Anamorphic widescreen (also called Full height anamorphic or FHA) is a process by which a comparatively wide
widescreen
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than t ...
image is horizontally compressed to fit into a storage medium (photographic film or
MPEG-2 standard-definition
Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...
frame, for example) with a narrower
aspect ratio, reducing the horizontal resolution of the image while keeping its full original vertical resolution. Compatible play-back equipment (a projector with modified lens, or a digital video player or set-top box) can then expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen image. This is typically used to allow one to store widescreen images on a medium that was originally intended for a narrower ratio, while using as much of the frame – and therefore recording as much detail – as possible.
The technique comes from cinema, when a film would be framed and recorded as widescreen but the picture would be "squashed together" using a special
concave lens to fit into non-widescreen 1.37:1 aspect ratio film. This film can then be printed and manipulated like any other 1.37:1 film stock, although the images on it will appear to be squashed horizontally (or elongated vertically). An
anamorphic lens
Anamorphic format is the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It also refers to the projection format in which a distorte ...
on the projector in the cinema (a
convex lens
A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements'') ...
) corrects the picture by performing the opposite distortion, returning it to its original width and its widescreen aspect ratio.
The optical scaling of the lens to a film medium is considered more desirable than the digital counterpart, due to the amount of non-proportional pixel-decimated scaling that is applied to the width of an image to achieve (something of a misnomer) a so-called "rectangular" pixel widescreen image. The legacy
ITU-R
The ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) is one of the three sectors (divisions or units) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and is responsible for radio communications.
Its role is to manage the international radio-frequency sp ...
Rec. 601 4:3 image size is used for its compatibility with the original video bandwidth that was available for professional video devices that used fixed clock rates of a
SMPTE
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...
259M
serial digital interface. One would produce a higher-quality upscaled 16:9 widescreen image by using either a 1:1 SD progressive frame size of 640×360 or for
ITU-R
The ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) is one of the three sectors (divisions or units) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and is responsible for radio communications.
Its role is to manage the international radio-frequency sp ...
Rec. 601 and
SMPTE
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...
259M compatibility a letterboxed frame size of
480i
480i is the video mode used for standard-definition digital television in the Caribbean, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Laos, Western Sahara, and most of the Americas (with the exception of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay). The ...
or
576i
576i is a standard-definition digital video mode, originally used for digitizing analog television in most countries of the world where the utility frequency for electric power distribution is 50 Hz. Because of its close association with ...
. Similar operations are performed electronically to allow widescreen material to be stored on formats or broadcast on systems that assume a non-widescreen aspect ratio, such as
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
or standard definition
digital television broadcasting.
Film
Many commercial films (especially epics – usually with the CinemaScope 2.35:1 optical sound or the older 4-track mag sound 2.55:1 aspect ratio) are recorded on standard 35 mm ~4:3 aspect ratio film, using an anamorphic lens to horizontally compress all footage into a ~4:3 frame. Another anamorphic lens on the movie theatre projector corrects (optically decompresses) the picture (see
anamorphic format
Anamorphic format is the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It also refers to the projection format in which a distorted ...
for details). Other movies (often with aspect ratios of 1.85:1 in the USA or 1.66:1 in Europe) are made using the simpler
matte
Matte may refer to:
Art
* paint with a non-glossy finish. See diffuse reflection.
* a framing element surrounding a painting or watercolor within the outer frame
Film
* Matte (filmmaking), filmmaking and video production technology
* Matte p ...
technique, which involves both filming and projecting without any expensive special lenses. The movie is produced in 1.375 format, and then the resulting image is simply cropped in post-production (or perhaps in the theater's projector) to fit the desired aspect ratio of 1.85:1 or 1.66:1 or whatever is desired. Besides costing less, the main advantage of the matte technique is that it leaves the studio with "real" footage (the areas that are cropped for the theatrical release) which can be used in preference to
pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard-definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus ...
when producing 4:3 DVD releases, for example.
