full screen vs widescreen and letterbox

[anger is pointless]

ok ill look for oar on my movies from now on

[Jayden]

ok ill look for oar on my movies from now on

Another soul saved from the hell that is Pan & Scan!

[anger is pointless]

yep yep and im gonna spread the word too

[Key]

yep yep and im gonna spread the word too

Yes, please, do so.

I'm trying to convert a friend of mine to widescreen (or rather, trying to inform her about original aspect ratios and whatnot) but she just doesn't give 2 cents. v.v;

[orestes.]

yep yep and im gonna spread the word too

Yes, please, do so.

I'm trying to convert a friend of mine to widescreen (or rather, trying to inform her about original aspect ratios and whatnot) but she just doesn't give 2 cents. v.v;

I know a lot of people like that. They can't just see why widescreen is better. I'll never win! Some people have their mind so made up and one-sided in their opinion that I find them very hard to talk to about things like that anymore.

...and then there are those who don't care at all... they'll buy a widexcreen movie, the sequel in fullscreen and then the third in the series in widescreen.... like my sister and her Harry Potter movies. She doesn't really care which version but when I want to borrow a movie I suffer.

[RJKD23]

...and then there are those who don't care at all... they'll buy a widexcreen movie, the sequel in fullscreen and then the third in the series in widescreen.... like my sister and her Harry Potter movies. She doesn't really care which version but when I want to borrow a movie I suffer.

OMGosh! That's evil! TERRIBLE! CRUEL, and baaaad punishment! (for her of course! )
mannn, that's a big no no.

[MickeyMouseboy]

yes on the back cover it will say what Aspect ratio the movie is.

1.66:1 - 1.75.1 - 1.85:1 - 2.35:1 - 2.40:1 - 2.20:1

all those are widescreen ratios

Don't forget however, some older movies (specifically Disney movies in this case) were not filmed in widescreen, and thus their OAR is 1.33:1 or Fullscreen. Movies like this are: Alice In Wonderland, Bambi, Fantasia, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Robin Hood, The Sword In The Stone and others. Always look for the words OAR or Original Aspect Ratio, not necessarily the widescreen label. If you want information about what Disney movies were shot in widescreen and fullscreen, just take a look at the Animated Classics menu on this very site, and it'll be able to tell you if you are unsure. Just as a general guideline however, it seems that the first widescreen animated feature by Disney was The Rescuers (with the exceptions of Lady And The Tramp and Sleeping Beauty of course, which were exceptions at their time instead of the rule). This would make The Fox And The Hound the only one on DVD not in it's actual OAR (although there is a lot of controversy about that, no one is entirely sure yet. Maybe someone should ask Leonard Maltin )

well if you read he asked:

how can i found out if a movie is suppost to be wide screen

no how do i know if a movie is fullscreen

[ichabod]

yes on the back cover it will say what Aspect ratio the movie is.

1.66:1 - 1.75.1 - 1.85:1 - 2.35:1 - 2.40:1 - 2.20:1

all those are widescreen ratios

Don't forget however, some older movies (specifically Disney movies in this case) were not filmed in widescreen, and thus their OAR is 1.33:1 or Fullscreen. Movies like this are: Alice In Wonderland, Bambi, Fantasia, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Robin Hood, The Sword In The Stone and others. Always look for the words OAR or Original Aspect Ratio, not necessarily the widescreen label. If you want information about what Disney movies were shot in widescreen and fullscreen, just take a look at the Animated Classics menu on this very site, and it'll be able to tell you if you are unsure. Just as a general guideline however, it seems that the first widescreen animated feature by Disney was The Rescuers (with the exceptions of Lady And The Tramp and Sleeping Beauty of course, which were exceptions at their time instead of the rule). This would make The Fox And The Hound the only one on DVD not in it's actual OAR (although there is a lot of controversy about that, no one is entirely sure yet. Maybe someone should ask Leonard Maltin )

Deathie's been given advice on aspect ratios!

[anger is pointless]

i cant wait to get lady in the tramp in its oar (waiting impatiently)

[AwallaceUNC]

i have the vhs modified for tv version of oliver and company and the dvd widescreen version i just found out i hadf the wide screen version of it just now lol and i just compared them and noticed in the begining when they show the city on the wide screen is so much better

Excellent!

Another one we've enlightened!

The UD squad, fighting the injustices of Pan and Scan, another case closed!

Onto our next case, we have have to convince a 43 year mother of four in Poughkeepsie, why 2D is greater than CGI!

Team let's go!

I'm very glad angerispointless has converted to Widescreen! We'll change the face of DVD retailing one consumer at a time!

