films?

[Michael Slowe]

Now that the 16:9 aspect ratio is becoming the norm for all material on TV and also for the films that we are making, I am often struck by the obvious 'mis match' when an older film is included in a programme of films in the modern aspect.

I have therefore, starting to convert some of my older productions from 4:3 to 16:9. This does, in my opinion, greatly improve the appearance, provided of course that there are no obvious drawbacks. My edit software, Media 100, does a great instant conversion when I drop 4:3 material on to a 16:9 timeline. Surprisingly the cropping is barely apparent although there is a loss of headroom which can be obvious, depending on the framing of certain shots. Titles are unaffected if they were placed centrally.

What do other film makers do with their 4:3 films? They will become very dated once 16:9 is universal and it does look so much better, our eyes apparently view life in this aspect naturally.

[col lamb]

I had not thought about doing anything, now I have. Many thanks for that : -)

A 16x9 sequence with 4x3 dropped on to it and then using Edius's layouter tool pan and scan is very easy

I also have Red Giant plug-ins including Instant HD which as the name suggests upscales, I did try upscaling a movie I made last year using 1992 video 8 footage and the footage was quite good especially in 720p

[Dave Watterson]

The only thing to watch out for are systems which apply degrees of stretch to 4:3 images to make them fit the 16:9 aspect ratio. Various tv sets and projectors do that under menu options like "auto".

I see cropping as the only acceptable answer, otherwise faces in the older material seem distorted.

[tom hardwick]

I too agree that 4:3 material looks very dated these days, yet I'm surprised at how many of the digital channels on my Freesat system and still happily showing 4:3 material - hours and hours of it daily. Of course with my TV I can use the zoom facility to fill the frame with an undistorted picture, but the image quality loss is most noticeable when I do this.

Like Michael I too have 16:9 versions of a lot of my Super-8 movie transfers and they look so much better to my eyes simply by having their aspect ratio brought up to date. But back then I was pretty fussy about filling the frame as accurately and efficiently as possible, and sometimes I have resorted to a 15:9 compromise to keep wanted picture info on screen.

Technically it's not a good thing to crop a 4:3 image to make it fill the 16:9 frame. You start out with a 576 line image and end up discarding a whopping 25%, showing a 432 line image. On a big modern TV, even upscaling the image is asking a lot.

What's good though is that nowadays (as Col points out) we can move the 16:9 rectangle about within the 4:3 frame - even throughout the individual clips. This is easy using Edius, and means that you don't have to accept cropped heads or lost feet.

For many people, the re-editing of their 4:3 material in this way offers them a neat way of tightening the crop, and in so doing adding more impact to what could be rather a lot of 'distant views'.

tom.

[Brian Saberton]

Personally, although I much prefer the 16 x 9 format, I'd rather watch films in the correct aspect ratio as filmed and it doesn't bother me to see 4 x 3 and 16 x 9 in the same programme. I'm uncomfortable with 4 x 3 films being cropped to 16 x 9 because I think it tends to spoil the picture composition and I hate to see 4 x 3 artificially stretched out to 16 x 9 which is even worse.

[Michael Slowe]

Brian, you're right in some cases, it does very much depend on how it's done. Stretched, I agree, is awful but if you can combine a bit of top and bottom as I can with my system then you have a chance of getting decent picture. It does of course depend on the original framing, maybe I wasn't tight enough to start with!

[col lamb]

I am now getting on well editing old 4x3 vid that I never edited previously into a new 16x9 movie.

As we are talking about 4x3 we are in fact talking about MiniDV recored material or in my case Hi8 & Video8 that I transferred onto MiniDV many years ago whilst the Video8 and Hi8 camcorders worked.

One for Dave the Kilt, I used the Sony 100 to record said source material.

Anyway I am now rambling again so let me get back to my original point that I had not got around to mentioning.

As you expand the 4x3 video to fill a 16x9 sequence (timeline or whatever you call it) the image quality suffers a little, it becomes softer. If you have a look in amongst the video effects in your editing software you may find an effect that can be applied which sharpens the image. Unsharp mask is one of its names, and its parameters are adjustable and as long as you do not apply to great an effect it can work wonders on the image quality.