Movie size on TV

[jack3216]

Could someone give me a simple answer to how i make my movie that i can view with the whole picture. At present when i play it the horizontal screen is covered but the vertical top and bottom has a black frame round it. I am a complete amateur and would appreciate help

[jggimi]

I'll try, though I may not understand your exact issue.

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All standard televisions have the same shape, where the width of the TV is 4/3 its height. This shape is called by various names, including 4:3, 1.33:1, and "Academy." Newer TVs, including High Definition TVs, may have a wider shape -- where the width is 16/9 its height. This shape also has various names, including 16:9, 1.78:1, and sometimes generically called "widescreen." These are physical aspect ratios. Regardless how big or small a TV is, it will have one of these two shapes -- and the aspect ratio will stay the same -- 4:3 or 16:9.

When you first install a set top DVD player, you run its setup menus, and you tell it the shape of your TV.

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Movies, on the other hand, are shot on film and are designed to be projected. They can have all sorts of different aspect ratios, not just the two TV shapes.

When films are transferred to video for broadcast, usually a technique called "Pan and Scan" is used during conversion. They take a 4:3 sized image of each frame ... and this often includes a panning step to try to acquire the part of the image where the main action of the scene is occurring. Pan and Scan transfers are also called "Fullscreen" because while they do not contain the complete film image, what they do have fills the TV display completely.

They do Pan and Scan transfers of film for 16:9 HD broadcast these days, but there is far less panning needed.

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Some widescreen films are transferred to video in what is known as "letterbox" format. In this case, Pan and Scan is not used, instead, the entire film image is transferred to video, with black background on the top and bottom to fit the image to 4:3 (or to 16:9).

This is what you are seeing; the entire film frame on screen with black background above and below.

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A production company may offer both a "widescreen" and a "fullscreen" version of a film, since many people seem to prefer "fullscreen" DVDs. They like to have their TV filled up with video, even if they do not see the entire movie.

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You can convert a widescreen film to fullscreen, via cropping. That's the "scan" part of Pan & Scan, and very easy to do. But most films will need panning. That is obviously much more complex, and while it is possible, it is something that a newbie should not attempt unless the newbie happens to own a video editing suite that includes the capability. Yes, it can be done with our community's commonly used video post-processing tools, but it is beyond the skill of a self-described newbie.


For more on how Pan&Scan works, I recommend you take a look at the example images at www.widescreen.org -- they have many examples of how panning decisions are made during the film to video transfre process.

[CWR03]

Shorter answer: you are viewing the whole picture. The black bars aren't covering up video, they're filling in where there is no video. In order to have the movie fill the screen top to bottom you would have to lose some picture on the left and right sides.

[jggimi]

There are *many* people who prefer to have every raster line or pixel on their TVs or monitors filled up with video image. These are people who prefer "Fullscreen" DVDs.

Quite a few of these people own 16:9 TVs. Aspect error be damned. They don't care about squashed or stretched 4:3 images fitting their 16:9 TVs, as long as all of their screen has active image on it. This same group will get upset because a widescreen 2.35:1 film has letterbars on their 1.78:1 TVs. So they'll zoom in so that they don't see the bars.

I have a brother like that. Nothing I can do or say to change his mind.

But ... if you reach them when they're young, you can sometimes change their perceptions. :D

When we got a 16:9 TV a few years ago, I explained to my then 7-year old child that there would be pillarbars when she watched SDTV. Otherwise, I said, "SpongeBob would have to change his name to RectanglePants!" She laughed, and understood. :)