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

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 11:42:34AM -0400, David J Patrick wrote:
> Ahhhh so wrong :)
> You may be correct that there is endless confusion regarding aspect  
> ratios, but you assertion that there is NEVER a good reason to do this,  
> puts you in the camp of the confused. If the original format differs  
> from the display format, you have only a few choices; "letterbox" the  
> image so that you see the whole picture (hence black bars) or the film  
> can be subjected to "pan and scan" (where the image is shifted left and  
> right to keep the important parts of the action visible, loose the  
> non-overlapping image areas entirely, or go buy a monitor that matches  
> the original aspect ratio (only available in 16:9, not 1:185 cinemascope  
> or any of the myriad cinema formats)
>
> Letterboxing is a necessary evil, and you can blame the history of  
> filmmaking and the lack of standardization.

Letterboxing is required by the display (ie DVD players add it, not the
DVD itself).  Broadcast is a different situation.  Now if someone takes
a broadcast signal which is letterboxed and encodes that, then yes they
would be also encoding the black bars.  In no other cases is there a
good reason for a video file to contain black bars.  Video files should
contain just the content (without black bars) and the info about the
proper aspect ratio so that the player software can decide whether black
bars are needed or not on the display it is using.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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