Why do they simply crop 4:3 TV shows to make them 16:9?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by JBStephens, Oct 7, 2015.

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  1. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, PA
    Gone with the Wind was blow up to 70mm in 1967 and "tilt and scanned" to fill the whole frame.
     
  2. Solaris

    Solaris a bullet in flight

    Location:
    New Orleans, LA
    And it ruined the composition. For feature films I think this should never be done because they're more carefully, intentionally composed for the original aspect ratio.
     
  3. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Haaaaaaarible. I saw an early demo of high definition in 1989 at an NAB show in Vegas, and I was horrified when the Turner Broadcasting people were showing demos of Gone with the Wind cropped to 1.78 in a 16x9 monitor (using the then-current analog 1025-line standard). They didn't get that maybe it was a bad idea to take one of the greatest films ever made and toss out the top and bottom of the picture.

    This is a good example of how Seinfeld looked when it was rescanned from the camera negatives to HD and then tilt & scanned for 16x9:

    [​IMG]

    To me, it's not a disaster and I get why from a business point of view the studio has to "future proof" their TV libraries for a 16x9 world. Note also that there's a little bit more image area on the far left and far right in the camera negative than in the original 4x3 version. The picture is also considerably sharper, though you can't tell in this comparison.

    This was discussed about six years ago in a lengthy thread about the new transfers done on Seinfeld:

    http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/seinfeld-in-hd.179378/
     
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  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Naaaaa, every single shot has to be meticulously reframed in mastering in order to optimize the framing. The problem with letting the set do it is that you're going to "give all the actors a haircut" (as some camera operators say). This needs to be a dynamic process where the image area is constantly changed to reflect the composition of the shot, where the actors are standing, if it's a wide shot or a close-up, etc. There is no one-size-fits-all setting where 4x3 will automatically fit 16x9 -- it's just a blow-up.

    I don't dispute that a bigger picture on a 16x9 frame has more dramatic impact, and I think you're reacting to that more than anything else.
     
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  5. Solaris

    Solaris a bullet in flight

    Location:
    New Orleans, LA
    Oh I don't disagree with you, I'm just saying I was surprised at how well it worked for Star Trek. I didn't mean to suggest that the TV set could automatically do a good job. Of course shows would have to be reframed from shot to shot. Once I realized what I'd done, I was futzing with the up and down buttons to reframe certain scenes, which certainly improved the crop.
     
  6. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Just bear in mind that what you're seeing was never intended by the director or the cinematographer or the studio. It's kinda like listening to a favorite rock album with the EQ controls yanked: you might like how it sounds, but it's not quite accurate.

    When the original Star Trek was being remastered a few years ago, there was a lot of internal discussion at CBS/Viacom as to whether they should do it in the original 4x3 or in 16x9 for modern audiences. While the Blu-ray fans were very vocal in demanding 4x3, the studio wound up doing both versions, and all the new visual effects were recreated in full 16x9. I haven't seen how well or how badly the show was blown-up for 16x9, but it's possible to do it in an acceptable way. But no question, purists would hit the roof, and I concede it's a big alteration from the original intent.
     
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  7. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    But how many hours straight does it take? Six hours is quite a bit. Not many six hour movies out there, and who would watch one straight through. If its being broadcast on TV, any 4:3 material will surely have commercial breaks so there is going to be some activity in those black bar areas. I was just watching a few Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes on HBO Comedy tonight. Thankfully they presented them in their 4:3 ratio rather than zooming, cropping or stretching.

    I guess if it really is an issue, and I'm not convinced it is, I STILL think it should be up to the TV owner to be cognizant of this and switch to full widescreen material every now and then to prevent burn in. The types who care about aspect ratio in the first place are surely aware of these potential hazards.
     
  8. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Oh, I've gone 6 hours easy on marathon binge-watching of Breaking Bad, 24, Daredevil, Sense8, House of Cards, all kinds of relatively-recent shows. If those had been 4x3 shows, it wouldn't have been healthy for the monitor.

    Again: leave a 4x3 white pattern up on any monitor for a few hours and tell me what you see when you pop up a full-field 16x9 gray pattern. You're going to see remnants of the burn in the screen. Even OLED does this. It's just the nature of dynamic images. You can believe me or not -- it's your set, not mine.

    The manual on my Panasonic plasma (which is technically a broadcast monitor) does specifically say, "if you watch letterboxed material or material that only uses part of the screen, be sure to 'wipe' the screen with the controls provided after use." And I routinely see burns in some of my LCD computer displays. Crap happens. As the great Isaac Asimov once said, "entropy can't be reversed." Everything eventually falls apart.
     
