Aspect ratio questions

I haven't watched that since 2013. I'm talking about films.
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16:9 (1.77:1) was chosen because it fits everything that had been used beforehand: 1.33:1/1.37:1 (TV and older films), 1.85:1, 2.20:1, and 2.39:1 (American flat widescreen, Panavision, and Cinemascope), and 1.66:1 (European standard widescreen). Most HD television is 1.78:1 (Netflix uses some 2.00:1, I think), so that's why television shows fit. I think more movies are being made in that aspect ratio now, too.
There's really no reason to be so disturbed by 1.33:1 being on a 16:9 screen. And that's not letterboxing, by the way...that's why you were confusing people. That's just the image fitting in the space. Sometimes, Blu-rays of 4:3 content are said to be "matted" to 16:9.

 

And, as Deesky pointed out, unless you're watching something in 1.78:1, there will always be black bars somewhere. This is super widescreen (2.76:1).

 

I just read things about 21:9 or 4k becoming the norm within the next few years, and it worries me. I don't want to see the old movies I enjoy, or old PC games I play (which were designed to work on 4:3 monitors) be basically unplayable or in the case of movies, unwatchable.

 

See, you're making this way too dramatic. There's nothing "tiny tiny" about a 4:3 image in a 16:9 space, especially if you have a decent sized screen. If that'll detract so much from the playing experience for you, that's you problem, not the aspect ratio's.

 

I highly doubt 21:9 will be a thing. 4K may, but that can still be in a 16:9 space.

 

4K is at the same 16:9 ratio as HD. No worries there. More pixels, same shape.

 

So a 4:3 game or movie would be the same "size" on a 4k or 8k screen? Or would the bars be bigger? I just want my kids, someday, to enjoy the movies and games I grew up with.

 

4K and 8K are simply referring to definition, not aspect ratio. If they keep the screen at 16:9, yes, 4:3 will be the same "size". And what your kids like will be dependent on you. I really, really, don't get what the problem is with black bars on the side of the screen. That's how the thing was made. Heaven forbid you stretch the image and distort everything, or chop off the tops and bottoms of the picture just to get rid of some bars.

 

It's not the bars that are the problem now. It's the prospect of the bars getting bigger, and bigger as aspect ratios change, and the image on the screen continuing to shrink as a result.

 

I think for that precise reason, they won't make 21:9 standard. As I said, 16:9 was chosen because it fits around everything that was commonly in use. Not to mention, so many television shows and even movies are made in 1.78:1—they would be shooting themselves in the foot to make 16:9 old-fashioned looking/obsolete. I'm also not sure people really need a screen that wide, anyway. Widescreen like that is one thing in the theatre, granted you have a big theatre, but on a home screen, it's never going to have much of an impact. I don't think people really care what shape their screen is in; a lot just seem to care that it is completely filled. Thankfully, I've mostly heard of 21:9 being used for PC monitors, not TVs. For computers, I can see the use if you're doing art, or a lot of business and need multiple windows open.

 

The answers you seek are upthread, OP. Your many descendents will enjoy Farm Simulator 2008 for ages to come.

 

Do you think 16:9 will remain the standard in monitors, as well, though?

 

21:9 won't become the standard, as I see it. I know one or two TV manufacturers have such a model (Philips?), but it's more of a gimmick than anything else. It's supposedly to get a better movie viewing experience, but that's just as flawed as any other aspect ratio, as there will always be stuff that doesn't match it.

I think that super wide AR is more of a computer monitor thing, than a TV thing, where a single wide monitor can used in lieu of two physical monitors. I'd never get one, in fact I'm irked that it's nearly impossible to get a decent 16:10 computer monitor anymore (which I prefer for computer work as it gives me more vertical space).

 

That, I can't tell. Likely... If you use a Mac, I don't think that is even 16:9. It's slightly narrower, at least the laptops. I can't imagine people carrying around a long laptop. Also can't imagine long phones.

 

You can learn to not see them unless you are like my sister and will fixate on the negative. While the TV aspect ratio changed with HD (not counting the few widescreen televisions) I don't see the need or reason for the TV aspect ratio to change ever again, until we move to holograms

 

Basically, all films made past april 1953 are widescreen. 4/3 films stopped right there, right now. Except some very rare exceptions, any film made after this date is to be shown widescreen as intended.

TV shows were actually cropped for then square TVs. They were all shot with wider framing, so the trend now is to go back, find those previously cropped footage on the side, and convert those to 16/9, like X-Files, Friends, etc. like this demo shows



But many shows that have cult audiences aren't done that way by fear of losing sales from the core audiences. So they are released in the old cropped on the sides 4/3... until at some point, they will be converted. Those who claims for "OAR" for those shows don't realized they were cropped for TV, thus their OAR (Original Aspect Ratio) was compromised from the get go.

If you watch them, you can see clearly that all shots are composed placing people in the frame for widescreen, the way every film was made since 1953. Also all the credits are placed widescreen safe.

To say they were composed for 4/3 is wrong, 4/3 composition stopped in 1953, save arty films where the director composed for that format.

The only exceptions would be shows shot on video. With those, you can't go back, they are as they are.

 

No, no, no. You're being wayy too general about TV shows being cropped. Some shows from the '90s were shot on film that may contain more information on the sides (a small amount; making them wide-screen still requires some cropping), but not every filmed show since the '50s, as your wording suggests.

