4x3? 16x9? Aspect Ratio: A History

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 1:39pm

For all you film geeks and home theatre geeks out there (like me!) ...


Everything you ever wanted to know, and probably stuff you didn't want to know, too.

[tazber]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 1:41pm

Just bookmarked that for later! Thanks for sharing besty.

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 1:59pm

It's long-winded, but it goes through the whole history of how film (and TV) evolved from 4x3, through all the various film ratios, to 16x9 HDTVs.

He does a very good job of explaining it, though.

EDIT: One of the things that bugs me (only slightly) is the way DVDs and SD broadcasts are framed at 1.33:1 ratio. That's really the silent movie ratio before sound came along and movies were give the new "Academy" ratio of 1.37:1.

What does that mean?

It means that nearly all older sound movies, from 1929 up until the early 1950s, have a tiny bit cropped off the sides when they are shown on TV or mastered to DVD.

You may have noticed this if you have a 16x9 TV at home. If you play a DVD of a film, the black bars on the sides (pillarboxing) is actually wider than if you play the same movie mastered to HD on Blu-ray. Those pillarbox bars aren't as wide, aka, more picture is shown horizontally. Sometimes, the image is just squeezed horizontally to make up the difference, meaning films aren't shown at their proper ratio. That may be flattering to actors who want to look just a hair thinner, but it makes for a weird slightly "pinheaded" look, too. Other mastering will just crop a bit of the image off on the sides, to keep the proportions accurate.

Either way, it ain't right. I like watching older sound movies on Blu-ray for that reason. They are the proper Academy Ratio of 1.37:1 (more image showing), rather than 1.33:1.

Updated On: 6/27/13 at 01:59 PM

[DAME]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 2:09pm

Very informative and fascinating. Thank you so much. You have become my go to person.

[morosco]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 2:31pm

All my years and I still can't understand "anamorphic". I don't know why it's considered a good thing. Everything I read gets me more and more confused. Is there a simple explanation for it without a lot of technical details that are over my head?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 3:35pm

I always ask myself, "How would Janis Paige explain it?"

http://youtu.be/X0kHKijb8jI

[tazber]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 3:49pm

morosco I found this book helpful in explaining what anamorphic means. Especially the NotADamnCheese section.

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 6:01pm

PJ, I LOVE that number ... and I love Janis Paige, too.

As for Anamorphic, it really just means "squeezed" horizontally. People try to assign it a specific ratio, but that's not true. It's a technique of both filming and projecting at a wider ratio than the actual film stock. The reason it revolutionized the movies is that it was really pretty simple:

1) Film the movie using an "anamorphic" lens that records the image on regular 35mm film stock. No special stock is needed. Just a special lens, that squeezes the image horizontally. So everything looks really tall and skinny to the naked eye.

2) Project that same film on a wider screen using a projector lens that stretches that same "squeezed" image and widens it, making it the correct ratio again in the theatres.

It allowed the industry to use the same cameras, the same projectors they already had, and the same film stock---all 35mm---so all they had to buy to make it work were new lenses for the cameras and new lenses for the projectors.

The exact same principal is applied for DVDs, which was very "forward thinking" of the industry when they first released the DVD format on the market. 16x9 TVs hadn't even caught on yet, but they knew they were coming on a huge scale.

DVD (standard def) video is all recorded on 4x3 video (720x480 D1 NTSC pixels, here in the USA). It's the same, no matter what. That's how the video is recorded.

If it's a 4x3 movie (1.33:1 or 1.37:1, like "old" movies, pre-1950s, the 720x480 movie plays back on your DVD player at a standard ratio (no stretching of the image horizontally).

If the movie is any of the various widescreen film ratios, the DVD video can be recorded two different ways. One is good, the other is crap.

