Description
Letterboxing is used as an alternative to a full-screen, pan-and-scan transfer of a widescreen film image to videotape or videodisc. In pan-and-scan transfers, the original image is cropped to the narrower aspect ratio of the destination format, usually the 1.33:1 (4:3) ratio of the standard television screen, whereas letterboxing preserves the film's original image composition as seen in the cinema. Letterboxing was developed for use in 4:3 television displays before widescreen television screens were available, but it is also necessary to represent on a 16:9 widescreen display the unaltered original composition of a film with a wider aspect ratio, such as Panavision's 2.35:1 ratio.
Letterbox mattes are usually symmetrical (both the top and bottom mattes are roughly similar in size), but in some instances the picture can be elevated so the bottom matte is much larger, usually for the purpose of placing "hard" subtitles within the matte to avoid overlapping of the image. This was often done for letterbox widescreen anime on VHS, though the practice of "hiding" subtitles within the lower matte also is done with symmetrical mattes, albeit with less space available. The placing of "soft" subtitles within the picture or matte varies according to the DVD player being used, though it appears to be dependent on the movie for Blu-ray disc.
An alternative to letterboxing is anamorphic widescreen presentation, which squeezes the picture horizontally to fit into a narrower aspect ratio. The player or receiver must correct this distortion by either stretching the image back to its original relative width, for display on widescreen televisions, or letterboxing it (during playback) for display on 4:3 video screens. This image transformation generally requires digital signal processing, so letterboxing was the only way in which films were presented in widescreen on home video prior to the DVD format (with a few exceptions outside the mass market, such as Squeeze LD). Anamorphic widescreen video recordings are sometimes called "anamorphically enhanced", in comparison to letterboxed versions. To represent a film wider than 16:9 (e.g., a 2.35:1 film) on a 16:9 display with no cropping, both anamorphic and letterbox techniques (or letterboxing alone) are required; using the anamorphic technique, the mattes will be smaller but still necessary.
Academy ratio (1.37:1) film or video is sometimes stretched to fill a widescreen (16:9) television display, resulting in distortion in which actors appear shorter and fatter. This horizontal stretching distortion can be avoided by pillar boxing the image, effected either in the television set or in the video player, e.g. a DVD player. Occasionally, video is shot in a widescreen format and encoded into 4:3 video incorporating letterboxing into the 4:3 image. This effect is common on personal video websites and old documentaries.
If a recording is said to be letterboxed, that implies that the letterboxing was done prior to fixing the recording on the medium. There is a difference between a letterboxed recording (or other source) and a letterboxed picture, as a letterboxed recording will appear letterboxed on every screen – even one that has the same aspect ratio as the source content – while a letterboxed picture may be produced from a non-letterboxed source, in which case it will appear full-screen on a suitably wide display. (The letterboxed source displayed on a wide screen will appear both letterboxed and pillarboxed, so the active picture will occupy a rectangle in the middle of the screen surrounded by mattes on all four sides.) Anamorphic widescreen recordings may be mislabeled as letterboxed, which technically they are not.
The term letterbox is sometimes used to emphasize that a widescreen motion picture or video has not been anamorphically encoded for 16:9 screens, thus not taking full advantage of the resolution provided by DVD, high-definition television (HDTV), or other media. Because the black mattes are part of the picture, they take up space in the signal that could be used for active picture information, forcing the picture to use less vertical space in the signal than if it were anamorphically encoded. This results in less vertical resolution in the letterboxed picture than in either an anamorphic or pan-and-scan version (which have the same vertical resolution). The reduced vertical resolution is the main disadvantage of letterboxing.
Read more about this topic: Letterboxing (filming)
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