Home > Letterbox
(this article discusses wide video formats. For the item of door furniture, see letter box).Letterboxing is the practice of copying widescreen film to video formats while preserving the original aspect ratio. Since the video display is most often a more square aspect ratio than the original film, the resulting master must include masked-off areas above and below the picture area (these are often referred to as "black bars", resembling a letterbox slot). The term takes its name from the similarity of the resulting image to a horizontal opening in a postal letter box. The resulting video master utilizes only a portion of the display screen, the technique offers an alternative to the older pan and scan method of copying that cropped the image to suit the 4:3 (or 12:9) ratio of the television screen. Letterboxing preserves the original composition of the film as seen in the theater.
Some filmmakers state a preference for letterboxed videos of their work. Woody Allen's insistence on a letterboxed release of Manhattan probably inspired this treatment of other films. One exception to the preference is Milos Forman, who finds the bands distracting. However, most video releases are made without consultation with either the director or director of cinematography of the film. The letterboxing is often careless, and the common 16:9 ratio does not precisely correspond to aspect ratios of the most common widescreen systems.
HDTV, a newer digital video system, uses video displays with a wider aspect ratio than standard television and, is becoming the broadcast standard in the United States. The wider screen will make it easier to make an accurate letterbox transfer. Some contemporary television programming is being produced in letterbox format. This is done both to give a "classier" look to the image (particularly in the case of advertising), and to facilitate the production of widescreen programming for later syndication in HDTV.
In Europe, letterboxing has long been the standard for showing widescreen theatrical movies on TV, partially because the PAL TV system with its higher vertical resolution does not degrade letterboxed images as much as the American NTSCNTSC is the analog television system in use in the United States and many other countries, including most of the Americas and some parts of East Asia. It is named for the National Television System(s) Committee the industry-wide standardization body that system. Together with the advance of digital broadcasting which allows 16:9 transmissions without loss of vertical resolution, 16:9 widescreen television is now slowly also becoming common on European television for made-for-TV materials. Although this is not true HDTV it uses the same aspect ratio, and the majority of programming in countries like BritainThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly and FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. is now made in letterbox format; in GermanyThe Federal Republic of Germany ( German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland is one of the world's leading industrialized countries, located in the middle of the European Union. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to the east most made-for-TV programming is still broadcast in 4:3 fullscreen.
Of course, on a true widescreen television set the "letterboxed" 16:9 picture is no longer letterboxed since it fills the entire screen. However, movies made in even wider aspect ratios are letterboxed to some extent even on 16:9 sets.
Sometimes, by accident or design, a standard-ratio image is presented in the central portion of a letterboxed picture, resulting in a black border all around. This is referred to as "matchboxing" and is generally disliked because it wastes a lot of screen space and reduces the resolution of the original image. This can for instance be seen on some of the DVD editions of the Star TrekStar Trek collectively refers to six science fiction television series, ten motion pictures, and hundreds of novels, video games, and other works of fiction all set within the same fictional universe created by Gene Roddenberry in the early to mid 1960s. movies whenever the widescreen documentaries included as extras use footage from the original TV series. The alternative would be to crop the original 4:3 TV images horizontally to fit the 16:9 ratio.
See also motion picture terminologyThe motion picture industry is driven by a large number of technologies and techniques, many of which are of keen interest to film buffs, but a little intimidating to newcomers to the field. We have gathered a collection of some important terms. apple box, widescreenA widescreen image is a film image with a greater aspect ratio than the ordinary 35 millimeter frame. The aspect ratio of a standard 35 millimeter frame is around 1. 37:1, although cameramen may use only the part of the frame which will be visible on a te, pan and scan
