[OT] Why do so few people understand aspect ratios?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 08:34:36PM -0400, Thomas Milne wrote:
> I don't know if anyone on here does any video encoding, but can anyone
> tell me why it is that so many people insist on adding the black bars
> to their videos? It's amazing how many people I run into who cannot
> seem to grasp the difference between 4:3, 16:9 and panoramic. They
> think if a movie is widescreen, ie. 16:9, they need to add the black
> bars to 'pad' the video...why?
> 
> Are their TV's wrong? Their computer displays? I've had all kinds of
> TV's, old CRT and flat screen, I've never, ever, needed to mess with
> video to make it display properly. Ever.

I strangely have never run into a video that had black bars in the video
stream itself.  Can't be that common a problem.

Obviously you just include the actual video in the stream along with the
header indicating the resolution and aspect ratio to use for playback
and the player does the rest.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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