Tweet Blu-Ray Resolution in 4:3 (was Phantom of the Opera)

But it's sad to know that the so called HD Technology scrow up silent films, since HD it's for 16:9 format, and all 4:3 films will have black side bar on each side, killing resolution, cause the Dumb Ray technology, Ooops..., I mean Blu Ray Technology, have no advantage of anamorph or squeeze the image to avoid black bars on image signal.

For a movietone print, the image killing will a bit be more severe, since it's a bit closer to a square than 4:3 format, and the final resolution of the movietone frame area will be only 1290 pixels from left to right.

Sometimes I imagine if the stupid decision, of BLU Ray technology standart, to use black bars instead of multiple ratio aspects or anarmoph & squeeze, was a way they found to help take people away from old films, since it reduzes a lot the resolution for any film made in 4:3.
I hope a new and non dumb digital format for home video rise in few years, able to value more the good work of classic film restorers.


Anayway, the good new print will look better than any early edition of the Phantom.

OK, so I am trying to get my mind around this.

Anamorphic video in the DVD days was so that the black bars would appear on standard sets but the image would expand to fit widescreen sets. As far as I understood, the resolution of anamorphic and non-anamorphic on standard sets would have been identical, given the constraints of the standard definition, and that there was only value if you moved "up" to widescreen.

So today, widescreen is the standard. If you made something like "SD anamorphic", what would be the value, unless you dug up an LED/plasma 4:3 monitor somewhere? If you watch on a typical widescreen TV, you will have black bars whether they are in the image or not, and the resolution will be identical. Help me understand a case where having "SD anamorphic" makes sense, because I am not and your complaint is not making sense to me.

[Mike Gebert]

I understand the theory behind the complaint (if a blu-ray makes the image out of X amount of bandwidth, it should use all of that for the image, not waste some of it on black bars). But I think it's completely wrong-- if the most your monitor can show is 1080p, what good would pumping more data into the 4:3 rectangle in the middle of the screen do?

Just look at the blu-rays of The General, The Wizard of Oz, or The Adventures of Robin Hood and tell me you get the feeling that there's detail missing from those images.

I understand the theory behind the complaint (if a blu-ray makes the image out of X amount of bandwidth, it should use all of that for the image, not waste some of it on black bars). But I think it's completely wrong-- if the most your monitor can show is 1080p, what good would pumping more data into the 4:3 rectangle in the middle of the screen do?

Just look at the blu-rays of The General, The Wizard of Oz, or The Adventures of Robin Hood and tell me you get the feeling that there's detail missing from those images.

Now someone correct me if I am wrong but I would have thought the black bars on the side gobbled up almost zero space on the disc because these black bars aren't stored as instructions such as: black dot, black dot, black dot, ad nasueum but instead as one simple instruction translating roughly as: draw this whole region black. And I think there might even be an additional instruction such as 'and leave that area black till I tell you otherwise'.

But it's sad to know that the so called HD Technology scrow up silent films, since HD it's for 16:9 format, and all 4:3 films will have black side bar on each side, killing resolution, cause the Dumb Ray technology, Ooops..., I mean Blu Ray Technology, have no advantage of anamorph or squeeze the image to avoid black bars on image signal.

All Darc, it will still be four times the resolution of DVD. Anyway, anamorphic squeeze on DVD was to enhance widescreen; it had nothing to do with 4:3, so why even bring it up in a thread about Phantom????

Also, the black bars on the side do not use any data (they're not part of the video that's being compressed), which means you can compress at a higher bit rate than you could with a widescreen movie (because there's less pixels used). So it's a GOOD thing!

You weren't one of those in the HD-DVD camp who just can't let it go, are you?

Anamorphic widescreen worked by squeezing a 16X9 image into a 4X3 shape and then unsqueezing it for display on a 16X9 screen. The reverse, squeezing a 4X3 image to 16X9, would only be of benefit if it you had a 4X3 TV to unsqueeze it onto, right?

