A Wider Net

Episode 1:  Fitting the rectangle peg in the square hole, a tutorial on aspect ratios.

Ever been watching the Red Sox / Yankees game and say to yourself:  “Is it just me, or has CC Sabathia gained even MORE weight?”  Most likely, you are at a friend’s house that has a brand new 1080p flat screen watching 4×3 Standard Definition and the image is stretched.  Now, if you’re like me, this drives you more insane than the revolving personnel at the Red Sox shortstop position.

It can be extremely confusing to some when it comes to aspect ratios and video, but I am here to help.  In music, different time signatures can confuse even a seasoned player, but at the end of the day you can break down any time signature into either a 3 or a 4.  But this is a discussion for another day.  Today, we are talking about images not sound, and we can break it down into either a rectangle or a square.

In the world of video you have 4×3, which is a square:

or, 16×9, which is a rectangle:

Pretty easy, right?  There is one more aspect ratio that is common for most people, but we’ll get to that later.  Let’s just get any more confusion about these two out of the way.   The confusions arise when you have a video of one and a playback device of another.  The one you hear most is letterbox, or fitting a rectangle into a square.

All we have done here is taken our rectangle and scaled it down to fit into the square box.  In doing so, we have created empty space at the top and bottom of the square box, which is usually filled with black bars.  So when someone say’s the term “letterbox” we are talking about a 4×3 square image with a 16×9 video playing in it.  Even though there is no video in those black bars, it is still part of the image.

Now what do we do if there is a 4×3 video but we have a 16×9 playback device?  Well, you do the same thing, just call it by a different name.

When playing back this way it is referred to as a pillar box.  When watching HD television stations you will notice this when they go to commercial, since a lot of stations play their spots in Standard Definition which are 4×3.  A good example of this is when you tune into SportsCenter to see if the Red Sox are fighting for the Wild Card or the AL East.  ESPN actually puts their logo in the side bars.  Another spot you will start to see this is on YouTube.  YouTube now streams all its video in a 16×9 player.  If you upload a 4×3 video, you will see black bars on the sides.  You can see this here with Cramer’s Video Demo Reel.  When I created this I went at it with the intent of doing a 5.1 Surround Mix to play in our main conference room, which has a 16×9 screen option.  On the YouTube site, if you click on the ‘HQ’ button on the player the video will hop between a full 16×9 image and a 4×3 letterbox image.

These are all examples of fitting the entire image of one into the other CORRECTLY, which for my money is the way to go.  An image should be viewed the way it was created.  There are other (or as I see it, INCORRECT) ways to use 4×3 and 16×9.

Squeezing a 16×9 image into a 4×3 playback is referred to as 16×9 anamorphic.  This is when you see Big Papi taller and skinnier than in real life.  Now, even though I said this was incorrect it does have a place and purpose.  The next time you go and buy a DVD and on the back it says “16×9 Aspect Ratio / formatted for Widescreen TVs” the video on the DVD in its native form is actually this size.  What your DVD player does is take that image and stretch it back out for your 16×9 TV…OR, it will letterbox it for your 4×3 TV, depending on what you have the DVD player settings on.  If you have a 4×3 TV and the DVD player set to 16×9, you image will look like the picture above.  And if I have bought the popcorn, I will ask for the remote so I can change the settings.

This is the most common mistake in aspect ratio playback.   It is wrong and there is no excuse for it.  Everyone looks short and fat and all the text and graphics look wrong.  A simple pillar box will fix it.  Check your TV manual to see how to accomplish this, although when watching HD channels you are at the mercy of the station who is broadcasting.  Beware, TNT does this for their commercials.

Now, we have one more aspect ratio to talk about, but since I would imagine most of you don’t have a 35MM projector and screen at home, you are still always going to be dealing with 4×3 and 16×9.  This aspect ratio is film, which is 2.35:1

The same techniques are applied here, although when you letterbox this you get a little bit of black bars on a 16×9 playback and more bars on a 4×3 playback.

So if you have just gotten your copy of Slumdog Millionare from Netflix, your 16×9 TV is setup and your DVD settings are on 16×9 widescreen playback, the DVD will still have black bars on the top and bottom.  Don’t worry, this is correct.

How does all this relate to the web?  Well, when it comes to that, there are no rules.  Any and all compressed formats will play ANY aspect ratio.  The internet is bound by no rules.  A good example of this is one of my favorite websites to visit, Apple Movie Trailers

(***side note*** click on either medium or large option on the trailers, not the featurettes)

A 16×9 aspect ratio trailer

A 4×3 aspect ratio trailer

A 2.35:1 Film aspect ratio trailer

What have we learned?  Well, aspect ratios are either square or rectangle, and you just have to stop and think about how to play one inside the other.  Like I said before, my preference is to always play the image as it was originally created.  Apparently there is a whole movement out there.

Join me next time when we talk more about 16×9 ratios, movie trailers, HD format options, and why Julio Lugo was a waste of money.

Tags: Suite Talk

This entry was posted on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Video Production. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.