Anamorphic flag, myth or reality ?

[Gersen]

I did some googling but I was unable to find anybody with a "definitive" answer. Some says "yes of course, 4/3 use the full 1920 horizontal resolution", other "No 4/3 movies/series have to be pillarboxed", I tried to find an anybody with an "official" source but was unable too.

Is there any official format description mentioning this flag or is this flag nothing more than another "crazy Net rumor" , and if it exists, is it used on actually released 4/3 and can it be use for other ration than 4/3 ?

Gersen

[Sensuifu]

at least to my knowledge anamorphic titles are real. Non-anamorphic titles would stretch/zoom to fill the whole screen (if the TV is set to stretch). Otherwise you'll get windowboxing (top/bottom/sides have bars).

Anamorphic 16:9 titles are accurately displayed with little to no overscan on a widescreen TV set to 16:9. As for 4:3 material, I haven't seen anamorphic 4:3 and wonder why there would be any.

[Pyocola]

at least to my knowledge anamorphic titles are real. Non-anamorphic titles would stretch/zoom to fill the whole screen (if the TV is set to stretch). Otherwise you'll get windowboxing (top/bottom/sides have bars).

Anamorphic 16:9 titles are accurately displayed with little to no overscan on a widescreen TV set to 16:9. As for 4:3 material, I haven't seen anamorphic 4:3 and wonder why there would be any.
Maybe I'm just tired, but I can't make the least bit of sense out of this post...

As far as I know there is no anamorphic flag for 4:3 or any other ratio, and with current generation 1080p sets there would be little point in having one. Though if anyone knows for sure, I would also like a final, definite answer.

[Ty]

You are referring to the existence of an anamorphic 4:3 video for display on a 16:9 display? So you can retain all of your horizontal resolution within the 4:3 image? As far as I know it doesn't work this way and is not possible. In the first place it doesn't make any sense to me and I can't think of a reason for such an encode.

[Tetsuken]

Insofar as supported resolutions on the new HD media discs is concerned. You can have a 1920x1080 (16:9) or a 1440x1080 (4:3) encoded stream on the disc. There is no flag to have the decoder squeeze the horizontal or vertical resolutions on output.

Bottom line for 4:3 material in HD -
Either the pillar box will be encoded as part of the image into a 1920 stream, or the stream will be 1440 and the player add pillars on output. Either way you are not getting any more horizontal rez on 4:3 material.


Disclaimer: All this is IMHO and to the best of my knowledge, which is far from infallible, so it doesn't mean it's the gospel truth. Feel free to add this to the list of other opinions you've heard until you seem to find a consensus.

[Gersen]

You are referring to the existence of an anamorphic 4:3 video for display on a 16:9 display? So you can retain all of your horizontal resolution within the 4:3 image?

Yes, that's what I mean.

As far as I know it doesn't work this way and is not possible. In the first place it doesn't make any sense to me and I can't think of a reason for such an encode.

Well it wouldn't be possible to take advantage of it today, but it would become usefull sometime in the future when TV sets start having a bigger resolution than today full HD ones.

Gersen

[Sensuifu]

As far as I know it doesn't work this way and is not possible. In the first place it doesn't make any sense to me and I can't think of a reason for such an encode.

Well it wouldn't be possible to take advantage of it today, but it would become usefull sometime in the future when TV sets start having a bigger resolution than today full HD ones.

Gersen

afaik, there are a few exceptions (i.e. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) where a film was originally shot in 4:3 (open matte) and modified for widescreen. In these cases, you are losing some vertical resolution.

Technically 'Wonka' was shot in 4:3 but the director probably did not intend it to be seen this way. When it was released theatrically, the image was cut, formatted to a widescreen AR, suitable for the widescreen cinema.

Taking the scenario above, are you suggesting that what's currently filmed in 4:3 is actually losing resolution when displayed in 16:9? If that's the case, you're not losing any vertical resolution IF the OAR is maintained but encoded within a 16:9 frame (including the pillarboxes).

If the OAR is altered to fit a 16:9 frame (i.e. Wonka) than you're out of luck either way because what's encoded in the final stream is what you're actually going to display regardless the TV's AR.

[JeffDM]

I think you just leave the rest of it black. It's real on DVDs, but I've never heard of it on HD. Most of the formats, except for the HDV camcorder format, are square pixel, nothing weird like DVD where the data is 3:2 but the screen is 4:3 or 16:9

[elmer92413]

As far as I know it doesn't work this way and is not possible. In the first place it doesn't make any sense to me and I can't think of a reason for such an encode.

Well it wouldn't be possible to take advantage of it today, but it would become usefull sometime in the future when TV sets start having a bigger resolution than today full HD ones.

Gersen

Well just like the moving from the past standards to the new HD standards a new release would be in order...
But an Anamorphic image by definition/usage is used to get a 16:9ish image onto a 4:3ish medium for delivery. Has to do with film size/area. 4*3=12 16*9=144 So to get a 16:9 image you would need larger film. But an anamorphic lens allows you to shot in widescreen using standard 4:3 film.
Otherwise if you were to anamorphosis a 4:3 image to a 16:9 format it would work in the opposite way of doing 16:9->4:3. As you would be compressing the top/bottom of the 4:3 versus the compressing the sides of a 16:9 image. If you wanted to do that you would definitely need that defined as a new flag rather than being able to use the old Anamorphic flag. And if such a flag existed we would know about it. And even if such a flag existed it wouldn't really help much, as taking the anamorphosised 4:3 and "deflating" it would net you lose in resolution. Because to play it on a wide screen set you still wouldn't gain anything as it would obviously be letterboxed and shrunk. To play it on current 4:3 monitors it would have to be shrunk. And it wouldn't be until as you say a higher HD standard is developed that it could be taken advantage of, but even then going from a squeezed 1920x1080 to 1920x1440 you would need a new widescreen standard of at least 2560x1440. But realistically 1080p is going to be the home standard of HD for quite some time (that is when it eventually does become the standard, as HD has yet to be the majority and you still have 720p to deal with). And I highly doubt anybody in Hollywood cares to future-future proof a release when they can just get you to pay for it again! ;)
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I hope the above makes sense...
Roughly a hour of research went into writing it...!!!
Most of it was just trying to understand how exactly an anamorphic image is currently used...!!!
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