Widescreen v full screen !!

[JonRead]

I just wondered, because widescreen covers half the screen rather then all, does this mean you can fit better quality for less size ? Or does the black border still take up MB ? May seem like a stupid question, but if backing up say the Back to the Future Widescreen version and also the full screen version, would one version be worse quality then the other due to it filling more of the screen ?

[int 21h]

Black is the easiest color to compress, I would speculate that the borders where the black meets the film take more space than all of the black space combined.

In short, yes, the widescreen will have better quality because bits will have less information to represent than the fullscreen version.

Besides, Widescreen is good :) (Although on BTTF II, its not entirely correct:confused: )

[xmenxmen]

If it's truly widescreen, then the dvd player is the one that's putting the black bar in. The video itself does not contain any. Just try watching it using a software dvd player and you will see.

[KaoS]

Originally posted by xmenxmen
If it's truly widescreen, then the dvd player is the one that's putting the black bar in. The video itself does not contain any. Just try watching it using a software dvd player and you will see.

Assuming it is a anamorphic widescreen.. there are alot of older DVDs out there that were widescreen in a 4:3 format

So the blackbars are hardcoded

[int 21h]

There are still black bars in a 1.85 @ 16:9, and of course in 2.35 @ 16:9, the bars are the largest (in the source frame). They aren't nearly as large as bars on a letterboxxed picture, but they are definitely there.

[MackemX]

http://www.technosound.co.uk/homecin/widescreen/widescreen.htm
great info about different formats

all depends what format it is recorded in and the transfer used

I think for BTTF both versions contain the same amount of horizontal & vertical info and it's the DVD player and TV that does the stretching or compressing (adding black bars) of image (They did botch the transfer of Widescreen didnt they, I think that's the version I have :()

if it already has black bars in a 16:9 image I think it depends what TV mode the DVD player is set at, cos if the player is set to 16:9 mode it zooms into the image chopping off the black bars whereas a 4:3 TV would display the images black bars when set to 4:3 mode in DVD player

xmenxmen is right about the adding of bars also, just play a dvd on your software player and disable setting of automatic aspect ratio and you will see the 4:3 image and whether it is anamorphic or has the has black bars included

star wars aotc is 2.35:1 and has 2 black bars top and 2 on the bottom in OAR as you can see the 2 added ones and the 2 in actual image which are slighly lighter when brightness is turned up, but if I switch to 4:3 or disable OAR mode it just has the black bars from the image top and bottom and the DVD players bars disappear and the image is then compressed horizontally

quality all depends on the format used on transfer and the format of the displayed image, if the DVD player adds the bars on a 4:3 it is actually compressing the vertical of 625 lines of widescreen info in less horizontal lines on the TV, so you lose definition and get the jagged effect on straight lines as certain line information is missing, so image defintion is lost

unless it's on a 16:9 TV then it stretches the horizontal lines and the info is all shown in it's true format and none is missing

this is all my guesstimates from my knowledge and probably not explained well enough but I know what I mean

:D

I would love to see 2.35:1 TV's available to the masses

[ronnylov]

What you can do to minimize the bitrate need for the border where the black meets the film if you are reencoding is to make a macroblock optimized rezising. Make the picture completely fill out the macroblocks and also make the black area fill the macroblocks.

There is a tool which make this easier by creating avisynth scripts. It is called FitCD and there's a more enhanced version more suitable for DVD encoding called Fit2Disc. You can find them here: http://shh.dvdboard.de/