Aspect ratio

[mach]

When I look up the aspect ratio of a video on amazon or something does it include the black bars? Or are the black bars added to make it 16:9?

What I'm wondering is how I can ensure I have the correct aspect ratio in virtualDub. Is right clicking and selecting 16:9 (for widescreen) always gonna get me the right proportions?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by mach
When I look up the aspect ratio of a video on amazon or something does it include the black bars? Or are the black bars added to make it 16:9? Yes, the mattes you see on a DVD presentation are added!

Also, what you have to understand is that images on all DVD's are presented anamorphicly (ie: they look squashed up on the disc but not on the display screen). Which is a difficult concept to understand if you're not used to it!

Sufficed to say, all NTSC DVD's contain 720x480 pixels and all PAL DVD's contain 720x576 pixels. Only the vertical quantity of pixels represents the true value of what you see on your display. The horizontal quantity of pixels "pings" horizontally to fit the screen you're watching.


Cheers

[Dimmer]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Yes, the mattes you see on a DVD presentation are added!

Also, what you have to understand is that images on all DVD's are presented anamorphicly (ie: they look squashed up on the disc but not on the display screen). Which is a difficult concept to understand if you're not used to it! However, there are some older/cheaper DVDs out there that are not anamorphic but instead a letterboxed widescreen with black bars embedded into the picture. Actual aspect ratio of these movies is 4:3, which would look terrible on a widescreen TV. To ensure that you're getting a real good stuff, look on the cover (or in description on Amazon) for the words "anamorphic" or "enhanced for widescreen TVs".

[Soulhunter]

Have also a look here... (http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm) ;)


Bye

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Dimmer
However, there are some older/cheaper DVDs out there that are not anamorphic but instead a letterboxed widescreen with black bars embedded into the picture. Actual aspect ratio of these movies is 4:3, which would look terrible on a widescreen TV. To ensure that you're getting a real good stuff, look on the cover (or in description on Amazon) for the words "anamorphic" or "enhanced for widescreen TVs". This is true. But such discs are rare now and getting rarer - especially in Europe.

Thankfully the movie companies have realised there's no economic sense releasing two disc formats (a 16:9 and 4:3 wide-screen) of the same movie, as stand-alone players can quite easily cope with one disc format (ie: 16:9 anamorphic wide-screen) and be configured to output to the two different TV shapes, ie: 4:3 (aka 1.33:1) and 16:9 (aka 1.77:1).


Cheers