Letterbox

[Dave Arnold]

Would some kind soul mind telling me what Letterboxing is?
I understand it is a technique for transferring original film to
Laserdisc. And what is Pan-and-scan, and how is Letterbox superior?

Thanks!

[William R Dippert]

Both letterboxing and pan-and-scan are ways to take a wide screen film
(CinemaScope or whatever) and get it in a format that is viewable on the tv
screen format. Pan-and-scan (or whatever you wish to call it) simply is what
the name implies. What you see on your VCR or laserdisc is a portion of the
full screen, hopefully it is where the action is. However, this leaves you
missing approximately 50% of the remainder of the screen. Hence, letterboxing
was invented. It simply allows the full screen to be recorded (on EITHER TAPE
OR LASERDISK) with a blank area of the top and bottom of the screen. Generally
this blank area is black. A lot of movies use letterboxing for the beginning
titles and the ending titles (with possibly a colored or fancy border, top and
bottom) and then go to pan/scan. Some (as in the latest "Lawrence of Arabia"
release) now use letterbox for the entire movie. LoA was done this way as the
movie would suffer greatly if any of the picture was lost due to pan/scan. I
believe that more laserdisks are letterboxed than pan/scan, but I do not know
as I do not have a laserdisk. I do know, however, that letterbox is fairly
rare with VCR tapes. (Other than the titles section.) On a small screen tv
(< 24") letterbox leaves the picture fairly small. It works quite well with
large screen tv (>24") or with projection sets. (~40--46" or bigger)

Someone else with more experience with ld can help out.

[Dave bd Hsu]

In article <141...@felix.UUCP> dar...@felix.UUCP (Dave Arnold) writes:

>Would some kind soul mind telling me what Letterboxing is?

Letterboxing is a format in which the entire width of a picture is
transferred to video at the expense of vertical height; the remaining
space is usually filled with black lines or subtitles. A variant,
called "matted presentation" or "semi-letterbox" is in common use;
this is a letterboxed presentation that still compromises some of the
original image but isn't as severely cropped as a pan-and-scan job.

Pan-and-scan captures just enough of the original image to fill a
standard video screen, discarding the parts of the film that spill
over the edges. This involves previewing the film to determine which
part of the picture should be kept and which should be thrown away.
Personally, my preference is that all of the picture should be kept,
so I have little tolerance for pan-and-scan discs.

-dave

--
Dave Hsu Systems Research Center, Building 115 (301) 454 8867
h...@eng.umd.edu The Maryversity of Uniland, College Park, MD 20742-3311

"I'm fishing. No I'm not, I'm newting!" - A. A. Milne

[Cisco's Buddy]

In article <86...@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM>, w...@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM (William R Dippert) writes...

} I believe that more laserdisks are letterboxed than pan/scan, but I do
} not know as I do not have a laserdisk.

Unfortunately, no. While more and more titles are coming out letterboxed
on laserdisc, it's still relatively uncommon.

--
"Ty Cobb wanted to play, but none of us could stand
the sonofabitch when we were alive, so we told him
to stick it."

--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, "The Mill", Maynard, MA)
UUCP: ...!decwrl!ruby.enet.dec.com!boyajian
ARPA: boyajian%ruby...@DECWRL.DEC.COM