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

[cheerfulcharlie]

Originally Posted by 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

Until the 1960s 16mm film 'didn't meet the standards' either to the TV engineering fraternity as source material..once these standards were relaxed..it saw the emergence of programmes like 'World in Action' where controversial subjects could be quickly filmed and put together with the budget being used for things like travel rather than bulky 35mm equipment and film stock. They also used 8mm film (blown up) to film in dangerous and covert situations.

.

[dave walsh]

Exactly Charlie. When an Aircraft came down short of Ringway [in the Stockport suburbs] they had 16mm footage offered but it wasn't good enough! I was really surprised to hear about that much later. As a Dylan enthusiast, I'm forever grateful that his 1965 and 66 Tours were captured forever by the late great D A Pennebaker using lashed together "hand held" 16mm gear that could be operated by one person. [I believe he was honoured with a Congressional Medal or something from the Smithsonian]. The 16mm BBC Film Units at the time involved a cumbersome 5 man crew including the sound recordist! Brian Eno once did an Art Installation [at MOMA?] which was a Skyscraper filmed over several hours as it slowly got dark and the lights came on, using a Video Cam [turned sideways] and then shown continuously on one of the new fangled WS TV sets stood on it's end, so you literally got the full height ratio It was surprisingly effective

Dave

There is some film quality parallel here with me being told at College that Dylan didn't reach the standard for a "Modern Poet", as he hadn't been dead for 50 years. I said but he's only 25! Beat's me how he got that Nobel Prize. Times must have been a'changing.

[Graham G3ZVT]

The last two posts have challenged everything I thought I knew about TV film.

Surly 16mm was always the bread & butter of TV production, particularly news?

[Philco-Pete]

Originally Posted by rambo1152

The last two posts have challenged everything I thought I knew about TV film.

Surly 16mm was always the bread & butter of TV production, particularly news?

True. At least for the period between 16mm being deemed acceptable and the advent of "lightweight" video kit.
NB: BBC film crews varied in size depending on the department/requirement; News and current affairs would often use a three man crew( Cameraman/Assistant /Sound recordist) some documentary and specialist shoots would have just two ( Camera/Sound), with the attendant problem of having enough film magazines loaded. Typical camera crew for Drama inserts would be maybe five (Cam/Assistant Cam/Recordist Assistant Recordist/Grip) All scalable for large projects. The essential Sparks (Lighting) would be additional to the basic camera crew as required.
Apologies for continuing to let this thread drift ever further OT
Pete( ex-BBC Film Dept)

[cheerfulcharlie]

Originally Posted by rambo1152

The last two posts have challenged everything I thought I knew about TV film.

Surly 16mm was always the bread & butter of TV production, particularly news?

Yes it was - but not always, in the 1950s it was regarded as a Mickey Mouse home movie format, not to be used seriously.

[Brigham]

The BBC didn't regard 16mm as a BROADCAST standard long beyond the 1950s.
It was acceptable as an EXPORT medium firstly. I believe the advent of 'Super 16' helped its credibility for drama and the like.

[dave walsh]

I think we are still on aspect ratios whatever the size of film favoured by our national broadcaster decades ago. I can confirm that 16mm was prominent for the period outlined by Philco Pete. I was interviewed at BH having got into the last 40 of the open competition for Sound Recordists that the Beeb held circa 1968. The system was 16mm film running along side sprocketed audio tape of the same size for editing [I still have my notes]. Amateurs [like Ken Russell] tried to emulate this with 8mm set ups and there was a commercial version for the home market but using a sound stripe and a marker pulse. I was told that crews could be up to five people but initially you worked in-house with the possibility of going on location if promoted. BBC attitudes were illustrated beautifully when in response to my enthusiastic analysis of the TV Industry [having scraped the technical questions] a kindly executive leaned over and said "You do realise that this is an interview for a Sound Recordist post?" I said "Oh yes!" puzzled, not realising he meant the Producers Course was for Oxbridge Graduates only. Of course Ken broke that rule and every other one! [I was very young!] They offered me a job on a shaky telephone line to the far North [ie Manchester] but then withdrew it, saying there'd been a mistake

Dave W

The chap on the balcony during the famous Embassy siege in the nineties [when the SAS carried out their rescue] was a Sound Recordist who had been told to get a Visa for the next job. Opportunities missed eh!

[Simondm]

They have paid for the full area of the screen, so they'll use the full area of the screen.

Seriously, if it was me, I'd render-out a short section using various settings, to see what worked, and what didn't.

You can force the display, by adding your own borders left-right and rendering it as 16:9 (or 14:9), but IMHO it's probably better to leave it as 4:3 so it can be displayed to taste on the viewing device.

If you force 16:9 by adding your own borders, you can end up with the ridiculous situation that "Pick" Freeview channel often shows, of a 4.3 picture surrounded completely by a black border. I think it's because they just can't be bothered to check the content matches what they expect. So they set their 4:3 flag for old content, without noticing that the recorded format is 4:3 because it's already been pillarboxed by their content supplier, or on ingest.

With the above mangled output, there is no "zoom" setting override on our domestic TVs that will allow proper display without the border (i.e. with correct aspect-ratio pixels).

