Letter-boxing is the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the film's original aspect ratio. The resulting video-graphic image has mattes of empty space above and below it; these mattes are part of each frame of the video signal.
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard-definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects.
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than 4:3 (12:9).
35 mm film is a film gauge used in filmmaking, and the film standard. In motion pictures that record on film, 35 mm is the most commonly used gauge. The name of the gauge is not a direct measurement, and refers to the nominal width of the 35 mm format photographic film, which consists of strips 1.377 ± 0.001 inches (34.976 ± 0.025 mm) wide. The standard image exposure length on 35 mm for movies is four perforations per frame along both edges, which results in 16 frames per foot of film.
CinemaScope is an anamorphic lens series used, from 1953 to 1967, and less often later, for shooting widescreen films that, crucially, could be screened in theatres using existing equipment, albeit with a lens adapter.
Anamorphic widescreen is a process by which a comparatively wide widescreen image is horizontally compressed to fit into a storage medium with a narrower aspect ratio, reducing the horizontal resolution of the image while keeping its full original vertical resolution. Compatible play-back equipment can then expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen image. This is typically used to allow one to store widescreen images on a medium that was originally intended for a narrower ratio, while using as much of the frame – and therefore recording as much detail – as possible.
16:9 (1.78:1) is a widescreen aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9 units.
Negative pulldown is the manner in which an image is exposed on a film stock, described by the number of film perforations spanned by an individual frame. It can also describe whether the image captured on the negative is oriented horizontally or vertically. Changing the number of exposed perforations allows a cinematographer to change both the aspect ratio of the image and the size of the area on the film stock that the image occupies.
High-definition video is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for high-definition, generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines or 576 vertical lines (Europe) is considered high-definition. 480 scan lines is generally the minimum even though the majority of systems greatly exceed that. Images of standard resolution captured at rates faster than normal, by a high-speed camera may be considered high-definition in some contexts. Some television series shot on high-definition video are made to look as if they have been shot on film, a technique which is often known as filmizing.
Cropping is the removal of unwanted outer areas from a photographic or illustrated image. The process usually consists of the removal of some of the peripheral areas of an image to remove extraneous visual data from the picture, improve its framing, change the aspect ratio, or accentuate or isolate the subject matter from its background. Depending on the application, this can be performed on a physical photograph, artwork, or film footage, or it can be achieved digitally by using image editing software. The process of cropping is common to the photographic, film processing, broadcasting, graphic design, and printing businesses.
14:9 is a compromise aspect ratio between 4:3 and 16:9. It is used to create an acceptable picture on both 4:3 and 16:9 TV, conceived following audience tests conducted by the BBC. It has been used by most UK, Irish, French, Spanish, Colombian and Australian terrestrial analogue networks, and in the US on Warner Bros. Discovery' HD simulcast channels with programming and advertising originally compiled in 4:3. Note that 14:9 is not a shooting format; 14:9 material is almost always derived from either a 16:9 or 4:3 shot, and no televisions have ever been made in 14:9.
Super 35 is a motion picture film format that uses exactly the same film stock as standard 35 mm film, but puts a larger image frame on that stock by using the space normally reserved for the optical analog sound track.
Univisium is a proposed universal film format created by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC and his son, Fabrizio, to unify all future theatrical and television films into one respective aspect ratio of 2:1.
The Academy ratio of 1.375:1 is an aspect ratio of a frame of 35 mm film when used with 4-perf pulldown. It was standardized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the standard film aspect ratio in 1932, although similar-sized ratios were used as early as 1928.
The pillarbox effect occurs in widescreen video displays when black bars are placed on the sides of the image. It becomes necessary when film or video that was not originally designed for widescreen is shown on a widescreen display, or a narrower widescreen image is displayed within a wider aspect ratio, such as a 16:9 image in a 2.39:1 frame. The original material is shrunk and placed in the middle of the widescreen frame.
Fullscreen refers to the 4:3 aspect ratio of early standard television screens and computer monitors. Widescreen ratios started to become more popular in the 1990s and 2000s.
Anamorphic format is the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It also refers to the projection format in which a distorted image is "stretched" by an anamorphic projection lens to recreate the original aspect ratio on the viewing screen. The word anamorphic and its derivatives stem from the Greek anamorphoo, compound of morphé with the prefix aná. In the late 1990s and 2000s, anamorphic lost popularity in comparison to "flat" formats such as Super 35 with the advent of digital intermediates; however, in the years since digital cinema cameras and projectors have become commonplace, anamorphic has experienced a considerable resurgence of popularity, due in large part to the higher base ISO sensitivity of digital sensors, which facilitates shooting at smaller apertures.
The technology of television has evolved since its early days using a mechanical system invented by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow in 1884. Every television system works on the scanning principle first implemented in the rotating disk scanner of Nipkow. This turns a two-dimensional image into a time series of signals that represent the brightness and color of each resolvable element of the picture. By repeating a two-dimensional image quickly enough, the impression of motion can be transmitted as well. For the receiving apparatus to reconstruct the image, synchronization information is included in the signal to allow proper placement of each line within the image and to identify when a complete image has been transmitted and a new image is to follow.
Shoot and protect is a technique used in video and film production, in which the material is shot in such a way that the areas of interest within a frame lie within a rectangular "protected area" within the frame, with margins at top and bottom and both sides. The action safe and caption safe areas then lie within this protected area. This allows the resulting material to be cropped to any of a wide range of aspect ratios, whether wider or narrower than the shooting format, without losing the most important features of each shot or having to resort to pan and scan or letterboxing. A 14:9 safe area is often chosen as a compromise between 4:3 and 16:9 frame formats.
The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of its width to its height, and is expressed with two numbers separated by a colon, such as 2.40:1. For the 2.40:1 aspect ratio, the image is 2.40 units wide and 1 unit high. Common aspect ratios are 1.85:1 and 2.40:1 in cinematography, 4:3 and 16:9 in television photography, and 3:2 in still photography. The film was filmed in 2.40:1 widescreen.
