Weird anime aspect ratio?

[lilcris]

Okay this is a general question about new or CG made shows. I have seen Samurai Deeper Kyo and Last Exile on TV, but something about the look of these shows kinda bugs me. They look very odd, the picture seems like it is squished vertically. Kinda like a anamorphic DVD played in non-anamorphic monitor. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? And why do they make certain CG shows look this way?

[Fencedude]

Okay this is a general question about new or CG made shows. I have seen Samurai Deeper Kyo and Last Exile on TV, but something about the look of these shows kinda bugs me. They look very odd, the picture seems like it is squished vertically. Kinda like a anamorphic DVD played in non-anamorphic monitor. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? And why do they make certain CG shows look this way?

TechTV has...issues with proper aspect ratio.

[lilcris]

Well this more a problem with the way the Japanese Studio's make the current shows, not how the TV stations show them.

Maybe it's not a problem and it's just my eyes that are messed up. :sd:

[kanechan]

Relax, you're not the one having problems. Most channels showing widescreen anime don't always show them in their actual aspect ratio. Some will show anamorphic product as letterboxed to preserve something of the original picture, while most will do it in the compacted style you've seen just to fit the picture into 4:3. It usually depends on the channel, but sometimes widescreen anime gets squished on TV. (If you're using a widescreen TV with picture-adjustment options, you can use one of those to compensate.)

[lilcris]

Oh, now I get what you guys are saying. It's not a problem with the way the show was made, it just that some channels chose to show some widescreen shows in anamorphic mode hoping that the viewers have a anamorphic set. :sd:

Thanks for clearing this up for me!

[nakimushi]

Oh, now I get what you guys are saying. It's not a problem with the way the show was made, it just that some channels chose to show some widescreen shows in anamorphic mode hoping that the viewers have a anamorphic set. :sd:

Thanks for clearing this up for me!


Almost right. You can't broadcast an anamorphic image in regular SD TV. You can either letterbox it, pan and scan (crop off the sides), or digitally squeeze it and try and fit into a 16:9 picture in a 4:3 window, which makes the image seem stretched up and "skinny".

Back in the old days, before letterboxing, you would see this when they would show old 70mm Panavision (even wider than 16:9) movies on TV. They would typically crop the image for most of the show, like they do for "full-screen" DVD versions of widescreen movies, but at the ending, they would typically want to show the entire picture so all of the credits would be visible, so they would squeeze the image to fit.

From your description, it seems that Tech TV digitally squeezing the widescreen image so it fits into a 4:3 TV screen.

Someone with a widescreen TV would not automatically see a widescreen image (like they do when they watch an anamorphic DVD), because it isn't being broadcast that way.

Many widescreen TVs have sidestretch option which would might bring the image closer to its original 16:9 aspect ratio, but the picture quality would be not be as good as an anamorpic DVD.

[Endymion]

or digitally squeeze it and try and fit into a 16:9 picture in a 4:3 window, which makes the image seem stretched up and "skinny".


From your description, it seems that Tech TV digitally squeezing the widescreen image so it fits into a 4:3 TV screen.

Someone with a widescreen TV would not automatically see a widescreen image (like they do when they watch an anamorphic DVD), because it isn't being broadcast that way.

Many widescreen TVs have sidestretch option which would might bring the image closer to its original 16:9 aspect ratio, but the picture quality would be not be as good as an anamorpic DVD.

Just to clarify... a 16:9 image takes up the same space as a 4:3 image, so no "digital squeezing" would be required to have a 16:9 image shown 4:3. They're simply taking the anamorphic source footage and broadcasting it that way. Since broadcast does not flag video as anamorphic, it shows up as 4:3. People with widescreen sets can simply change to their Full wide mode and watch it just like an anamorphic dvd. The only thing affecting picture quality is the broadcast of the channel itself, not any kind of squeezing process.

[nakimushi]

Just to clarify... a 16:9 image takes up the same space as a 4:3 image, so no "digital squeezing" would be required to have a 16:9 image shown 4:3. They're simply taking the anamorphic source footage and broadcasting it that way. Since broadcast does not flag video as anamorphic, it shows up as 4:3. People with widescreen sets can simply change to their Full wide mode and watch it just like an anamorphic dvd. The only thing affecting picture quality is the broadcast of the channel itself, not any kind of squeezing process.


Sorry, you are correct.

Not having seen the Tech TV broadcast, from the descriptions here, it probably looks a lot like Figure 2 in this page (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75079).

I had forgotten that DVD players are designed to squeeze the image back down to normal for standard television sets. They use weighted averages to combine lines, scaling the image back down by 33% (http://gregl.net/videophile/anamorphic.htm).

(quote is about a quarter of the way down that page).


Although, I didn't know anyone was actually broadcasting widescreen content this way. All the 16:9 content that I've seen is either letterboxed, cropped, or a bit of both on the SD channels. I guess it isn't done because it makes the 4:3 picture look odd and that's what the majority of people will be watching it in anyway.