Fullhousegirl and Dano05, just out of curiosity, can you explain why you prefer fullscreen? I'm assuming it's just that the bars annoy you?

-Aaron

[Escapay]

FULL SCREEN RULES!

Why, Must we be tortured like this?!

Do you not see why a pan and scan version of a movie is evil?

Maybe Fullhousegurl was just kidding around...I hope.

As for me, I prefer widescreen, but there are very few movies that I'll choose to watch in pan and scan, perhaps because that's the only way I've seen them for years and it doesn't bother me at all:

Annie
Follow that Bird
The Ten Commandments (though it's not much of a stretch watching it in widescreen vs. p&s, as it wasn't a large ar. I think it was 1.85 or 1.66)
The first six Star Trek movies
Star Wars (sometimes)

Escapay

[Bill]

Just to add on a little...

If you have Finding Nemo, you've been introduced to the new way PIXAR creates Full Screen Transfers. They don't squeeze anything, they actually just extend the viewable area of the computer frame on the top and bottom. So not only do you not miss anything, you actually get more then the Widescreen version.

Having said that, the extra parts of the frames are usually limited to backgrounds and such. You don't really gain much. Heh heh.

I don't know if Luke got the Full Screen DVD of the Incredibles or not... but it would be interesting to see if PIXAR did that with the Incredibles as well.

[AwallaceUNC]

They don't squeeze anything, they actually just extend the viewable area of the computer frame on the top and bottom. So not only do you not miss anything, you actually get more then the Widescreen version.

Having said that, the extra parts of the frames are usually limited to backgrounds and such. You don't really gain much. Heh heh.

Isn't that the same sort of thing as you get with matting, though, where the extra stuff you see was really never intended to be seen?

-Aaron

[ichabod]

Just to add on a little...

If you have Finding Nemo, you've been introduced to the new way PIXAR creates Full Screen Transfers. They don't squeeze anything, they actually just extend the viewable area of the computer frame on the top and bottom. So not only do you not miss anything, you actually get more then the Widescreen version.

Having said that, the extra parts of the frames are usually limited to backgrounds and such. You don't really gain much. Heh heh.

I don't know if Luke got the Full Screen DVD of the Incredibles or not... but it would be interesting to see if PIXAR did that with the Incredibles as well.

If you look back on some of the other pages of this thread you will see some comparisons of the widescreen and fullscreen versions of Pixar films. What you have described would as Aaron say be matting, well sort of.

Pixar actually reframes the entire scene, moving characters to different positions so that they fit within the screen area!

[deathie mouse]

While dethincredible was saving senior citizens and wooing amazing babe he also has been reading this thread and getting much enjoyment from it and eating his pop corn

Counsin's pictures are an excellent example and before he posted them i was thinking to do maybe a huge jpeg where i put examples of the 3 major film ratio width differences which are actually shot on 5 basic forms and how those could end up looking on three possible kinds of video displays compared to the original theater screen which would take a while to get cooked. (we were thinking of a jpeg with 45 pics of combinations on it, of which 26 would be the wrong presentation )

(Is no wonder people can be dazed and cornfuzed about which is the correct presentation of a film )


In the meantime, as i've said before, the main reason I think many people prefer "Full Screen 4:3" versions of movies is cus on the 4:3 TVs the widescreen versions have to shrink the vertical size of the image to make the wider image fit on the squarish screen so you get a smaller image which goes against Cinema's huge size Virtual Reality experience so even tho it may be compositionally correct, it may give a less emotionally satisfying experience for some, and on top of that they also see black bars that give the false illusion in some cases and the reality in others (like films transfered with the "matte openned") that they are covering "something" (And this, being true, as i said in the cases of "open matte" versions, gives weight to the argument, even tho what would be uncovered on the "open matte" full screen version WAS NOT ever meant to be seen in theaters)

If they had bigger displays, specially wide 16:9 ones or Projection, their unsatisfaction would drop and they wouldn't have any problems with the widescreen version.