  9. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    Sure, you can do that. But even if you're binge watching, you're going to be changing discs at some point, accessing menus (either on disc or on-demand) and so there is likely to be some break from just the 4:3 material. But its is up to the viewer to be aware of the potential for problems. I don't think broadcasters should butcher the material to save ignorant viewers. It's not like they have any real potential liability, do they? Has anyone ever successfully sued a network for broadcasting 4;3 material in its correct format and causing burn in on a widescreen TV?

    Going back to the three reasons you posted earlier in this thread, I think #1 and #2 are more likely the reasons why Hulu and Comedy Central are airing old South Park episodes zoomed and cropped. I don't think they really care about people's TV sets. I'm glad I've got my old South Park dvd sets so I can watch those episodes as they are intended. And I appreciate that HBO doesn't botch the 4:3 material they air, as with the Curb Your enthusiasm episodes I mentioned. They do zoom anything wider than 16x9 however, and that is very annoying. I watched a some old Futurama episodes on Netflix recently, and thankfully they were still in 4:3 and not cropped.
     
  10. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Absolutely. 99% of the reason is purely economic: they're terrified that the moment younger audiences see a 4x3 picture, boom, they change the channel because their perception is that the show is old. I have seen recent-memory TV shows like Cheers, Friends, and Seinfeld blown up to 16x9, and they generally hold up OK.

    The 16x9 versions of The Simpsons are very controversial -- do a Google search and you'll see some pretty scathing criticism out there. I'm very disappointed that Fox didn't spend the money to at least go back to the original negative, rescan everything from scratch, and do a better job doing new 16x9 versions. And for the digital shows (starting around 2003), to me those should be reanimated with 16x9 backgrounds and just done over to preserve them for an HD future. Unfortunately, Fox took a cheaper route. (And I should say no more.)
     
  11. biggerdog

    biggerdog Senior Member

    Location:
    MA
    Does anybody know what method was used to convert "The Shield" series to 16:9 for the most recent DVD release? I suspect zoom/crop, since I get a vague claustrophobic feeling when I watch it. (The show itself is quite engrossing, perhaps almost as good as BB or The Wire.)
     
  12. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    It was originally shot in widescreen.
     
  13. biggerdog

    biggerdog Senior Member

    Location:
    MA
    Thank you.
     
  14. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    In the little bit of research that I've done on the Internet, it appears that there is consensus about two things:

    [1] - all TVs can suffer from some kind of image retention, and in the worse-case scenario, burn-in.
    [2] - 4:3 images can appear "old" to younger eyes

    I'm not sure I agree about point [1] and here's why. Most of us grew up in the age of CRT television and CRTs for computer displays. So we've all witnesses image burn-in from cable logos to sign-on screens. It was an artifact of the era, and no-one fretted over it. It just was. And some of those monitors and TVs cost way more in local dollars than comparable units do today. In the flat-screen age though, it's a bigger worry factor, and I think I know why.

    It's the plasma factor. Plasmas were an early and dynamic favorite in the TV world. They offered excellent pictures to a demanding audience, but they did suffer from the burn-in phenomenon. Leave a cable-channel on constantly, and the logo image would make ghostly appearances on all sources. As technology improved, so did plasmas, and later (latest) models had improvements in design and controls to minimize any burn-in or image retention. I do not know this first-hand, as I've never had a plasma set. I've avoided them because I DO watch a lot of 4:3 and 2:40:1 content and never wanted to worry about it.

    I've always chosen LCD or LED televisions simply because they "supposedly" did not suffer from image retention or burn-in. It made sense to me that this was so, as increasingly, the mere idea of a computer screen saver is looked on as an unnecessary artifact of an earlier age. If screens don't need to be "saved", then there's no danger of burn-in. Computers are particularly notorious for their static images left unattended for long periods of time. OK, the same flat panels that we're using for monitors are also used in televisions, are they not? Or is this some mistaken notion on my part?

    In all of the years I've been buying televisions, I've always chosen Sony models. They were great and definitive as CRTs, with a lesser reputation these days, but still out there. In the modern HDTV age, I've owned four Sony televisions: an older LCD that was called a rear-projection/LCD, a sort of hybrid between a rear-projection set with an LCD screen; a 37" XBR model; a 60" LCD for our current main TV; and a 32" little brother model for our den. In none of them have I ever witnessed even a pixel out of place and never a trace of image retention or burn-in. And again I must reiterate that I watch a lot of older TV shows on over-the-air, DVD and Blu-ray along with a fair amount of wider-screen movies. And yes, we do on just as many occasions watch 16:9 stuff, so the image-size is often changing. If there were any image-retention or burn-in, I'd notice it. Also, in none of the manuals for these TVs did I ever see a note about burn-in or image retention. There have been no warnings - ever.

