Well, Cecil invited film fans to rise up in protest, so I suppose I must… I won’t list specific films ruined by Pan and Scan. I don’t need to - I can just use Cecil’s primary example:
<<Let’s take a dialogue close-up in which the actors are at the far right and left of an 1.85:1 frame. If you ran the shot at the original 1.33:1 (assuming this were even an option) you’d lose the close crop and thus some of the scene’s intimacy and intensity. So instead lab magicians cut or pan back and forth between the two actors. Only one appears in the frame at a time, but if you do it right you retain the impact–well, some of the impact–of the theatrical release.>>
Note that the director put both characters on the screen at the same time. He/she didn’t just do a close-up of one of them talking. Why? Presumably because the listener’s reaction is important - sometimes slightly less important, sometimes as important, sometimes MORE important than the talking character. If you can only see one of them, you’re only seeing half the movie - and not necessarily the right half, either (this is why some directors insist on the right to work with the pan and scan technician during the inevitable film to video transfer). The same can be said for any scene with action on both sides of the frame, and any visual scene (landscapes, special effects, etc.).
Now, it’s true that on a small TV (say, anything under 25"), letterboxing is actually worse. Sure, you get everything the director intended up on screen, but everything is so small that you lose almost all the impact.
I’d like to say, “that’s too bad. Get a bigger TV,” but I’d be tarred and feathered for sure. But (fortunately?) that’s pretty much what happens with DVD. The assumption seems to be that DVD owners have larger TV sets, and studios are releasing most movies on DVD in their original aspect ratio (sometimes with extra resolution for folks with 16x9/HDTV sets). I think that’s great, but then I have a 53" TV. Dual layer DVDs have plenty of storage space - if studios wanted to put full frame and widescreen versions on the same disc, they could. (So far, most have chosen to use the space for extras that help sell more discs to film buffs).
Welcome to the SDMB, and thank you for posting your comment.
Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site. To include a link, it can be as simple as including the web page location in your post (make sure there is a space before and after the text of the URL).
Avi - I agree with you. On DVDs I buy that include both the “pan-and-scan” version and the “letterbox” version, I always watch the letterbox, even though I have a small television.
Maybe it’s not possible to implement with the DVD encoding, but shouldn’t the full-screen + P&S versions together only take up slightly more space than the full-screen alone? You put in the full-screen version as usual, and then you put in a track that contains the frame information for the pan and scan… Not the image of the whole frame, just the coordinates of the box defining the new frame in terms of the old. Then, you’d have room for both versions of the movie, and all the extras.
Chronos- I won’t pretend to be an expert on MPEG2 (the video format DVDs are encoded in) but I am into the “DivX” scene, which involves archiving DVDs onto CD-Rs, using a different format to squish them down into a much smaller size so that they can fit into the reduced storage space CDs offer.
I’m thinking that what you suggest would require the player to know how to do more than just decode the DVD, but also know how to crop and resize the video. An additional problem is that the player would need to perform filtering so that the enlarged video didn’t look all pixelated and ugly, and this filtering can be VERY computationally intensive.
Nothing of import to contribute, except to say hi to FDISK, and welcome to the SDMB. And, nothing personal, but as a long-time DOShead, your name just makes the little hairs on my neck stick up.
Chronos, I doubt it, because the DVDs I have purchased that include both letterbox and “pan and scan” formats have the two versions on different sides (the DVD is “double-sided”). I would think that a manufacturer would put them both on the same side if there were enough room.
Chronos, I think your proposal is outside the capability of most, if not all current MPEG2 decoder chips. It would require a new format and hardware, something both the industry and consumers would not like, since it would create a disc that all existant players obsolete. Usually, there is space to burn on the disc, so reducing usage wouldn’t accomplish much. Special editions that add more content often already use two discs to do so and most of us serious collectors don’t mind two seperate discs in these cases since it makes us feel like we’re getting more ;).
MPEG 2 does not have the ability to store pan and scan info AFAIK (though it could be encoded someway in the way closed captions are added). Much better for this purpose would be MPEG 4 which allows any arbitrary information to be added to the stream in an object oriented manner which can either be used by a decoder which understands it, or otherwise ignored.
Unfortunately this would mean a new DVD and Digital TV standard, so it looks like we’re stuck with having 2 sided DVD’s with a separate movie (one 4:3 pan and scan, one 16:9) on each side.
Most wide screen films are released with an aspect ratio of 1.85. These films are shot with standard spherical lenses not anamorphic lenses.
With standard spherical lenses, the original 35mm film negative is exposed with an aspect ratio of 1.33. Generally, the release print is also 1.33. The picture is cropped to 1.85 in the projector.
When a transfer is made to DVD, the original 1.33 can be retained or the picture can be cropped to 1.85.
Directors and cinematographers are aware of the dual aspect ratio release pattern and they usually make sure that the film works both at 1.85 and 1.33.
The uncropped full frame DVD transfer usually shows the entire original camera negative. Crop your TV set to 1.85 with cardboard if you want to see it as it was shown at a movie theater.
FWIW, 35/70mm aspect ratios up to 2.75 are listed in the ASC manual but few theaters can show anything above 2.25.
2001 was released in 2.75 Ultra Panavision as a 70mm print but you need a Century JJ or Philips/Norelco DP80 70mm projector with Panavision anamorphic lenses and a 2.75 screen to see it. Good luck in finding a theater.
As we’ve established in this thread, this is not necessarily so.
I dont’ think so–if this were true, we would not be subjected to the horrible panning & scanning that still occurs in quite a lot of full frame DVD (not to mention video) releases.
The television series Babylon 5 was shot on Super 35 in 1.56, for HDTV, but composed so that the sides could be trimmed to 1.33, for existing television. Unfortunately, the special effects were shot in 1.33 and composed so that the top and bottom could be trimmed for 1.56 (although an initial attempt was made to wireframe them in 1.56 and then only render the central potion, intending to render the side panels later). The first round of 1.56 prints, made for the Sci-Fi Channel last year, mistakenly trimmed the tops and bottoms of everything, and the second round, now running on SFC, still has some assembly errors here and there.)
we all seem to be forgetting that dvds have a lot of frickin room. standard dvd-5 disks have around 4.7 GB of space, which is usally enough to put the original and edited versions on one disk. and even if there isn’t enough room, why not just use 2 disks? i mean, these things must cost the production companies a whole whopping dollar per disk, so why not?
This is not true. The main movie generally takes around 4GB, add to this the menus and any special features, and the entire disc is used up very quickly. Also, I’m fairly sure DVDs cost far more per disc than CDs.
Blank commercial DVD discs are not terribly expensive in the quantities film distributors deal with. A dollar is probably as close as any other rough estimate.
CD-R discs are well under a dollar now in bulk consumer packages. Blank CD-ROM media is far cheaper. Most estimates are that each one costs a company like Sony, which purchases millions monthly, about $.15 each.
So DVDs do cost far more than CD-ROMs, but CD-ROMs are far cheaper than you realize.
thank you sewalk, that’s exactly what i meant. cds are cheaper than hell these days, and while dvds are much higher ratio-wise, they are still probably slightly less than a buck. and i would also like to point out that i have seen several dvd disks with two versions of the film as well as a few extras all on one disk. though i do have to admit that this was a year or two ago, and the video quality may not have been as good then, thus the footage would take less space.
I had to return a copy of The Graduate on VHS a couple of weeks ago because it was pan-and-scanned so poorly I couldn’t watch it. It was painfully obvious that most of the action was occuring offscreen, and some shots were so closely zoomed that the film grain looked like a cloud of gnats, with blurry noses and mouths darting in from the sides of the screen.