1) The crap way is to record the widescreen video as "standard" (no anamorphic stretching) and add black bars to "letterbox" the movie into whatever ratio it should be. That is called "4x3 letterboxed, and on any widescreen TV, it looks like total crap, because the image sits in the middle of the screen with both the letterbox bars on the top and bottom AND the pillarbox bars on the sides, because it's a 4x3 image. It looks like a small rectangle playing on your TV with black bars on all four sides. I usually "zoom" the image, which of course lessens the quality and clarity significantly, but at least I'm not watching a 30" widescreen movie on my 60" TV.

2) The good way is to record the widescreen video as "anamorphic" (also known as "enhanced for 16x9 TVs"). This means the image was "squeezed" when it was recorded on the same 720x480 (D1 NTSC) video. And your DVD player actually stretches the image horizontally for playback, just like the anamorphic projector lenses do in a movie theatre. It fills the TV screen horizontally, and you may or may not get any black bars (depending on the various widescreen film ratios).

Updated On: 6/27/13 at 06:01 PM

[javero]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 7:01pm

Besty,

Several friends of mine and I are still complaining that our first HDTV sets didn't last nearly as long as the cathode ray tube predecessors, which we all predicted by the way. What's new is not always what's best where technology and art are concerned. And HDTV @ 1080p or 1080i has not done certain stitched-up screen stars any favors.

If you haven't done so already, I highly recommend leafing thru the legendary cinematographer John Alton's book 'Painting with Light'. You strike me as someone who would enjoy it. Though it applies more to motion picture filming I still refer to it when shooting still pix on film. I've got a 1962 Fujica-35 Auto-M rangefinder which is much funner to use than any smartphone or digicam.

Thanks for sharing the link, btw.

Updated On: 6/27/13 at 07:01 PM

[NoName3]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 8:12pm

Everything, absolutely everything, you could ever want to know about the history of aspect ratios, color film, film sound, and much, much more, in easily readable language -- and lots of pictures!

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com

Updated On: 6/27/13 at 08:12 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 9:13pm

Great links and info! Thanks for sharing them!

[morosco]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 11:20pm

It's a technique of both filming and projecting at a wider ratio than the actual film stock.

Bless you besty. Now I get it. :)

[AwesomeDanny]

Posted: 6/27/13 at 11:33pm

This was a very interesting video--thanks for sharing! I just have one question that I'm wondering if someone could answer. A few years ago, I had a geometry teacher who told us that the purpose of a "widescreen" aspect ratio is to reflect the golden ratio, the most pleasing visual ratio to the human eye. Was this a true factor in the move away from the 4:3 aspect ratio? I think it makes perfect sense, although the golden ratio is 1.618, so while it is very close to some of those aspect ratios covered in the video, I don't believe it was ever used.

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/28/13 at 7:16am

To my knowledge it was never used, either, but that's an interesting idea!

The closest would be 1.66:1, which is also referred to today as "Academy flat" widescreen ratio.

They would take the 4x3 Academy ratio (1.37:1), and instead of using an anamorphic lens, they would just crop off a bit from the top and bottom of the image that was shot to create the 1.66:1.

It started in the '50s, but was used a lot in the '60s and early '70s. Films that were shot that way include Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Some Like It Hot, Night of the Hunter, and several Disney films of that era, including The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, The Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood, etc.

Since the image wasn't stretched, but rather "blown up" or "zoomed in" when projected, it created a lot of added/magnified film grain, so most movies shot that way don't look that good.

The interesting thing which has caused controversy today is that several of these movies have been released in the standard 4x3 ratio, or "open matte" which removes the top and bottom crops and actually shows viewers MORE info vertically on the screen. This was not the way these films were intended to be viewed (or projected). In some instances it adds camera flaws like mic booms hanging down in the shot, or a startling one from Willy Wonka: you can see the air tubes on the floor going into Violet Beuregarde's blueberry costume as she's being filled with air! Those were supposed to be cropped off by the matte, but in an "open matte" 4x3 DVD, you can see this "extra" area at the top and bottom, exposing the air tubes.

When "Academy flat" movies are displayed properly on 16x9 (1.77:1) TV sets, you will get very small pillarbox bars on the sides to get to the 1.66:1 ratio.