    That said, I think part of the fear of LCD/LEDs also suffering the same fate as plasmas perhaps come from manuals of a favored brand, Samsung. I only owned a Samsung flat-screen LED TV for a short time. Looking for a TV for our home den/office, my wife found this Samsung UN28H4500 Smart TV on Amazon and ordered it for Christmas. After the initial setup, things seemed to work fine, but after awhile, I noticed that while the HD-TV channels looked great, the SD channels looked like they had a kind of jerky motion artifact, almost like a Skype video would look. I discovered that turning the TV off and back on made those SD channels look smooth again - for awhile - but after a time the jerky motion returned. Contacting Samsung Customer Service via an Internet chat, I was directed to do a total reset of the TV. Once again, initially it seemed fine, but after a power off/power on, the jerky motion returned to the SD channels. While the Smart functions of the TV are desirable, the interface to use them is somewhat clunky and slow. I was successfully able to access Amazon Prime videos, and they looked and sounded great, but occasionally, trying to return to regular TV was slow and unresponsive. On several occasions, I had to unplug the set to get it to respond again. Using the remote control, I occasionally found that I had to push a button more than once as the TV seemed unresponsive. That set went back to Amazon and we bought the 32" Sony to replace it.

    My point in that story is that I DO recall reading the Samsung manual while it was here and seeing the note about burn-in/image retention, even on this little 28" 720p TV, I think they were in CYA mode in adding that blurb since their corporate history includes a plasma line.

    As far as older 4:3 shows being converted for over-the-air telecasts at 16:9, I tend to agree with Vidiot. As long as the DVD or Blu-ray versions that I spend my money on are original, night-of-broadcast aspect ratio, I'm fine with them messing with them for over-the-air use, if they feel that a younger audience might be attracted to it. But don't mess with classic films, please. When it comes to really old television shows, say STAR TREK or the recent LOST IN SPACE, I think the conversion to 16:9 might be a little easier in many cases, possibly because of the amount of "safe area" that the show-creators used.

    I have no evidence other than my own observations, but it seems to me that when I watch an old 16:9 show from the fifties, sixties or early seventies, one that's been properly and nicely remastered for at least DVD, I can hit a zoom function on my television and get a rather pleasing "widescreen" image. Yes, there are the occasional haircuts, but overall there seems to be a fair amount of open-ness to the picture. It doesn't feel as cramped as it does with an old movie or a more recent 4:3 TV show. And this might possibly have to do with just how much overscan there was on those old round television tubes of the fifties and sixties.

    Show producers of that era must surely have realized that anything in those corners was going to be missed by much of the audience, so I believe that their "safe area" had to occupy a lot less of a 35mm frame than in an old classic film from the 30s or 40s. Which would explain why, when they go back to the original films or negatives for use in modern remastering, that there's so much more picture available for cropping to whatever ratio might be desired - as long as they paid attention to set-edges and equipment in the frame. Thus, a show like STAR TREK can possibly look pleasingly framed at 16:9.

    I'm far from advocating modifying aspect ratios - give me the original every time and I'm happy. But if you're going to mess with aspect ratios, make sure the originals are out there for anyone who wants them.

    Harry
     
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  15. minerwerks

    minerwerks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA
    I agree with the premise of your complaint, but unless there have been some mistakes perpetrated, the 16x9 episodes of South Park should all be re-rendered and recomposed in 1080 from the original Maya files:
     
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  16. mdm08033

    mdm08033 Senior Member

    When did television producers begin to shoot 4:3 with a 16:9 safe area?
     
  17. nosticker

    nosticker Forum Guy

    Location:
    Ringwood, NJ
    Probably more the other way around. Guessing late 90's.

    Dan
     
  18. PH416156

    PH416156 Alea Iacta Est

    Location:
    Europe
    :thumbsup: :agree:
     
  19. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY
    I've heard about it, but I have yet to experience it - and I watch a LOT of old 4x3 stuff. I've had a number of Samsung HDTV's (LED or LCD), though I do mix it up with a lot of regular full screen viewing too. I've owned both 46 and 55" screens. I haven't done a white pattern test, but feel no need to. If I see any "burn", I'll notice it whenever. Usually the TVs themselves haven't lasted that long anyway.
     