Supose someone have a better monitor, able to handle 2k image resolution.

Supose someone want to edit the image to some purpose, and wish to zoom a bit, and for that need all resolution matters.


I can't respect black bars recorded on image file, since it's a VSH thing, a thing from past, and put it on a suposed advanced digital format it's just dumb !!!
Or maybe the suposed advanced digital format it's not such advance...

And the correct would be capability to have rames in many different ratios, like have $:3, 16:9, 1:2,21 etc...and not anamorph or squeeze.

And if Blu Ray was trully digital, they would file digital frames, and a silent film could have 2 or more projection speeds and 2 or 3 soundtracks, and Mr Shepard would be able to work his edition with a second option, just to and calm down his personal villain, R.M. Roberts.

I understand the theory behind the complaint (if a blu-ray makes the image out of X amount of bandwidth, it should use all of that for the image, not waste some of it on black bars). But I think it's completely wrong-- if the most your monitor can show is 1080p, what good would pumping more data into the 4:3 rectangle in the middle of the screen do?

Just look at the blu-rays of The General, The Wizard of Oz, or The Adventures of Robin Hood and tell me you get the feeling that there's detail missing from those images.

HD-DVD Camp ??????
It's fun how a 2,5GB film, well encoded from a Blu ray, can look better than a original DVD edition of the film (even if both came from the same 4k digital restoration/remasterization) The version encoded from Blu ray to make a 720x480 pixels image (SD) will look sharper. The encoders and compression algorithms are better today.

And many films encoded from a Blu Ray edition, after converted HD1 (72p vertical) ´to fit 3,2GB, looks pretty good, much better than just a DVD edition.
If they think it's more expansive to release to produce in mass for Blu Ray media, why do not realease in DVD encoded

Why they did not do that ??? Cause most Blu Ray players can't play multiple codecs. technology standart problems again...
Also maybe because Blu Ray players are not majority yet.

And don't forget that most edition kill a lot of details with grain reduction, and other filters, so the high resolution it's not very true.But this is more for sound films, and films up to 80's, when emulsion was still grainy. Silents in HD editions use to respect more the grain, keeping it.

But it's sad to know that the so called HD Technology scrow up silent films, since HD it's for 16:9 format, and all 4:3 films will have black side bar on each side, killing resolution, cause the Dumb Ray technology, Ooops..., I mean Blu Ray Technology, have no advantage of anamorph or squeeze the image to avoid black bars on image signal.

All Darc, it will still be four times the resolution of DVD. Anyway, anamorphic squeeze on DVD was to enhance widescreen; it had nothing to do with 4:3, so why even bring it up in a thread about Phantom????

Also, the black bars on the side do not use any data (they're not part of the video that's being compressed), which means you can compress at a higher bit rate than you could with a widescreen movie (because there's less pixels used). So it's a GOOD thing!

You weren't one of those in the HD-DVD camp who just can't let it go, are you?

Yes, but supose you have a 4:3 monitor able to display 2K ? You would get all pixels to form a better resolution. Many 20 inch CRT monitors are able to display 2K resolution.

Anamorphic widescreen worked by squeezing a 16X9 image into a 4X3 shape and then unsqueezing it for display on a 16X9 screen. The reverse, squeezing a 4X3 image to 16X9, would only be of benefit if it you had a 4X3 TV to unsqueeze it onto, right?

Supose someone have a better monitor, able to handle 2k image resolution.

Supose someone want to edit the image to some purpose, and wish to zoom a bit, and for that need all resolution matters.

Except that blu ray cannot handle anything beyond its basic resolution, anamorphic or not anamorphic. You didn't get extra resolution with anamorphic, you just didn't get an image surrounded by black bars on all four sides on widescreen.

I can't respect black bars recorded on image file, since it's a VSH thing, a thing from past, and put it on a suposed advanced digital format it's just dumb !!!
Or maybe the suposed advanced digital format it's not such advance...

