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I've noticed when I'm on YouTube and I'm watching something that is in anamorphic widescreen, sometimes the black bars take up most of the video, and other times. the video itself takes up most of the player. Why is that? Here is an example of what I'm talking about:
See what I mean? They're both anamorphic widescreen but one takes up significantly more of the picture. |
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The answer is that they really don't have the same aspect ratio. Youtube will always display an aspect ratio of 16:9 and compensate for the difference in the video by filling in anything extra with those black bars, either on the sides or the top and bottom, depending on the aspect ratio of the original video. So Star Wars in the top example has an aspect ratio of 2.40:1, which is narrower than 16:9, so there are black bars on the top and bottom. the bottom example has an even narrower ratio. I'm not sure what the movie is, but 2.40:1 is really the widest commonly used aspect ratio today, although there were wider ones (2.75:1 and even 4.00;1) that were experimented with in earlier days of fimmaking. My guess is that whoever converted the bottom video simply cropped out some of the top and bottom. Another possibility is that bottom video is actually a 4:3 letterbox copy that has been stretched to 16:9. |
