View 16:9 on 4:3 TV

[George Palmier]

I want to film in real 16:9 format with my JVC HD100 (filming in DV as I don't have the means to capture and edit HDV for now) and have my final video on DVD which can be viewed on any TV, not only on widescreen TV's. What I mean is that I want to create an anamorphic video. That is, when you play the dvd on a 4:3 TV you will see the black bars at the top and at the bottom of the screen. I am using Adobe Premiere 6.5 for editing. I am from Europe so the format in which I am working is PAL, if that makes any difference. So to sum up, how do I make an anamorphic video??

[Guillermo Carrera]

I have a project in 16:9, when Adobe Encore created my project DVD it was letterboxed the way you want it.

[Wade Spencer]

Export your finished movie in 16:9 and author the DVD.

What will determine how it shows up on 4:3 TVs is actually a setting in the menu of the DVD player itself. When you set up your DVD player, it asks you what aspect ratio television you have. If you have a 4:3, you have a choice of how you would like 16:9 video displayed - letterboxed, or pan-and-scan.

[Martin Pauly]

Originally Posted by George Palmier

I want to create an anamorphic video. That is, when you play the dvd on a 4:3 TV you will see the black bars at the top and at the bottom of the screen.

George,

you may already know this, but the way you wrote this sounded a bit odd: having black bars at the top and bottom of the screen is not the definition of "anamorphic". What anamorphic means (in the context of video) is that the pixel aspect ratio changes, such that all available lines of the recorded image are used for the 16:9 image, instead of wasting lines on the back bars. The alternative would be to encode the back bars as part of the recorded image, which (on DVDs) is called "letter-boxed". Film uses special lenses to do something similar.

If you would like to learn more about this, type "anamorphic" into wikipedia.com and you'll find a good description.

As for how to create an anamorphic video with your software - sorry, can't help you there (I am a FinalCut guy). Based on my experience, what Wade says sounds correct, though. If your DVD fills the whole screen on a 19:9 TV, the player can will the letter-boxing for a 4:3 TV if configured correctly.

- Martin

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Martin Pauly

the way you wrote this sounded a bit odd: having black bars at the top and bottom of the screen is not the definition of "anamorphic".

Actually he does need to create an anamorphic video to get the desired results on a 4:3 screen. Anamorphic video has a flag imbedded in the data stream which identifies it. If you watch the DVD on a properly configured DVD player it will fill the full width of a widescreen TV and have the maximum quality. However if you play the same disk on a 4:3 screen the DVD player itself will provide the black bars. But if you don't author the DVD as anamorphic then the player won't know that it needs to do this.

[Ervin Farkas]

I just went through this pain myself. I shot a birthday party with a GL2 set to 16x9, edited with PPro set to 16x9 and authored the DVD with Encore that interpreted the footage correctly and the resulting DVD was playing in 16x9 format on my PC. However, when I played the DVD in my Philips stand-alone player connected to my 4x3 TV set, the image filled the whole screen... after doing some reading on these forums, I accessed my DVD player's menu and set it to play 4x3... and voila, I got my black bars back.

Lessons learned: three important thing... setup, setup, and setup. Make sure you set your camera to 16x9, you set your NLE project to 16x9, and, depending on your DVD authoring software, you may need to set that one correctly too.

Oh, and don't forget to set up your DVD player!

[Martin Pauly]

Boyd,

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

Actually he does need to create an anamorphic video to get the desired results on a 4:3 screen.

I don't believe this is correct. What creating an anamorphic video buys him is that it will create the desired results on a 4:3 screen and on a 16:9 screen - black bars for the former, full-screen on the latter. To just get the desired result on a 4:3 screen, either letter-boxing or flagging the asset as anamorphic will look pretty much the same on the screen. The only difference is whether the black bars are part of the encoded image or created by the (properly configured) DVD player.

The only exception I can think of is an upconverting DVD player connected to a high-definition TV with a 4:3 aspect ratio. I haven't had a chance to experiment with such a combination, but in theory at least the anamorphic video can look better here because the DVD player can take full advantage of the larger number of lines used to encode the image.

- Martin

[Christopher Lefchik]

Originally Posted by Martin Pauly

The only exception I can think of is an upconverting DVD player connected to a high-definition TV with a 4:3 aspect ratio. I haven't had a chance to experiment with such a combination, but in theory at least the anamorphic video can look better here because the DVD player can take full advantage of the larger number of lines used to encode the image.

Anamorphic wide screen is higher quality regardless of whether it is played on an upconverting player, and whether it is viewed on a 4:3 or 16:9 set. It carries more detail in all situations simply by virtue of the fact it is using all available lines of resolution to encode an image, instead of wasting resolution on the black bars.

[Craig Syverson]

I agree with everyone's summary, and just wanted to let George know that this handy conversion to letterboxed video is a phenomenon of the DVD player interpreting an anamorphic video. If you ever want to play this as a straight QuickTime (WMV?) file, you'll need to make some adjustments to either the output of the file itself (as can be done in QuickTime Pro) or in the method by which you'll compress the final movie file. In my experience, QuickTime Player doesn't seem to compensate for the anamorphic tag - maybe I'm missing something?

My current video podcast is dealing with the aspect ratio question, but the anamorphic issue is a few months off!

Cheers

[Martin Pauly]

Originally Posted by Christopher Lefchik

Anamorphic wide screen is higher quality regardless of whether it is played on an upconverting player, and whether it is viewed on a 4:3 or 16:9 set. It carries more detail in all situations simply by virtue of the fact it is using all available lines of resolution to encode an image, instead of wasting resolution on the black bars.

Yes, anamorphic video carries more detail - noone questions that. My point was merely that a 4:3 NTSC display has no way to show this additional detail, because of the total 480 lines, it uses only the center 360 lines when showing a 16:9 display - the rest is used for the black bars. The 480 lines of original image information need to be scaled down to 360, because that's all the 4:3 NTSC display has to offer. For letterboxed video, the reduction to 360 lines is done during the encoding process; with anamorphic DVDs, the player needs to scale in real time as the DVD is playing. Thus, one could argue that an off-line process that doesn't have to worry about real-time scaling can produce a higher quality image than the scaling performed in real-time by the DVD player.

Bottom line: while an anamorphic video carries more detail, this addition al detail cannot be shown on a 4:3 NTSC TV.

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html explains all of this in a lot more detail.

- Martin

[Christopher Lefchik]

Originally Posted by Martin Pauly

My point was merely that a 4:3 NTSC display has no way to show this additional detail, because of the total 480 lines, it uses only the center 360 lines when showing a 16:9 display - the rest is used for the black bars. The 480 lines of original image information need to be scaled down to 360, because that's all the 4:3 NTSC display has to offer.

True. But our 4:3 Sony HDTV features a letterbox mode specifically for anamorphic content that can show the full detail. It doesn't waste any scanlines on the black bars.

[Martin Pauly]

Originally Posted by Christopher Lefchik

True. But our 4:3 Sony HDTV features a letterbox mode specifically for anamorphic content that can show the full detail. It doesn't waste any scanlines on the black bars.

Good point! In this case, the scaling is done by your HDTV (not the DVD player), the DVD player is configured to assume a 16:9 TV, not a 4:3 TV - and, maybe most important, it's upscaling to 75% of your HDTV's vertical resolution vs. downscaling to 360 lines, meaning that the additional detail does make a difference, as you suggested earlier.

I'll add this to the list of exceptions I can think of! ;-)

- Martin