"Converting" 4:3 to 16:9 (Aspect Ratios)

[bluepilot]

Cinemas overcame the problem decades ago. You watched the weekly serial with cliff-hanger ending in "normal" format. Then there would be a sort of whirring, grinding noise as a couple of panels at the side of the screen were moved back and you had a cinema scope screen for the main feature. Maybe some enterprising person could design a TV with moveable wooden flaps.

[Paul Stenning]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

I've noticed some channels occasionally have a 16:9 picture with a black border all round.

I have seen that. Probably made 16:9 in the 4:3 era, the only copies remaining are centred in 4:3, and if it was cropped and resized properly the resolution would be poor. Or the channels can't be bothered to do anything other than broadcast as-is.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by bluepilot

Cinemas overcame the problem decades ago. You watched the weekly serial with cliff-hanger ending in "normal" format. Then there would be a sort of whirring, grinding noise as a couple of panels at the side of the screen were moved back and you had a cinema scope screen for the main feature. Maybe some enterprising person could design a TV with moveable wooden flaps.

I'll go along with that. Can we have the Wurlitzer rising from beneath the floorboards too please?

[raditechman]

The variable or movable masking in cinemas are normally black curtains, one each side of the screen and sometimes another at the top. The back masking was to give the image a defined and steady edge as film images could judder or wave slight from side to side. It only became movable when CinemaScope was introduced in 1953
Unfortunately a lot of new cinemas have unmasked screens now as less to go wrong and as the image from a digital projector is rock steady regarded as unnecessary They have also done away with screen tabs (curtains) in many new cinemas, also less to maintain.
Of course the organ went long ago although a few still exist and until the lockdown the Regent Street, London cinema had a live Compton organ performance before film every Wednesday matinee.

John

[spamfritter]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

It's a sad fact that many people can and do tolerate wrongly displayed images. If I stayed in the room it would only be a matter of time before I made a desperate lunge for the remote and started mashing the 'Apect Ratio' button. I wouldn't be able to help myself.

I can see that this might be considered unacceptable behaviour in some circumstances so instead, I politely remove myself from temptation.

Last line I agree with. My wife does not seem to notice errors of aspect ratio. Standard words are "You are just being difficult" come to mind.

I have been moaning about problems of aspect ratio since digital TV came out. If I set my TV to AUTO aspect I expect it to be able to sort it out and on the main 5 channels there is not a problem but others are totally oftenwith flat faces or long thin faces depending on the original aspect ratio. I took this up with the BBC as they used to have a decent engineering dept. but not much hope. The general opinion is that it must be your TV's software ( I have 3 different makes and they all do it) and one so called expert took the standard freeview vision of "You probably need a better aerial".

It appears that some services (ITV3 is an example) just automatically just load a recording and blast it out any old aspect ratio.

[spamfritter]

Here is another little problem of aspect ratio I have found. My main set up is a Panasonic TV and a Panasonic DMR-BWT740 DVD / Bluray / HDD recorder. They are both linked using an HDMI lead and they talk to each other using the viera link feature that Panasonic has. I often record programmes on the HDD for later viewing or sometimes recording off later on to DVD.
Here is the challenge. Record off of air a 16 x 9 aspect film from the BBC to the HDD. Watch it and it will be correct on the TV but it's a 50:50 chance whether the DVD recording will be 16 x 9 or 4 x 3. I think I have now cracked it but only time an a lot of wasted DVD's will tell. If the TV is switched to auto and you have watched say a 4 x 3 programme then it tells the recorder that. If I then try to record to a DVD a recent recording which is 16 x 9 it will be squashed up to 4 x 3. I have found that If I set the TV to fixed 16 x 9 before I start the remote DVD recording it work OK. Great fun isn't it and Mr Panasonic does not have a clue !

[SiriusHardware]

When recording to DVD from HDD, in my experience the aspect of the original recording will be preserved as long as you do a high-speed copy onto DVD. If the length of the recording on HDD exceeds what will naturally fit on a DVD (2 hours at standard definition) then the recorder has to re-encode the recording and for some reason it will, depending on recorder model, record it to DVD in 4:3 regardless of the original aspect. Tres annoying.

But that's not all. If the recorder is HDMI-connected to the display / TV the display will be told, over HDMI, what the aspect of the material is - 4:3 - and you will find it difficult to override that. The only way around that is to connect the recorder and TV via an analogue connection and then you will be able to override the display's aspect ratio so that at least the recording which was wrongly recorded to DVD in 4:3 can be displayed in its original 16:9 aspect.

Both of these nuisances were certainly an issue with my Pioneer 545.

There is a workaround for this, which is, if you know that something you are recording will exceed 2 hours in length, then drop down one 'quality mode' when you make that recording - for example most HDD recorders have a mode between 'SP' and 'LP' in which they will record up to 2.5 hours of SD material which can then be high-speed copied onto DVD, preserving the original aspect. For films especially, you have to be aware of whether the recording (with any adverts removed) will be in excess of 2 hours and adjust the recording mode downwards if need be.

