Matted Vs. Unmatted

[mvealf]

mvealf's concerns about the framing of "Freaky Friday" aroused my curiousity, so I popped in the disc to check it out. Yes I would agree it's a little tight, maybe it was meant to be matted at 1.75 rather than 1.85. But I didn't notice the chopped-off head syndrome.

Look at the scene right after they switch bodies, when Jodi Foster is in the diner with her friends. When they walk out on their way to the bus, you see the whole group of girls walking with their heads chopped off. No director would purposly do that. The laserdisc shows their entire heads with more space at the top. It looks MUCH better.

[Poppins#1]

Look at the scene right after they switch bodies, when Jodi Foster is in the diner with her friends. When they walk out on their way to the bus, you see the whole group of girls walking with their heads chopped off. No director would purposly do that. The laserdisc shows their entire heads with more space at the top. It looks MUCH better.

I think what you may be referring to is in this scene where the girls in the background have their heads cropped, but the girls in the foreground are the main focus of the shot and they are shown properly within the frame. To me this is proper framing. Just my opinion.

[deathie mouse]

That downrezed capture measures about 1.86-1.87 using NTSC broadcast standarts btw

[mvealf]

Look at the scene right after they switch bodies, when Jodi Foster is in the diner with her friends. When they walk out on their way to the bus, you see the whole group of girls walking with their heads chopped off. No director would purposly do that. The laserdisc shows their entire heads with more space at the top. It looks MUCH better.

I think what you may be referring to is in this scene where the girls in the background have their heads cropped, but the girls in the foreground are the main focus of the shot and they are shown properly within the frame. To me this is proper framing. Just my opinion.

Nice screen capture. What softwaare did you use?

What I am talking about is the scene right after that, when the girls are walking down the street outside, before they get on the bus. The entire group has chopped off heads.

[Poppins#1]

What I am talking about is the scene right after that, when the girls are walking down the street outside, before they get on the bus. The entire group has chopped off heads.

I really don't know what you are talking about. This is what I'm seeing in that scene. Perhaps you are watching it on a 16x9 monitor and the overscan is causing too much cropping?

[deathie mouse]

If you had a correctly synchronized 16:9 CRT NTSC TV monitor so that it had 0% vertical overscan with that image (the black top of the image coinciding with the top edge of the CRT and the black bottom of the image coinciding with the bottom of the CRT ), of the 270 x 480 pixels of that image you'd see 270 x 468 pixels

with the following overscans you'd see:

2.5%: 263 x 465 pixels
5%: 257 x 445 pixels
7.5%: 250 x 433 pixels
10%: 243 x 421 pixels
15%: 230 x 398 pixels
20%: 216 x 374 pixels

The leftmost girl's head would start to dissapear at 3% overscan, the center blue shirted girl's head would start to disappear at 6% overscan, Jodi's head at 21.5% overscan and that is if the image is perfectly centered on the CTR, if it's a little skewed to the top, the heads will start disappearing earlier. Not taking into account the up and down bob of them walking.

Btw the TV Safe Action Area is considered to be 10% overscan and the TV Safe Title Area is considered to be 20% overscan.

On the film front, SMPTE Theater Projection practices allow for up to a 5% overscan of the Projection Aperture dimensions, but recommend the maximum crop to be 3% or less. (Of course, the AIM being 0% )

[Poppins#1]

deathie,
As I pointed out in my first posting to this thread, Freaky Friday is a somewhat tight transfer and heads will momentarty exceed the top frame line.

Aren't most high quality TVs and projectors being made today, limiting overscan to no more the 5%? I know that my own equipment is around 4-5% (I wish it were less)

[deathie mouse]

deathie,
As I pointed out in my first posting to this thread, Freaky Friday is a somewhat tight transfer and heads will momentarty exceed the top frame line.

Hey, i'm not disputing that, just giving out the measurements and some possible explanations for why

1.75 Aspect ratio movie, transfered at 1.865, windowboxed 4%, shown on a tv with 6% vertical overscan of the 480 DVD vertical lines would make center girl bump her head to the CRT border on that scene. On a TVset with 4% vertical overscan of the 480 DVD lines you wouldn't see the windowbox frame.

(My numbers are based on that downrezed capture, could be a little off in real life)

Aren't most high quality TVs and projectors being made today, limiting overscan to no more the 5%?

You said it, high quality made being today. The 20% Safe Title Action area may be based from since when TV's used round tubes and were very unstable
But i've seen lots of TV's with more than 5%.
To be sure about how much is being cut off from a DVD on your TV measure with the AVIA disc pixel cropping pattern. But that brings up another issue:

What are we measuring as overscan? NTSC video is set at 1.33 = 486 x 710.85 pixels. But it's limits are 486 x 720. And DVD is 480 x 720. If you want 0% overscan of all images all the time you have to underscan your TV set so that it shows 720 on the width and 486 on the height (making the full 486 x 720 an 1.35 aspect ratio on 4:3 TVs and 1.80 on 16:9 TV's). Even non-windowboxed NTSC FullFrame DVDs would show up with some black vertically (about 2.5% of the vertical faceplate) (But with 100% of the image and the correct proportions for NTSC standarts)

Computer captures like the one posted here show the full 480 x 720 image, altho they don't follow the correct NTSC timings , so proportions may be a little off.

I know that my own equipment is around 4-5% (I wish it were less)

Well maybe you can have it adjusted to the minimum possible by a friendly (and technically saavy) TV tech. Go to some TV shops and ask if they can do it and how much $. On some TV's is relatively easy. Having the Service manual helps. Usually called Horizontal Size and Vertical Size adjustment
Don't do this yourself cus TV sets have High Voltages inside that can kill.

After doing that, you'll find lot of video with small black borders on the sides, and if you underscan perfectly to the correct proportions, everything will have slight letterboxed bars even, even taller 486 video would have about 3 black lines above and 3 below those 486. Or worse: the close captioned signals and other various test signals, like single line color bars or resolution partterns on broadcast tv and tapes and laserdiscs would appear on those extra lines. NTSC is a 525 line system with 486 lines for picture. (To get 100% of the image and crop that out, you'd have to adjust the Vertical position up a little, making the bottom black pixel bar a little "thicker" )
(or you can adjust the vertical size so that the full NTSC 486 x 720 image (or only the 480 x 720 DVD image if you prefer) will fill the faceplate, but then, proportions might be a little off. Probably unoticeable in most off center seating positions tho)

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I want 23:9 displays with 0% overscan