And the correct would be capability to have rames in many different ratios, like have $:3, 16:9, 1:2,21 etc...and not anamorph or squeeze.

If the people making blu ray were making it for us classic film types, this might be true. We are a tiny minority. They make it to sell to the widest swath of people, most of whom just want the latest and greatest film technology.

And if Blu Ray was trully digital, they would file digital frames, and a silent film could have 2 or more projection speeds and 2 or 3 soundtracks, and Mr Shepard would be able to work his edition with a second option, just to and calm down his personal villain, R.M. Roberts. [/b]

I don't get this. Digital will always have to deal with special means for dealing with frame rate. The fact that blu ray assumes that all films are 24 fps (which is a valid assumption if you aren't dealing with silent film for the most part) is just a convenience to reduce the size of the binary files. You will NEVER get 100% of the media caught on digital, not until we have a disc that can store 200 GB to 1 TB of data. To capture that much info requires more sampling than a 50 GB disc can store, regardless of standard or widescreen. And again, as said before, it's pretty easy to put the black areas into digital without using a bit for every pixel. You just draw a square and say that the whole area is black. No bandwidth required. If your format assumes that there are absolutely no 4:3 monitors that will use it, that is not a bad thing to do.

Yes, but supose you have a 4:3 monitor able to display 2K ? You would get all pixels to form a better resolution. Many 20 inch CRT monitors are able to display 2K resolution.

Then you need another format besides blu ray. Blu ray assumes a widescreen format as all programming across the board is moving to 16x9. Standard format in the future is only for archiving purposes, and they aren't going to make blu ray a custom fit for us old movie fans. Basically, your complaint is why don't they make it all custom fit to your needs. The answer is that only about 5-10% of the movie audience wants standard def to be standard. Heck, most people I know (not me natch) stretch the standard def stuff to fit the screen, or zoom in, because they don't want black bars and don't care about losing screen detail.

Not only 4:3 get printed in black bars eating or wasting resolution... but also any film wider than 16:9. So it's a Dumb Ray even for modern films.
Drop this argument now if you can



You need to understand that Blu Ray it's a media, and you can put anything on that, just like we can with a CD.

The problem is the decoders, what the software on the player it's able to play. It's fixed to 16:9, while PC sotwares for PC or MAC players, have options to multiple ratio aspects.

We can put 20 minutes of HD video into a CD, encoding to avi, mp4 or others.

Thanks o the moderator for create a new topic.

Now take Lawrence of Arabia, a very very rectangular ratio spetc. The DVD did not put all the frame are, still cutting the sides a bit more than the equivalentproportion of top. If they would prepare a Blu Ray edition showing all the sides and the few top rop, the verticall resolution would became very shortned, the film would became even nore rectangular.

By the way, while Lawrence of Arabia have no Blu Ray yet, there are already HD transfer made for HDTV channels. I downloaed a sample of the HD, from a site, and it looked good, solid transfer, but like the DVD, the frame area was still not the full original wide rectangular from the original film.

16:9 was made for TV, for modern TV, and almost all films today or from 35 years to today are more rectangular than 16:9.

I remamber a photo from Spartacus original negatie or interpositive, and some color rectangles traced over it digitally, representing the area of many home video, and even the trace representing the DVD transfer was quite small than the total area of the original film. I will try to find this representative image and post here. I remamber it was from American Widescreen Museum website.

[Mike Gebert]

Yes, a number of DVD transfers of extremely wide films cheated it a little so as to keep the image from looking like a narrow band on a 16:9 set.

Until we finally adopt that new 27:9 TV ratio, these things will happen.

I've seen the Lawrence HD transfer on TV and while nice, I don't think it's as good as could be, and my hope and understanding is that they'll redo it for an ultimate blu-ray release.

[b]
Supose someone have a better monitor, able to handle 2k image resolution.

Supose someone want to edit the image to some purpose, and wish to zoom a bit, and for that need all resolution matters.


