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Aspect ratios, pillarbox and letterbox
Hi, I work for a post facility and I deal with different formats and aspect ratios, mostly for digital cinema delivery.
Sometimes I’m asked to deliver to broadcasters. In their specs, I don’t find any suggestion on how to deal with letterboxing or pillarboxing. For example, a 2K film scaled down to 1920 x 1080 leaves some small black letterbox… And a Full HD video leaves some minor pillarbox when scaled to widescreen SD. What is the common practice? Should I leave these letterbox / pillaborx or it’s better to scale up the image (and slightly crop) to fill the container? -
2 Replies
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There is no answer.
Some broadcasters have specs, some don’t
Then their is your / the directors taste.
Then there is the concern that ‘some’ TV sets do ‘smart scaling’, detecting letterbox / pillarbox and do ‘something’ to the image to ‘make it look better’Watch TV, see what you like. (Eg nowadays it’s common to do a blurred / mirrored version left right for vertical video from a phone (or supposedly to be phone)
For theater, I would always letterbox / pillarbox with black if it’s mixed sources. But that’s a different viewer experience.
Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com -
Thank you very much for you answer…
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