to letterbox or not to letterbox

[Vince Becquiot]

With many people now purchasing widescreens, letterboxing is no longer the cool thing, since it will actually put black bars not only on the top and bottom, but also on the sides. So you end up with a small video in the center of the screen.

So your options are now either blow up your 4:3 video inside a widescreen project, or start shooting 16:9 or HD.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Todd Roush]

Hi Lillian,

It is really a matter of taste and market but I actually disagree with the previous post although it depends on your initial aspect ratio.

ALL of the DVDs I now product are letterboxed. The reason I do this is because it offers the best of both worlds to my clients.

1. They can watch in widescreen on their 4:3 TVs.
2. When they upgrade to 16:9 TVs they can use the Zoom or “Wide” function to zoom the picture to fill their entire screen rather than looking at a square in the middle of it.

The best option for resolution is to stick hard and fast to 4:3 but I have not produced a 4:3 product in over a year. 4:3 is old school but for some reason the Wedding market that is 40% of my business is driving HD…even more than TV networks oddly.

Since I edit exclusively in HDV currently I always product both a Blue Ray disk and a DVD since I will almost certainly be able to sell the upgrade to Blue Ray once the customer sees it down the line.

Nobody wants to view an image with everybody having that stretched “fat” look on a flat panel, PARTICULARLY a bride.

That said, you get more res with 4:3 on a DVD. A closeup on a subject is about 1/2 the size in 16/9 letterbox which hurts.

4:3 is a dead medium except for the ancient local TV channels who are too cheap to upgrade. Frankly, for intimate close ups I will miss “aspects” (get it) of 4:3. It’s not always best to have to fill a speech in with a shot of a tree.

I hope this helps.

Best,

Todd

Todd Roush
Dreamscape Digital Media
Canon XH-A1’s – Dell Studio XPS i7, 920, 2.66 gig,6 gigs RAM (soon to be 12) 650 gig SATA, 1TB eSATA external, 3TB USB(storage). 512gig ATI video card, 28″ HannsG Monitor, 24″ Dell Monitor.

[Todd Roush]

PS, sorry for the double post.

If you’re ACTUALLY working for local TV, you are probably very poor but doing exciting work. You are also most likely using VERY high quality but old equipment.

I ran into a local FOX news team covering a concert that my band played at, they were using my OLD camera, the Panasonic AG-DVX100.

Cost effective and why change the gear until their market actually changes?

Best,

Todd

Todd Roush
Dreamscape Digital Media
Canon XH-A1’s – Dell Studio XPS i7, 920, 2.66 gig,6 gigs RAM (soon to be 12) 650 gig SATA, 1TB eSATA external, 3TB USB(storage). 512gig ATI video card, 28″ HannsG Monitor, 24″ Dell Monitor.

[Vince Becquiot]

Todd,

I think we have to be careful about definitions here. I believe the previous poster was referring to physically adding a letterbox on 4:3 footage, but not working in a widescreen anamorphic project. This will NOT play nice with a widesreen TV, it will play with bars all around.

You also have to differentiate broadcast and DVDs in that case, since there is no such thing as standard def widescreen in broadcast, it’s all letterboxed. And then you have Enhanced-Definition that a few stations ran for a while before they switched to HD, which actually supported anamorphic widescreen, nothing too confusing 🙂

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Lillian Fidler]

Thank you both for your input. I think it might help if I add a bit of clarification. I am editing in HD widescreen actually. My final will be output to dvd. I guess my question is do I need to add anything extra for it to have the letterbox effect or will it do that automatically since it is widescreen. I have alot of experience in graphic design and am just now moving into video editing and am just getting used to the terminology, file types, etc. I’m a little unclear still, so pardon my ignorance :.) thanks again for your help and any other comments that you have based on my setup.

Lillian

Lillian Fidler
Jillian Productions
St. John’s, Newfoundland
Canada

[Vince Becquiot]

Keep it widescreen in the export settings and you are good to go.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Todd Roush]

Hi Vince,

The last 4:3 project I did I letter boxed because the customer expected ‘modern widescreen’ and I was still shooting with my DVX, but that’s a different subject.

Maybe you can help me out with this because there are so many ways to do this now. I think that no matter how you slice it your are getting bars on top if you are doing widescreen. Is this not correct? In the following example I use AVIs instead of .mpg.

For instance:
1. If I export “widescreen AVI” from CS4 to DVD Architect, DVD architect reads that the content is 16:9 and essentially inserts it’s own bars.
2. If I export widescreen as a 4:3 AVI to DVD Architect with visible black bars as part of the actual source output, then CS4 is adding the bars.
***I have tried both of these methods and the net affect is exactly the same; a small image on a flat panel with large black bars on the sides and small black bars on top. If we used all the resolution of the DVD we would have a full square in the middle of the TV screen with no bars top or bottom but black bars on either side.

Either way I am guessing our effective widescreen resolution is something like 380×720? But, by doing this it allows the user of a flat panel (at least mine) to zoom in to eliminate both the bars on the side AND on the top so the image is not stretched making everybody look short and wide. I went down to check my Apocalypse Now Redux widescreen and it’s exactly the same way as I do it.

I hope I’m making sense. There are 3 wide/zoom choices on my Bravia.

1. Watch Square.
2. Stretch 4:3 to widescreen and make everybody short and fat.
3. Crop the sides AND the top allowing full screen 16:9 viewing of widescreen DVDs.

This is why I don’t do 4:3 anymore, because if you deliver 4:3 the user is stuck with either the full 4:3 square or the stretch. They could crop the top but might not be inclined to because there may be important content in the top and bottom.

Sorry to be so wordy but without pictures it’s interesting to explain.

I would love your thoughts.

Best,

Todd

Todd Roush
Dreamscape Digital Media
Canon XH-A1’s – Dell Studio XPS i7, 920, 2.66 gig,6 gigs RAM (soon to be 12) 650 gig SATA, 1TB eSATA external, 3TB USB(storage). 512gig ATI video card, 28″ HannsG Monitor, 24″ Dell Monitor.

[Vince Becquiot]

Assuming your TV display is set to normal (I’m guessing what they refer to as Square), and your DVD player setup to widescreen, a widescreen project will fill the screen, no bars. Keep in mind that most people don’t mess with the display settings, so they should be set to normal by default.

A 4:3 project with no letterboxing will have the pillar bars on the sides, which is the way it should be. A 4:3 project with added letter boxing (template) will have added bars all around.

The 2 only ways to make a 4:3 project fit a widescreen are:

1- Inside a widescreen project, stretch the sides until you fill the screen (stretch effect)

2- Zoom in the footage until you fill the side, and add pan and scan keyframes. Loss of resolution will ensue, as well as potentially a lot of work, still the way most 4:3 footage is converted to 16:9…

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area