The anamorphic encoding on DVD is related to the anamorphic filming technique (like
CinemaScope) only by name. For instance, ''
Star Wars'' (1977) was filmed in 2.39:1 ratio using an anamorphic camera lens, and shown in theaters using the corresponding projector lens. Since it is a widescreen film, when encoded on a widescreen-format DVD the studio would almost certainly use the anamorphic encoding process. ''
Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' was filmed in 1.85:1 ratio without using an anamorphic lens on the camera, and similarly was shown in theaters without the need for the decompression lens. However, since it is also a widescreen film, when encoded on a widescreen-format DVD the studio would probably use the anamorphic encoding process.
It does not matter whether the filming was done using the anamorphic lens technique: as long as the source footage is intended to be widescreen, the digital anamorphic encoding procedure is appropriate for the DVD release. As a sidenote, if a purely non-widescreen version of the analog-anamorphic ''Star Wars'' were to be released on DVD, the only options would be pan and scan or hardcoded 4:3 letterboxing (with the black letterboxes actually encoded as part of the DVD data). If you were to release a purely non-widescreen version of Monty Python, you would have those options, as well as the additional option of an "open-matte" release, where the film footage that was never visible in theaters (due to use of the matte technique in post-production or in the theatrical projectors) is "restored" to the purely non-widescreen DVD release.
Laserdisc
While not anamorphic widescreen per se, many of the earliest Laserdisc offerings forwent the pan-and-scan cropping typical of home releases at the time, the mastering-technicians opting instead to simply squeeze the film's original aspect ratio down to 4:3. While this resulted in an image that was overly compressed on standard televisions, many later HDTVs can stretch out this picture, thus restoring the correct aspect ratio.
Later during the 1990s, a handful of Laserdiscs were released with proper anamorphic transfers.
Video was stretched vertically to fill the whole 4:3 picture of a Laserdisc (and add more information where black bars would be at the top and bottom) then either un-squeezed horizontally on a 16:9 TV set or using an anamorphic lens on a 4:3 video projector.
DVD Video
A DVD labeled as "Widescreen Anamorphic" contains video that has the same frame size in pixels as traditional ''fullscreen'' video, but uses wider pixels. The shape of the pixels is called ''
pixel aspect ratio
Pixel aspect ratio (often abbreviated PAR) is a mathematical ratio that describes how the width of a pixel in a digital image compares to the height of that pixel.
Most digital imaging systems display an image as a grid of tiny, square pixe ...
'' and is encoded in the video stream for a DVD player to correctly identify the proportions of the video. If an anamorphic DVD video is played on standard 4:3 television without adjustment, the image will look horizontally squeezed. The menus are also anamorphic.
Packaging
![Univ-Pkg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Univ-Pkg.JPG)
Although currently there is no labeling standard, DVDs with content originally produced in an aspect ratio wider than 1.33:1 are typically labeled "Anamorphic Widescreen", "Enhanced for 16:9 televisions", "Enhanced for widescreen televisions", or similar. If not so labeled, the DVD is intended for a 4:3 display ("fullscreen"), and will be
letterboxed
Letterboxing is the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the film's original aspect ratio. The resulting videographic image has mattes (black bars) above and below ...
or
panned and scanned.
There has been no clear standardization for companies to follow regarding the advertisement of anamorphically enhanced widescreen DVDs. Some companies, such as Universal and
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
, include the
aspect ratio of the movie.
Blu-ray video
Unlike DVD,
Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...
supports
SMPTE
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...
HD resolutions of 720p and 1080i/p with a
display aspect ratio of 16:9 and a
pixel aspect ratio
Pixel aspect ratio (often abbreviated PAR) is a mathematical ratio that describes how the width of a pixel in a digital image compares to the height of that pixel.
Most digital imaging systems display an image as a grid of tiny, square pixe ...
of 1:1, so widescreen video is scaled non-anamorphically (this is referred to as "square" pixels).
Blu-ray also supports anamorphic wide-screen, both at the DVD-Video/
D-1 D1, D01, D.I, D.1 or D-1 can refer to:
Science and technology Biochemistry and medicine
* ATC code D01 ''Antifungals for dermatological use'', a subgroup of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System
* Dopamine receptor D1, Dopamine ...
resolutions of 720×480 (NTSC) and 720×576 (PAL), and at the higher resolution of 1440×1080 (source aspect ratio of 4:3, hence a pixel aspect ratio of 4:3 = 16:9 / 4:3 when used as anamorphic 16:9). See
Blu-ray Disc: Technical specifications for details.