I can't respect black bars recorded on image file, since it's a VSH thing, a thing from past, and put it on a suposed advanced digital format it's just dumb !!!
Or maybe the suposed advanced digital format it's not such advance...

Your complaint doesn't make any sense since there aren't any 4:3 2K monitors. Blu-Ray's maximum resolution is 1920x1080 since it's meant to be viewed on 1920x1080 TVs/monitors. What you want simply doesn't exist. That doesn't make Blu-Ray a stupid format, it's you being unreasonable.

If they create a 27:9 TV someone will complain, saying it do not handle cinerama.


Seriously, I think digital projectors could create a very good cinerama exibition, even in home. In theory, it only need 3 projectors of same brand (like 3 from sony mode-X or 3 from Sanyo model-Y) and a software designed to align the image and blend the borders. It could be virtually seamless, if the image signal creates a complement, like a gradient near the border of each image, in such way one gradient complement the other. And the software would have many kinds of gradients, since different brands of projector can have different gamma curves. And for align perfect, the software could have sample frames with lines and dots with numbers, to help positione each project carefully until the lines and dots match in right position to create the cinerama shape.
The only noticeable edge efect (seam effect) would be from the digital file itself, since that even with digital restoration and a special software to try remove the "seam effect", many scenes have some residual "seam effect", but in general look acceptable.

I remamber about fanatic who took down some wall in his home, just to add a true cinerama system on his living room. An he alone operates all the three film projectors


I will give a brake to you guys, and will I not complain about Blu ray have no smilling anamorph effect to avoid smiling black arcs in smillingbox editions, and avoid to put one versions of the film in smilingbox and other in normal widescreen.
(despite the idea be possible in theory if a very fast chip is used for the work)

Yes, a number of DVD transfers of extremely wide films cheated it a little so as to keep the image from looking like a narrow band on a 16:9 set.

Until we finally adopt that new 27:9 TV ratio, these things will happen.

I've seen the Lawrence HD transfer on TV and while nice, I don't think it's as good as could be, and my hope and understanding is that they'll redo it for an ultimate blu-ray release.

There are 4:3 CRT 22 inches monitor from sony, since 7 years ago or more, and such monitor was able to handle 2K image very well. There were large in horizontal line, as large or a bit more as most 16:9 PC/MAC monitor most people use today or more, depoite of be 4:3.
There are used 22inches for sale, fine prices, but such gracefull displays consume a lot of energy, so it's not a very "green monitor".

Blu Ray should be prepared in case of better monitors come.

And in any case, someone maybe want to edit the image, make some zoom, and the vertical resolution could be affeted in quality terms.

For GOd sakes, I saw 4:3 restorations made on HD, and the restorer said they had to fit the damn tranfer and work with the black bar on sides of 4:3 . A digital restoration limited to that !!!!!!!!

Your complaint doesn't make any sense since there aren't any 4:3 2K monitors. Blu-Ray's maximum resolution is 1920x1080 since it's meant to be viewed on 1920x1080 TVs/monitors. What you want simply doesn't exist. That doesn't make Blu-Ray a stupid format, it's you being unreasonable.



Perhaps there'll be 4K consumer displays and new media formats for 4K movies

The fun digital solution:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/flikfx/loatest1.htm


You can't miss that...
Look all 6 pages.

All Darc, each time you post I'm stunned by how much you misunderstand digital, Blu-ray, and HD in general. It's simply amazing.

I know digital it's only about the binary aspect, and not necessary about great achieves or versatility and falwless...

I know that HD TV standart have only two formats, 720p and 1080p

I know both HD formats are only to 16:9 ratio.

I know Blu Ray it's just a media, and the players for TV uses medias only with HD format.

But I'm saying the limitations are anoying. HD format it's anoying.

I'm saying it could be better.

All Darc, each time you post I'm stunned by how much you misunderstand digital, Blu-ray, and HD in general. It's simply amazing.

