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

[Thomas Milne]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 01:58:33PM -0400, Thomas Milne wrote:
>> Okay, that makes sense. What I'm seeing, I guess, is people uploading
>> shows that are supposed to be 16:9, but wherever this show is coming
>> from they're broadcasting a 4:3 stream, therefore the black bars are
>> part of the stream to compensate. The people doing this are probably
>> completely unaware of what they're doing, because with their display
>> it looks 'normal'.
>>
>> Still, it causes havoc with real 16:9 displays because I end up with a
>> 16:9 image, with black bars 'squashing' it so it's more like 2.33:1.
>> Unwatchable, of course.
>
> What you should be getting is black bars all around the picture.
> It should not be squashed.  If it is squashed then your display or player
> is doing the wrong thing, or the meta data on the file is wrong (and it
> should then display wrong for everyone including the person that made it).
>

You're right. The video that prompted this comment was _really_ bad.
What the person had done, I think in response to a comment I made on
one of their previous uploads, was to 'correct' their mistake by
changing the aspect of the video to 16:9 and leaving in the black
bars. I don't know why they thought that would help, but...that's
where we get to David's observation about the pervasiveness of
stupidity I guess. ;)

Normally the problem is that a video advertised as 16:9 is really 4:3
with black bars all around, as you describe.

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