IMHO, 4:3 doesn't look too bad on a 14:9 or 16:9 display, especially bearing in mind the original CRTs were very often 5:4. A lot of the edges of the frame were cut off when originally viewed at home.

[dave walsh]

Good one Simon-wise comment but purists have their own view I appreciate As I've said a sense of humour does help! When the BBC did show occasional introductory "wide screen" films at one time, as an experiment, people [unbelievably] actually did write to the Radio Times using that "I've paid for it" argument. I've still got a 4x3 set with white markers placed to remind me what a future WS image would consist of. Then one Xmas I looked forward to the Beeb showing "2001 A Space Odyssey" [Possibly my favourite film of all time] in a WS ratio. They did, but with a with a silver tinsel strip [ex Xmas Tree] to fill in the "gaps" across the top and bottom . It would be impossible to have done anything more distracting. What complete idiot thought that would be a good idea [someone who didn't like the film? ]. They never tried it again!

Dave W

[peter_scott]

Cathovisor over on V.Rat recently sent me the BBC standards for Television Delivery:

1.8.3. Picture Aspect Ratio
Archive material that is not 16:9 should be zoomed to fill the 16:9 raster where possible without compromising the image quality or composition. Alternatively, it may be presented in a pillar-box or letterbox format, which:
• may be of an intermediate ratio between 4:3 and 16:9, but must be of consistent width across sequences;
• must be centrally framed in the 16:9 raster;
• must show no geometrical distortion;
• must have clean and sharp pillar-box edges (i.e. any video or film edge artefacts may need to be blanked);
• must be black outside the active picture, unless otherwise specified by the broadcaster.

I would assume that "zoomed to fill the 16:9 raster" would mean that the zooming applied to width and height to preserve the geometry and thus the width would be cropped.

Peter

[Dave Moll]

Originally Posted by peter_scott

• must be black outside the active picture, unless otherwise specified by the broadcaster.

All to often the broadcaster seems to specify an out-of-focus repeat of the image when its one of those ghastly portrait-orientation mobile 'phone images.

Originally Posted by peter_scott

I would assume that "zoomed to fill the 16:9 raster" would mean that the zooming applied to width and height to preserve the geometry and thus the width would be cropped.

If 4:3 is zoomed to fill 16:9, it would presumably be the top and bottom that would be cropped.

[peter_scott]

Originally Posted by Dave Moll

If 4:3 is zoomed to fill 16:9, it would presumably be the top and bottom that would be cropped.

True! I was thinking of my complaint with the BBC that was the subject of Cathovisor's message to me,

Peter

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by Dave Moll

If 4:3 is zoomed to fill 16:9, it would presumably be the top and bottom that would be cropped.

If I HAD to do this I think it would be better to crop more of the bottom and less of the top.

If they really wanted, they could dynamically shift the framing depending on the composition of the shot, and if that sounds fanciful, isn't that what they sometimes did on the other axis when viewing was primarily 4:3?

It was called "Pan & Scan", my system could be called Nod & Dodge or Tilt & Wilt.

[peter_scott]

Originally Posted by rambo1152

If I HAD to do this I think it would be better to crop more of the bottom and less of the top.

I find with films nowadays I need to read subtitles and I would include American films in that category.

Peter

[SiriusHardware]

Nod & Dodge or Tilt & Wilt.

I think you'd have to do that, for one thing subtitles (where embedded in the source material, such as where someone momentarily speaks in a different language) are usually right at the bottom of the screen.

My main objection to 'zooming' is that you lose quite a few of the original 625 lines when you hack the top and bottom off, so what remains is in even poorer resolution than before. I'd rather have the whole vertical picture intact and in its original aspect, and have black bars at the sides.

[Graham G3ZVT]

That's particularly true since it seems the concept of a "graphic safe area" is no longer complied with.

[Eidolon]

Originally Posted by Mach One

I hope that this is the correct place for this. I am trying to find out the correct setting for making sure that a 4:3 picture looks correct in a 16:9 television picture.

In my video editing software (Final Cut Pro) I can adjust the x and y axis of the picture in percentage terms. What exact percentage do I have to put in the x setting to make a 4:3 picture correctly display in a 16:9 basic background as it were? I have tried to look it up and tried to work it out from first principles but failed - at least as far as I can tell - it still looks wrong. It's somewhere around 75% I reckon.

Sorry for this ignorant question...

If you're doing a 16:9 project, and are going to put the 4:3 video into it, as opposed to doing a 4:3 project itself, then most editing programmes usually have some option that can be reached by clicking the file and choosing how you want it to display in the 16:9 frame.

[Nicola_Jayne]

Originally Posted by rambo1152

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

I don't believe so but I binged it on All4 on the computer...

the Series going to be a Touchy subject in some of the tech communities as very much still DADT if not openly hostile towards LGBTQ+ topics...

I suspect people will also be rivet counting some aspects of it and anachronisms in it

[spamfritter]

Originally Posted by 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.

Not seen that screen before. I will have to find a bit of "playtime" when the management is not about. I need to study that page of the manual -- Thanks