HD (Blu-ray and also the HD format itself) has four times the resolution of NTSC. That alone makes it fantastic for home use. It is, in fact, only 68 pixels (in width) less resolution than theatrical feature films. (I know that 35mm is higher resolution, and I know that theatrical projectors are generally 4k, but for most films the FX work is still 2k-- 2048 pixels wide.)

What are the limitations? (Black bars are not limitations by the way-- television sets can not change their physical dimensions for each format.)

What is your solution that is better than HD?

I know Blu Ray it's just a media

No, Blu-Ray is a MEDIUM. The word "media" is plural -- one medium, two (or more) media.

Don't feel too bad -- a lot of more fluent English speakers make the same mistake (I won't name names, but you know who you are).

Keep working on your English . . .

Take a look on this screen capture of a very good Cinerama film transfer, from How The West Was Won:



The total image area with black bars included is 16:9, but the cinerama format need to add a lot of black bars on top and lower portion to fit in this 16:9.
The vertical resolution it's almost reduced to 50%, because HD have no anamorphic, do not squeeze the image, MAKING THE BLACK BARS ARE PRINTED IN THE IMAGE IN THE DIGITAL FILE ITSELF.

What I complain about HD format is the lack of multiple ratio aspects. The funny is that you can rip in different ratios, but the HD transmission and blu ray for sell it's always froze in 16:9.

Ok, you say no actual 16:9 TV have higher resolution than 1920x1080 pixels, but this will probably change fast. And for 2K monitors, and many 20 inch CRT and all 22 inch CRT have 2K, so they could show all vertical resolution if the film had anamorph.
If a 4:3 film in HD had anamorphic, to avoid black bars printed in the image, the horizontal resolution of a 4:3 film in HD would be 1902 pixels and not only 1300 pixels, it watched in a 2K CRT monitor (22 inch screen).

There are already a affordable home digital projector that reach native 1920x1080 pixels. I bet in few time will be displays and projectors with 2K or more.

Ok, maybe I'm just desiring perfection. I agree with you that HD have a lot more resolution than DVD and make VSH a prehistoric thing. But only prime editions do things right. Many editions waste image details by using crap grain reduction, washing details aways just to look 100% smooth, or with poor encoding or bad telecine.

A perfect work for a vintage film is The Wizard of Oz (last restoration). Warner createdm the best technicolor restoration ever.
Gone With The Wind was also great 5 stars job, and had great image details, but removed too many grain, DESPITE REMOVE IT WITH PRIME TOOLS THAT DO NOT KILLED DETAILS. Well, many ones prefer the very low grain of GWTW than the also detailed but with fair right grain from TWOZ.
A matter of taste, as many vintage technicolor had a softness that helped to hide grain, while printer technicolor prints from decades latter was sharper and able to show more grain.


Back to critic of DVD and Blu ray, both players had no adjust for remove overscan. if DVD player manufactures had brains, they would add such feature, like a small zoom out, and David Shepard would not need to add a black frame around silent films imagwe to avoid overscan of cropp heads of characters, as some silent prints are not original full frame and a small aditional cropp would "take heads off"

HD (Blu-ray and also the HD format itself) has four times the resolution of NTSC. That alone makes it fantastic for home use. It is, in fact, only 68 pixels (in width) less resolution than theatrical feature films. (I know that 35mm is higher resolution, and I know that theatrical projectors are generally 4k, but for most films the FX work is still 2k-- 2048 pixels wide.)

What are the limitations? (Black bars are not limitations by the way-- television sets can not change their physical dimensions for each format.)

What is your solution that is better than HD?

Thanks.... I will try remamber.

I know Blu Ray it's just a media

No, Blu-Ray is a MEDIUM. The word "media" is plural -- one medium, two (or more) media.

Don't feel too bad -- a lot of more fluent English speakers make the same mistake (I won't name names, but you know who you are).

Keep working on your English . . .