>> ^dag:
I don't like the black bars. It's something about owning a big screen, you don't want to waste part of it.
I don't like pan and scan though. I usually just do a video zoom, with the aspect ratio unlocked. It stretches people's faces - but you don't see it after a couple of minutes. The mind adjusts.


Holy crap... you're joking aren't you? Please? No... oh noooooo.

I did not peg you as one of the 'I don't like black bars on my tv' set.

That's very, very sad.

How anyone can watch content vertically stretched is just... *shudder*

Even when we had a relatively small tv, and it was 4:3 ratio, and what we were watching on it were VHS, so you don't have much resolution to play with... I STILL much preferred the full aspect ratio.

Now that I have a much larger, widecreen, HD set I adore widescreen. And when the movie is more than 16:9 in ratio (so you still get black bars on top and bottom even on a widescreen set), I care not a jot that some of my screen is black. I care that I'm getting the cinematic frame as the directed intended, no cropping, no *shudder again* stretching, nothing.

If you think you're 'wasting' some of the screen by having black bars, I would argue that you're wasting ALL of it by watching content stretched abnormally. That's worse than pan and scan to my mind, at least then you're seeing some of the image correctly. Stretching it means you're seeing NONE of it correctly at all.

>> ^westy:
I think they are bing over dramatic about it , Its not comparable to cropping a still painting , you can still as a viewer receive a good propotoin of the essence of the film. maby more so than if you had a 15" tv and you tired to watch it in wide screen.
obviously its not as good and is different from the original intended composition of the film but I would argue its not that bad compromise to get a wide screen film onto a tv and looking comparably good.


They're not being overly dramatic at all. It's just the same as cropping a still painting. The frame is composed, it is set out to give a certain amount of story telling and mood setting. You crop out a section of that frame and you destroy the beauty of the shot, the storytelling of the shot, the artistic merit of the shot.


When you're left with a scene where you can't see one of the people in a discussion, or... as I have seen, NEITHER OF THEM (just the bit of scene between them), then that is horrendous.

And the examples they show here more than amply demonstrate the problems inherent in the horrors of pan and scan.

Hopefully though, with widescreen really becoming the norm, this is disappearing from our world of movie issues... no we just need to get rid of the 'stretchers'... oh Dag... how could you?

>> ^dag:
I don't like the black bars. It's something about owning a big screen, you don't want to waste part of it.
I don't like pan and scan though. I usually just do a video zoom, with the aspect ratio unlocked. It stretches people's faces - but you don't see it after a couple of minutes. The mind adjusts.


Say it ain't so Joe!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I don't like the black bars. It's something about owning a big screen, you don't want to waste part of it.

I don't like pan and scan though. I usually just do a video zoom, with the aspect ratio unlocked. It stretches people's faces - but you don't see it after a couple of minutes. The mind adjusts.

the bad aspect ratio really ruins this for me

much better.

In reply to this comment by ant:
Better now? Default code made its aspect ratio incorrect (very horizontally wide).

In reply to this comment by mauz15:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Master-of-the-Killer-Ants-Battle-Scene

you should fix the embed code dimensions. It is currently very small to watch

Better now? Default code made its aspect ratio incorrect (very horizontally wide).

In reply to this comment by mauz15:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Master-of-the-Killer-Ants-Battle-Scene

you should fix the embed code dimensions. It is currently very small to watch

Those are just widescreen skulls. Clearly they just forgot to set the aspect ratio!

bad quality, improper aspect ratio, total crap.

Sorry I'm late to this party, but I do have some relevant information. First, it sounds like you are only interested in Standard Definition (SD) content (no HD on NetFlix), in that case go no higher than 720p. However, if you are still curious about that 1080i/p stuff you've been hearing about (game consoles, HDTV over the air or from cable/sat, blu-ray), I worked out some numbers a couple of years ago (when 1080p was very expensive). I'm too lazy to double check the numbers.

the thing you have to keep in mind is the maximum angular resolution of the human eye. I'll spare you the details, which you can look up yourself, but for a person with 20/20 vision (corrected, in my case), assuming a 16:9 aspect ratio screen and 1080 by 1920 picture size (resolution is a misnomer) you need to be 1.5 diagonals OR CLOSER to resolve the difference between pixels.


This makes sense if you think about movie screens or IMAX screens, or a graphic artist computer work station. Most TV viewers don't think about (being that close to a screen) | (having a screen that big).

That means if you have a 32 inch TV and you are 6 feet away, you will not see all the detail on a 1080p TV, so you can save a few bucks with a 720p.

Now that the price of 40"+ LCD TVs has dropped dramatically, you should consider a 1080p screen, but keep in mind you viewing distance.

In my case I could resolve 1080p for videogames since I sit up close for that, but I haven't upgraded because we sit way back on the couch for movies. I wouldn't be able to see the detail of a 1080p blu-ray without a 42 inch (or larger) TV. Or if I pushed to couch up.

Though the size is automatically up-sized when submitting, the aspect ratio is retained. This means if you paste embed code with a widescreen aspect ratio, it will stay widescreen even if siftbot automatically resizes it.

To fix old embeds, the submitter has to edit and paste the new widescreen code.

Dang aspect ratio!

Maybe there could be a widescreen check box when submitting, like the high quality check box, so the sift would know to not alter the aspect ratio on those vids that are 16:9.

Hmmm now I don't see that high quality box, I know it was there earlier!

*notdead

And the aspect ratio on the embed can be fixed by changing:
width="100%" height="100%"
to:
width="540" height="405"

Aspect ratio seems fine to me

argh aspect ratio is fucked!!!! ergh!!!!!!!

but anyway, looks interesting, i will have to hack the embed somehow. i sincerely hope that is possible.