16:9 = Croppin 25% height?

[Michael Chen]

Just wanted to make sure. I know from calculation it means cropping off 25% of the height.

But then if its shown on a tv screen, which doesnt include the overscan area, the total height of the black bar will be less than 25%. So is croppin 25% off still correct?

[Don Donatello]

i have to admit this 16x9 is a bit confusing ...

i have a sony 14m2u monitor and it does 16x9 ... i put it into 16x9 mode and i put some tape at the top and bottom black bars so i can see where the 16x9 image fits ... i then switch back to 4x3 mode and play regular clips .... to get my clips to fit into the black bars i would have to render them out as 720x360 ..which according to my math is 2:1 /18x9 ..... also in VV i can have it render out to letterbox and it renders clips out 720x360 ....

so i want to know how does 720x360 end up being 16x9 ??

i've also did a ilttle experiment with broadcast TV ... when ever a show i was watching was letterboxed i would put pencil marks on the edge of the TV to mark the top/bottom of the letterbox ... over a week period i ended up with several different letterbox sizes ... i called the local stations to find out what size letterbox these shows were suppose to be and they all said 16x9 ....

[Michael Chen]

Yeah this is what I've been wondering. As I am going to submit my work in 16:9 format, I would like to confirm the % of height I should letterbox off.

Can anyone help out?

one more thing is that, there's one particular scene I need to frame properly. I know there's an option in adobe which could do this, but I couldnt find it. Can anyone tell me where is it? And is this option available in ulead media studio pro too?
Its pretty urgent, i hope that someone could help me out. Thanks a lot.

[Rob Lohman]

letterboxing is not the same as 16:9. You can convert a 16:9
image to 4:3 by letterboxing it (adding black bars). The only
thing 16:9 tells you is that the picture is 1.77 times as wide
as that it is high.

Then you have anamorphic which is the principle where a lense
(or electronic circuit -> losing quality here) will squeeze a wide-
screen image (does not have to be 16:9, but can be) into a
regular 4:3 image which then gets stretched back out upon
projection or playback on your widescreen TV.

What a camera like an XL1 does when you instruct it to do 16:9
is create an image with a 16:9 aspect ratio that is electronically
anamorphically squeezed to fit into a 4:3 space.

I personally add black bars on top and bottom of my footage
to SIMULATE widescreen (ie, looks better in my eyes). A
widescreen TV will simply ignore these black bars (either partially
or fully) and display the remaining picture. If you want it to fully
fit crop them at 16:9 ratio (now you are loosing resolution!!).
Or you can do theatrical 1.85:1 (almost 16:9) or 2.35:1 .... Or
anything you want as long as the remaining picture stays 4:3.

If you want to do an anamorphic signal you need to make an
mpeg2 file with the 16:9 flag on (it should be called anamorphic
flag, but hey)....

I hope this all makes a bit sense...