Television
Major
digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...
channels in Europe (for example, the five major UK
terrestrial TV
Terrestrial television or over-the-air television (OTA) is a type of television broadcasting in which the signal transmission occurs via radio waves from the terrestrial (Earth-based) transmitter of a TV station to a TV receiver having an anten ...
channels of
BBC One
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...
,
BBC Two,
ITV,
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
and
Channel 5), as well as Australia, carry anamorphic widescreen programming in standard definition. In almost all cases, 4:3 programming is also transmitted on the same channel. The
SCART
SCART (also known as or , especially in France, 21-pin EuroSCART in marketing by Sharp in Asia, Euroconector in Spain, EuroAV or EXT, or EIA Multiport in the United States, as an EIA interface) is a French-originated standard and associated 2 ...
switching signal can be used by a set-top-box to signal the television which kind of programming (4:3 or anamorphic) is currently being received, so that the television can change modes appropriately. The user can often elect to display widescreen programming in a 4:3 letterbox format instead of
pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard-definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus ...
if they do not have a widescreen television.
TV station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
s and
TV network
A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mi ...
s can also include
Active Format Description (AFD) just as DVDs can. Many
ATSC tuner
An ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) tuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner, is a type of television tuner that allows reception of digital television (DTV) television channels that use ATSC standards, as transmitted by te ...
s (integrated or
set-top box
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
) can be set to respond to this, or to apply a user setting. This can sometimes be set on a per-channel basis, and often on a per-input basis, and usually easily with a button on the
remote control
In electronics, a remote control (also known as a remote or clicker) is an electronic device used to operate another device from a distance, usually wirelessly. In consumer electronics, a remote control can be used to operate devices such a ...
. However, tuners often fail to allow this on
SDTV
Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...
(
480i
480i is the video mode used for standard-definition digital television in the Caribbean, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Laos, Western Sahara, and most of the Americas (with the exception of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay). The ...
-mode) channels, so that viewers are forced to view a small picture instead of cropping the unnecessary sides (which are outside of the
safe area), or zooming to eliminate the
windowboxing that may be causing a small picture, or
stretching/compressing to eliminate other format-conversion errors. The shrunken pictures are especially troublesome for smaller TV sets.
Many modern
HDTV
High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...
sets have the capability to detect black areas in any video signal, and to smoothly re-scale the picture independently in both directions (horizontal and vertical) so that it fills the screen. However, some sets are 16:10 (1.6:1) like some
computer monitors, and will not crop the left and right edges of the picture, meaning that all programming looks slightly (though usually imperceptibly) tall and thin.
ATSC allows two anamorphic widescreen SDTV formats (
interlaced
Interlaced video (also known as interlaced scan) is a technique for doubling the perceived frame rate of a video display without consuming extra bandwidth. The interlaced signal contains two fields of a video frame captured consecutively. This ...
and
progressive scan) which are 704×480 (10% wider than 640×480); this is narrower than the 720×480 of DVD due to 16 pixels being consumed by
overscan (
nominal analogue blanking
Nominal analogue blanking is the outermost part of the overscan of a standard definition digital television image. It consists of a gap of black (or nearly black) pixels at the left and right sides, which correspond to the end and start of the h ...
) – see
overscan: analog to digital resolution issues. The format can also be used for fullscreen programming, and in this case it is anamorphic with pixels slightly taller (10:11, or 0.91:1) than their width.
See also
*
Anamorphosis
Anamorphosis is a distorted projection requiring the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point, use special devices, or both to view a recognizable image. It is used in painting, photography, sculpture and installation, toys, and film special e ...
*
Aspect ratio
*
Letterbox
*
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard-definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus ...
*
Shoot and protect
Shoot and protect is a technique used in video and film production, in which the material is shot in such a way that the areas of interest within a frame lie within a rectangular "protected area" within the frame, with margins at top and bottom and ...
Notes
References
External links
Anamorphic vs. Non-Anamorphic DVDAnamorphic Laserdiscs released in the USAAnamorphic Laserdisc released in JapanPAL+ Laserdiscs released in Germany
{{Film formats
Film and video technology