Prevent HD double dipping (1 Viewer)

[Ed St. Clair]

16:9 is the HD standard. Love all the stuff that is now done 16:9 native, for a perfect match (for those w/o overscan), from camera, to software, to display!

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Personally, I would not be opposed to having a tri-position aspect ratio flag, allowing the same scan structure [pixel map] to be allocated to 4:3, 16:9, or 7:3 -- the first and last are, basically, Academy and Cinemascope ratios.

On the other hand, you have to look at it this way. Having one standard for things is a very good idea, because it reduces design problems [for engineers] and confusion [for matrketing and for the public]. It also allows the production people to do their jobs, instead of getting snarled up in choosing equipment and settings.
16:9 was chosen precisely because of its relation to the theatrical aspect ratios -- the Japanese had originally proposed 5:3, which is a little narrower [and a common projection AR in Asia and Europe], but some clever cat at Sarnoff Labs was comparing all the different screen shapes in use and found one which was a compromise. Basically, 16:9 is the geometric mean of Cinemascope and Academy ratios, so the same amount is lost to letterbox bars on a "scope" film as to pillarbox bars on an "open" film.
Obviously, the converse is also true: if you cropped an Academy film, you'd lose as much picture as if you cropped a Scope film. Let's hope it doesn't come to that; I remember an article by some doofus who saw 16:9 as an opportunity to correct the "sins" of the old cinematographers, said "sins" including shooting at "extreme widescreen ratios" which weren't TV-friendly -- in this guy's particular paradise, everyone would be "protecting" for 16:9 no matter what ratio he was shooting at. Sounds dreadful to me.
Anyway, 16:9 is also very close to the standard "flat" widescreen ratio [really about 11:6], and I don't know if we'll see such films cropped slightly at the edges or opened up a little at top and bottom, rather than properly letterboxed; the difference is small enough I don't know if anyone will notice, either.

I mean, given that these HD discs will supposedly be supporting framerates of 30 [interlace], 30 [progessive], 60, 29.97, 24, and 23.98, and possibly 25 Hz, and scanstructures of 480, 720, 1080, and possibly 576 lines, with possible aspect ratios of 4:3 and 16:9 for the Standard Definition formats, the video processing is going to be a real mess anyway. I don't care what Nicolas Negroponte says, digital processing doesn't do away with the need for standards.

A constant-height system, with square pixels added or subtracted to make up the aspect ratio, would be interesting, but it would have the defect that data transfer rates, and thus play times and required bandwidths, would change according to the aspect ratio, in a big way. It might encourage cropping.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Oh yeah!
Wouldn't have it any other way. Just...
To bad we didn't get the notice sooner so that "everything" could have been one ratio.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Oh...there's no gaurantee! But we can hope that the studios will preserve OAR with pre-recorded HD software since it's primarily aimed at the cinephile-collector who cares about things like OAR.

But I'm sure we'll see our share of "pan and scan" 16x9 HD transfers...probably with both 2.35 and 1.33 OAR content! We must be ever vigillant...

dave

 

[Juan C]

Actually, I opened a thread to try to raise some awareness towards this potential problem, but most people were pretty nonchalant about it. Or maybe I'm too paranoid. Or both.