  20. R. Cat Conrad

    R. Cat Conrad Almost Famous

    Location:
    D/FW Metroplex
    As I see it, this whole discussion is being framed in the wrong aspect ratio. Instead of discussing the problem of burn-in as a product design flaw we allow manufacturers wiggle room to opt out of warranties via a legal disclaimer! Have we, the product consumers, become surrender monkeys to questionable claims that each new pixelated television delivery system is better when it isn't?

    IMO, the marketing of TVs is a travesty. We're sold curved screens on newer direct view televisions (OLED) even though there's little justification for it beyond the spin, we're asked to forego proper aspect ratios and accept burn-in issue warnings as SOP for static images (while station/network logos in the corners are quietly overlooked by the industry because program content owners concerned about copyright violations won't be drawn into a debate over competing interests with TV manufacturers) and if that isn't enough, the public continues to be pablum fed marketing hype to buy higher definition in lieu of manufacturers refining existing products to be more dependable and user friendly.

    If I'm missing something here maybe someone more in tune with what's perceived as cutting edge performance can set me straight, but I'm generally fed-up with the industry hype and the marketing of next-generation products that in reality aren't ready for prime time players.

    :cheers:
    Cat
     
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  21. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    You can view it as a product design flaw if you wish, but that's just the way it is. If you demanded a perfect TV with no (burn-in) flaws, we would not have display screens of any type, including CRT displays. That's unrealistic.

    I can't disagree with that, but it isn't as bad as the marketing of mobile phones/plans! :)

    There's little justification for curved screens for sure, but OLED TVs are a whole new ballgame poised for prime time, now that Panasonic is producing them (with LG panels).

    Marketing is what it has always been. That's why it pays to be informed about what it is that you're purchasing. If you trust the marketing hype, then you deserve all you get IMO. And refinements in this space happen all the time, which may contribute to feeling a little lost.

    It's easy to sometimes feel overwhelmed if you don't have an active interest in the latest developments. What's cutting edge today and the foreseeable future and has more substance than hype? Here's some:

    * 4k screens
    * HDR (high dynamic range) ability
    * Extended colors closer to what the human eye can resolve
    * 10/12 bit panels to better handle those extra colors and gradeints
    * OLED - gold standard for display technology - Panasonic already has a reference TV here
    * Streaming apps for various services and integration with mobile, laptops, PCs.
     
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  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    More and more people have demanded traditional flat (non-curved) 4K UHD screens, so those are beginning to come out. Consumer Reports said in their reviews that the curved screen added nothing to the experience and that flat was a better way to go.
     
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  23. R. Cat Conrad

    R. Cat Conrad Almost Famous

    Location:
    D/FW Metroplex
    I'm not so sure about that, but I'll take your word for it. :righton:

    True, but if I wanted to watch bottom-feeders compete I'd invest in a high-definition aquarium. :D

    Agreed, but so far the pitcher's stats aren't impressing me. We'll see how the game progresses.

    We're pretty much in agreement, but there are refinements and refinements. I'm more in tune with dependable products that deliver performance without caveats.


    I do see your points and where you're coming from. It's not that I'm overwhelmed by new technology so much as disinterested in products that don't meet certain basic quality standards. For instance, obtaining the proper aspect ratio should never be an issue. This should be a design component of each television. I'm not writing off OLED or any other developing technology, but it shouldn't come with strings attached. Is 4K necessary or even desired below a certain screen size? Improved colors, maybe, but I'd rather see colors that can recreate the original technicolor palette than some marketer's interpretation of eye-popping reality. Streaming apps are fine, but I can't see how any of the devices you've mentioned can improve upon the experience of television viewing.

    This is the kind of viewing experience to which I'm more accustomed (and my projector is a Panny)...


    [​IMG]

    :cheers:
    Cat
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2015
  24. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Animated programs like South Park and The Simpsons could be converted to 16:9 by generating new content to fill in the sides using Image-Based Rendering techniques. Since the vast majority of the scenes in the Simpsons world are the same "sets" over and over, it's not computationally hard to extrapolate the "missing" rest of the room and furniture. I'm surprised they didn't go back and re-render South Park, as except from the pilot, it was always produced using a 3D program (originally Wavefront PowerAnimator). I suppose they didn't bother to archive the original elements.
     
  25. R. Cat Conrad

    R. Cat Conrad Almost Famous

    Location:
    D/FW Metroplex
    That's good to know. Curved TV panels without the benefit of a wide viewing cone ...vis-a-vis projected image on a 10ft or larger screen... seemed like marketing hype from the outset (simply a means to demonstrate the flexibility of the screen material). :righton:

    :cheers:
    Cat
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2015
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