Where Did Those "Black Bars" Come From? - Page 4

Originally Posted by rav4man

on the 5689S, is there a way to adjust the picture so that regular channels are stretched to fit the screen, this happens automatically on my LCD 5071

Originally Posted by briansemerick

Comcast in Chicago -

seems like occasionally i notice captions or words near the bottom of the screen are cut off. especially noticeable on commercials. also, the station logos are usually cut off on the right edge. this is while viewing in HD. my TV letterboxes HD.

i'm using a Sony KV27HS420 27 Inch FD Trinitron Wega Hi-Scan TV w/Component 1080i.

any ideas? is it overscanning somehow? it seems the ratio is correct, so i'm not sure what to do about that.

Originally Posted by briansemerick

yeah but it's not analog, it's HD. so there shouldn't be overscan because there is no caption track at the top, right? odd that it would still build that into the picture. oh well.

Originally Posted by briansemerick

any ideas? or is this kind of overscan normal?

Originally Posted by briansemerick

should it really be overscanning that much on a digital source though? it's an HDTV, you'd think it would be smart enough to realize it doesn't need much if any. it's got ClearEdge enhancement - is that just sharpness or could that be a setting i could change to fix some overscan?

Originally Posted by briansemerick

thanks for the info, i didn't realize that. dot-for-dot is the setting on Pio's right? That's what I'm getting in June.

Originally Posted by Frank J Manrique

Can't believe that with all of the pertinent information that is available--and has for a long time--on the Internet regarding film and video transfers aspect ratios that many folks are still confused as to what they should be seeing on display devices. Am glad you make that distinction perfectly clear.

Simply put, the wider the film format a given movie was shot in, the wider the black bars above and below the active video area are going to appear...period. It was true with 4:3 TV sets, and still holds true with 16x9 displays.
Personally, I absolutely abhor TV channels that crop native aspect ratios to "fit the screen," even HD channels; it destroys the original intent of the movie directors' careful framing of their films, the ONLY exception being movies that were shot in Super35 (full aperture framing); these can be modified practically at will under the supervision of Directors for video mastering and subsequent transfers purposes.
Movies like T-2 and other Cameron's movies were shot in Super35 which for theatrical presentation were formatted in a bastard (as I call it being that is not true anamorphic lensing) "scope" format; these can be altered for video transfering without messing up the original framing intent.
True Lies is a good example of this; HBO had a new HD transfer of this movie done for them, which was aired in the 16x9 AR video format some time back--it looks absolutely gorgeous, and its framing suffers very little in the translation when compared to the "scope" version.
Oh, yes...as with SD widescreen transferred movies, the addition of 33% of more vertical lines of resolution also aids 16x9 transfers for after all black bars are ACTIVE video too! Man, I wish HD was anamorphically "enhanced"!

Anyway, the most extreme widescreen movies to be encountered are those that were filmed in Ultra-Panavision; 1959's Ben-Hur, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Allelujah Trail, The Fall of the Roman Empire, and Mutiny on the Bounty are examples of this (a fairly recent transmission of Ben-Hur by Cinemax finally gave this glorious widescreen Epic its overdue HD treatment, something that can be sampled to a lesser extent in the magnificent DVD box set that Warners put out not long ago. Can't hardly wait Ben-Hur is given the Blu Ray treatment too! Oh, well...HD video tapes of that transmission and 35mm IB Technicolor road show plus S-8mm prints of this movie will keep me at bay until that happens. But now looks like am going to need a KURO to view it with! )...

-THTS

Originally Posted by Frank J Manrique

Happy to oblige!

You might also like to consider the following:

With a 16x9 (1:78:1) display movies shot in the "Academy Aspect Ratio" (1:34:1 but 4:3 or 1:33:1 on video) will normally show black bars to either side of the active image.

For films shot in Cinerama (a precious few, alas!) the AR would be 2:55:1...the very same AR Fox used to shoot their initial CinemaScope55 movies (The Robe, The King and I, et al) --black bars larger than "normal" scope films (35mm Panavision, CinemaScope, et al, 2:35:1 AR...subsequently 2:40:1 from the late 60s to the present) above and below the active image area will be displayed.

Spherical or "flat" 70mm (Todd-AO, Super-Panavision, et al) with an AR of 2:21:1 will show even smaller blacks bars.

"Flat" or spherical 35mm films (1:85:1 AR) will exhibit yet smaller bars...as will VistaVision, an 8-perf horizontal film format (movies like The Ten Commandments, The Buccaneer, Vertigo, West by Northwest, et al, were filmed in that superb 35mm optical format).

Movies that were filmed in the "flat" or spherical standard European format, which has a 1:66:1 AR, will show hardly any black bars.

And as stated in my post above, Ultra-Panavision (anamorphic Camera 65--70mm for practical purposes--2:76:1 AR) will display the most radical and dimensionally larger black bars of them all.

Super35, which is a wide open aperture 35mm film format, can be shown in just about any AR desired depending upon selected framing for both theatrical and video exhibitions, also stated in my previous post.

...and all video content shot in true HD (1:78:1 AR) will have no black bars to contend with, of course...

-THTS