--

The Ten Commandments was shot in VistaVision, whose full camera aperture is 1.50 but the film is composed for Standart Widescreen 1.85 Projection
(The prints even had special Projectionist Cue marks indicating where the 1.85 framing would be, and also had alternate 1.66 and 2.00 markings to indicate where to frame in theaters that had only this size of screens (1.66 being the European Standart Widescreen shape , and 2.00 being an alternate ratio used for some films, specially SuperScope movies) You can see these markings on the specially made for telecine print used for the Widescreen Laserdisc, I don't know if they were carried over to the DVD. Since the image exposed in the negative coulda been taller, falling onto the 1.50 VistaVision camera aperture area, the 4:3 video version could be a combination of "open matte" and pan scan, cutting around a minimum of 12% of the sides and showing about up to 23% of that extraneous top and bottom image exposed on the negative. So that would look kind of acceptable on a 4:3 TV (it's been awhile since ive seen the TV version)

--

Leonard Maltin's video guide is good to determine ratios of movies specifiying the different types of camera formats used for the alternate camera proccesses (like Cinemascope/70mm/VistaVision, etc) but since most Standart Widescreen films (1.66-1.85 wide) are shot with the same 35mm Academy ratio cameras or equivalents, there's no distinction between them and Academy ratio films in the book. But looking at the date of production for those, you can assume most films shot after 1955 were composed for widescreen presentation which in the case of animated Disney means the ones after Lady And The Tramp and this includes the Standart Widescreen films presented in 4:3 in some video versions (mostly showing the "open matte" area) which is ok cus if you want to, you can usually extract the OAR widescreen version from them or close to it, eliminating the extraneous image exposed on the negative and replicating the Wide involving cinema experience again.




As many UD members have posted, Academy and Silent films (most films made before 1955 or so) should be seen in non widescreen versions and Widescreen films (most films made after 1955 or so) should be watched in widescreen versions if you want to see what the director intended and created and how they were meant to be seen (and shown) on the Cinema.

Hopefully in a big screen if possible

[Fullhousegurl]

Excellent!

Another one we've enlightened!

The UD squad, fighting the injustices of Pan and Scan, another case closed!

Onto our next case, we have have to convince a 43 year mother of four in Poughkeepsie, why 2D is greater than CGI!

Team let's go!

I'm very glad angerispointless has converted to Widescreen! We'll change the face of DVD retailing one consumer at a time!

Fullhousegirl and Dano05, just out of curiosity, can you explain why you prefer fullscreen? I'm assuming it's just that the bars annoy you?

-Aaron

Yes it is! First of all, you people are talking about how fullscreen takes away some parts of the images.Wide-Screen does it, too! Even on my Beauty and the Beast DVD, it said that Widescreen may take some images away from the bottom and top! Also, once I was watching a widescreen DVD, and the black bars were so huge, that everything was squished! And for some reason, the black bars make me feel uncomftorable

[AwallaceUNC]

Fullhousegirl, I refer you to a post Luke made on the first page:

the top and bottom cause i used to buy whichever i didn't care about widescreen/fullscreen but I was watching a movie once and this lady got mad at some guy so when he turned around she did something which you couldn't see in widescreen cause it cut off the bottom

Widescreen NEVER "cuts off the bottom" except in about two instances that come to mind (the misframed <i>Buzz Lightyear of Star Command</i> and <i>Aladdin and the King of Thieves</i>, which are both widescreen when they should not be).

In some cases (particularly in films that are framed for 1.85:1), they are shot full frame, with the intention of being in the widescreen aspect ratio, and matted for theatrical exhibition. When they're released to home video, they might have some additional information on top and bottom (this is called "open matte"), but this was never intended to be seen and can be considered as "superflous visual information" as opposed to the widescreen version as being "missing something." And even open matte films almost always involve some cropping.

I do understand that on a small screen, though, widescreen can be a bit of a hinderance (as deathi explains). If things are already small to begin with, you don't want to make them smaller, as it becomes a hinderance. That's about the only argument I can see for it, though.

I've always found that even people who complain about black bars forget they're even there after about five or ten minutes of watching the movie. Have you found this to be true too?

-Aaron

[karlsen]

Yes it is! First of all, you people are talking about how fullscreen takes away some parts of the images.Wide-Screen does it, too! Even on my Beauty and the Beast DVD, it said that Widescreen may take some images away from the bottom and top! Also, once I was watching a widescreen DVD, and the black bars were so huge, that everything was squished! And for some reason, the black bars make me feel uncomftorable

If your picture was "squished" then there are something wrong with your TV. If viewd like the DVD intends then nothing should be disformed or squished.

The black bars are only there because the movie were made that way. It is much better to see it with black bars then look at it with both ends shoped of.

[anger is pointless]

i had no problems watching mib 2 in wide screen on my little 13 inch tv the piccy wasnt squished or anything it looked great

i have a question does starwars come in its oar i love those movies

[Luke]

Even with Pixar's reframing...fullscreen means compromises, particularly on very wide titles.

Por ejemplo:

<img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/a-c/abl3.jpg"> <img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/a-c/abl4.jpg">

Which looks better to you?