 

Someone in Hollywood needs to be writing a screenplay called THE ATTACK OF THE BLACK BARS! More people seem to be afraid of black bars than they are of Screen Gems logos.

With black bars!:

 

Every remote control has a zoom button that users can use to distort the picture as much as they want. All programming ought to be in the original aspect ratio, but many providers get complaints from watchers too stoopid to adjust their own sets for the distorted picture they prefer, so the rest of us are stuck with bloated pictures. So I will sit and watch an obese Beaver Cleaver for a while, and then it will dawn on me; why not read a good book instead?

 

There may be a variety of sizes and shapes of monitors, but the content (IMHO) will stay within a narrowly-defined set of aspect ratios from here forward. I quoted Pinknik for the image below to help demonstrate. The majority of contemporary content is roughly in the 16:9 ratio, shown in red. Older films and TV shows in 1.33:1 will be formatted inside a 16:9 frame with pillarbox bars, and widescreen films using the wider 2.35:1 ratio will be formatted inside a 16:9 frame with letterbox bars. Of course, there will be odd exceptions and experiments, but I would venture over 90 percent of content fits in one of the three ratios below.

The 16:9 ratio is not exactly the "golden ratio" but it's close enough. That pleasing aesthetic reason is probably the one that has me most convinced that 16:9 is here to stay.

 

Not accurate.

What is true is this: Many shows that were in production when everyone knew widescreen television was coming were shot "protected for widescreen", meaning that even though the important action was kept within the center "square" area, they knew to keep the far left and far right free of distractions such as light stands and stage hands.

But most shows from before that recent time were not shot with widescreen in mind at all. Fortunately, just by good luck, there is almost always a little extra bit of image on the edges of the frame that is available to be used, today, to turn it into widescreen.

Here's a picture illustrating why that sometimes cannot be done. In this example from Buffy the Vampire Slayer there wasn't any extra image available on the sides of the frame, so the only option when converting the show to widescreen was to cut off the actor's head:




More often the reason why it cannot be done is that there is production equipment visible on the sides. The example here is Star Trek: The Next Generation.



For an example of when it sometimes can be done, look at The X-Files remaster.

The takeaway is that whether a show can be converted into widescreen depends on how the directors shot the series - not on "cult audiences" feelings.

 

You must not be very interested in this or you'd already know that there are plenty of old 4:3 games that have been modified to run in widescreen (as well as modified to run on current computers rather than Windows XP).

Look at a modern classic like Syberia. It's an adventure game, with you controlling the character Kate Walker as she explores a strange land. It was 4:3 when it came out. But because the "sets" - the landscapes, the rooms - are simply sets of data that render an environment in which the virtual camera can look about freely, the view can be opened up wider with just a little bit of new coding. The only difficult bit where this tends to fail is with overlays - like text when a character is speaking - sometimes ending up in the wrong place, since their X/Y coordinates are no longer correct.

 

And I just want to agree with people above who are saying that 4:3 isn't a "tiny box" when you are watching a modern giant flatscreen that takes up most of your living room wall. Even shows that cannot be anything but square-o-vision still look immense.

I suppose if you tend to watch shows in the daytime, when the black bars don't blend into the dark of the room, they may be distracting. I only watch in the night and evening so I've never noticed the bars.

 

That's not exactly true. The original 1990 analog HD HiVision system (1125 lines) used 16x9 because the math worked well. They couldn't use 1.85 because they wound up with odd numbers that proved difficult to handle in firmware. There were many battles between Hollywood and the Japanese manufacturing companies, because Hollywood wanted a traditional film aspect ratio like 1.85 or even 2.20, and the manufacturers firmly insisted that 1.78 was the only thing that could work. The Japanese won that battle, though the Americans won the HD war by insisting that the world change to an all-digital HD system using 1080 lines instead.

All TV shows made prior to about 1995 were intended for the normal NTSC/PAL aspect ratio of 1.33 (4x3). Right around that time, Warner Bros. VP of technology Chris Cookson predicted that the future of broadcasting was going to be 16x9, so he got all their film shows to change over to 3-perf Super 35mm production. 3-perf Super 35mm was inherently a 16x9 medium, so it worked well for future-proofing for HD. The film negatives at that point were good enough that if you cropped it to 4x3 for broadcast (center-scan only), it looked fine in standard def. Many -- if not all -- film TV shows made from 1995 on can be easily converted to 16x9 HD, provided they spend the money on remastering. The shows shot on standard-def tape are doomed to always be ugly standard-def video, and I don't think they'll survive very well (for the most part).

That's a lotta questions. I don't see the world changing from 16x9 for at least 15 more years. Beyond that... the crystal ball is cloudy. I think we're headed into an era of denser resolutions, wider color gamuts, and higher dynamic range, plus there's also growing interest in Virtual Reality. I think the shape of the screen isn't as important as those other factors. (Hell, if the story and the characters are good enough, nothing else matters.)

Old TV shows are doomed to be 4x3 forever, because that's how they were intended to be seen. They can blow up 35mm negative to 16x9 -- what I call the "cut 'em off at the knees" method -- but you wind up losing about 25% of the image. Seinfeld, Cheers, The Simpsons, and quite a few other shows like this were converted in this manner. I think it can be done well but it can also be done badly, but a lot depends on who was doing it, what equipment was used, and how much time they took to master the show.

You can make a good argument that younger audiences below a certain age will automatically turn away from B&W programs and from 4x3 programs, simple because "they look too old."