[spamfritter]

Yes my work around seems to work OK now. I don't think recorder has a high speed copy feature. This Panasonic DMR-BWT740 DVD / Bluray / HDD recorder auto adjusts DVD recording speed/quality automatically. The only limit seems to be the number of titles you can cram onto 1 DVD together with the lengths of the individual recordings. I must admit, I have never used a bluray disc to record to --- yet. I always try to edit out the adverts on the HDD before I copy them over. A 2 hour 20 mins recording with ads comes down usually to just under 2 hours.

[SiriusHardware]

740 definitely does have high-speed copy. Page 53 of the manual, which is here.

https://tda.panasonic-europe-service...16/sqt0139.pdf

I have a BTW850 which has a very similar user interface. When you are in the 'copy' menu you may see various symbols next to the 'titles' (recordings you can choose from) - a double arrow pointing to a disc, crossed out, means that the title can not be high speed copied, usually because it is too big to fit the 2HR capacity of a standard DVD.

Using high speed copy (or not) is usually one of the choices you have to make when you are preparing a 'copy list' of titles to copy to a disc. Here's a screen from the 'Copy' menus of my 850.

On my Samsung telly I have found a button on the remote marked "PIC SIZE" hardly does anything on some channels but it has a custom mode which I set to max width and appropriate height for 4:3 onto 16:9 it nearly gets there!

[Graham G3ZVT]

I saw this 4:3 promo after "Countdown" on channel 4 on Thursday. It was proceeded by a retro scheduled programmes "slide".

They are promoting "It's a Sin" as "Brand new 80s drama" I didn't watch the actual episode, is the entire series going to be shown in 4:3?

Anyone going to watch it on a vintage colour set?

https://youtu.be/n21SLyOI0Xo

[raditechman]

I get annoyed when some TV channels show 4:3 in 16:9 so we lose the top an bottom of the picture. One example is Murder She Wrote one channel sows them 4:3 whilst another channel has the same series in 16:9
They also ruined the original Star Trek TV series when the "remastered" it and made it 16:9 from 4:3, (they also added stereo sound effects).
There are many other examples.
Please TV companies show films in the ratio they were made.

John

[SiriusHardware]

Just recently I surfed onto the 1995 'Pride And Prejudice' (Firth/Ehle) with all episodes being shown back to back on one of the 'lesser' channels, but although originally made in 4:3 it was being shown 'zoomed' with the top and bottom sliced off. This only made the original low resolution look even worse.

We have a proper DVD copy of it somewhere, thankfully.

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by raditechman

I get annoyed when some TV channels show 4:3 in 16:9 so we lose the top an bottom of the picture. One example is Murder She Wrote one channel sows them 4:3 whilst another channel has the same series in 16:9
They also ruined the original Star Trek TV series when the "remastered" it and made it 16:9 from 4:3, (they also added stereo sound effects).
There are many other examples.
Please TV companies show films in the ratio they were made.

John

I had thought ST:TNG was made with stereo sound from the start.

Some (mostly American) shows from the 1990s were made on film, but then all the post-production was done on computer with videotape final masters.

This means it's been hard to re-issue them on Blu-Ray as even if the film negatives and other elements survive it's going to be expensive to give them a high definition remaster.

[SiriusHardware]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

I had thought ST:TNG was made with stereo sound from the start.

He did say original Trek (Shatner / Nimoy) , not Next-Gen.

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

He did say original Trek (Shatner / Nimoy) , not Next-Gen.

Sorry I misread it.

[dave walsh]

I'm looking at all sorts of things all the time [eg TPTV/ BBC4/CH5/Ch4/Blaze etc etc ] I'm often keen to see the material in any sort of format or aspect, as an amateur Archivist but I understand the irritation. It can become an obsession though! In the sixties the BBC wouldn't screen even scoop "live" news 8mm film material because it didn't meet the "standards" yet Derek Jarman produced successful feature films in the eighties using the same gauge blown up. Then hand held Sony Videocams were pioneered by CH4 changing the rules for everybody-although with the right aspect no doubt. Mobile phone footage complies with nothing as far as I can judge! It's nice to "see" things done "properly" perhaps but most people aren't so discriminating and would probably agree with Mrs [Spam] Fritter [post 25]. Or is that "Pan Fritter" I'm more concerned about "graduates", "celebrities" or officials who say "like" or "obviously" every twenty seconds because they can't manage to string a sentence together!

Dave W

[Richard_FM]

I remember in the 1990s occasionally camcorder footage would feature on the news if it was the only source for an event, normally with the caption like Amateur Video.

[SiriusHardware]

At least camcorder footage was locked to a single orientation so we didn't have the depressing spectacle of mobile phone footage (almost always shot vertically) being displayed on landscape format TVs and monitors.

Folks: If you are ever at the scene of a disaster and decide to film it rather than rush in and try to help... please remember to turn your phone on its side.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

At least camcorder footage was locked to a single orientation so we didn't have the depressing spectacle of mobile phone footage (almost always shot vertically) being displayed on landscape format TVs and monitors.

You would think so wouldn't you? But on a cruise holiday I leant my traditionally shaped camcorder to someone in our party and he managed to shoot most of the footage with the thing turned through 90deg.

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

Folks: If you are ever at the scene of a disaster and decide to film it rather than rush in and try to help... please remember to turn your phone on its side.

That's rule #1
Rule #2 is don't mention this to the people around you who are also filming.
That will put you at an advantage when you
solicit bids from BBC/ITN/SKY
What a mercenary mind I have.