Letterbox vs. Pan & Scan

[The Happy Friar]

Since most action happens from left to right, video compressions are made to take advantage of this this as well, objects moving up and down are blurred more and updated less. Objects moving left and right are updated more often and not nearly as blurred. If videos on you tube were compressed in a way that caused vertical lines then you'd probably immediately find another source for videos. The changes in horizontal movement go almost completely unnoticed and with a horizontal letterbox nothing changes. With a vertical letter box contrasting with the actual sides of the web page your attention is drawn the sides of the screen making compression more noticeable.

Nope!    Video compressors don't care which way stuff movies.  the reason things are blurrier one way vs another is either a) interlacing b) to slow of a shutter or c) to slow of a framerate.  Most TV is STILL interlaced (had the chance to ditch this with the digital conversion, it wasn't do make cheaper backward compatible).  Interlacing is HORRIBLE for most things, especially static stuff.  Slow shutter = purposeful stutter. Normally used to give a crisp effect, really high speeds look weird.  Each frame is sharper anything has a harder time to compress that because compressors are build on the keyframe idea: keyframe every X frames & interpolate between.  Film framerate is 24fps, which SUCKS.  It's done that way to save $$.  It should be 60fps, easy.  Same with TV, but that wasn't done because of technical limitations (signal, etc) at the time.  Low framerate = more stutter.  Each one of those highly effects the compression used & quality: high shutter & framerate require a LOT more bitrates & many times it's just not possible (the general best you can do on a DVD is 8mbs for video).  That creates artifacts, blur, etc. that shouldn't be there.  Only solution is to do a higher bitrate.  BD can do that but it doesn't look like it's being used to it's full potential (similar to DVD's first release).  On DVD widescreen doesn't equal any more pixel info them 4:3, so the same bitrate won't make it look any better/worse.  Some encoders purposely encode better the closer you get to the center of the image because it's assumed you'll want to view that & not the edges, but it doesn't matter what the dimensions are, 4:3 & others still have the edges look bad.  That's normally consumer content but stuff done on a professional level, like mpeg-2, never did that, and edge reduction isn't that prevalent any more.

Did youtube switch to widescreen (and start filling it's mainpage with ONLY widescreen videos) because users started uploading more widescreen videos than standard?

No, they didn't.  They did that because HD is 100% widescreen by default.  You support HD, you support widescreen.  Widescreen is eigther a 1.33 par (widescreen) or widescreen in resolution (1920x1080).  Hence the move.  I don't know why they just don't check the PAR of the uploaded file & display @ that PAR though... it can be done, you can change the resoltuion of the flash window easily.  They didn't start filling the main page with WS either: they zoom all the thumbnails to 16:9 now, check it out on my page!: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheHappyFriar  most of those shown are 4:3 but the thumbs are wide.  On the left with my activity you'll see the thumbs are 4:3 & are different then the other thumbs.


Talk to most video people & they'll say widescreen = better for one reason & one reason only: because everything in the world is wider then taller.  Cities build out, not up.  Farms go out, not up.  Concerts are out not up.  People walk across the ground not fly up.   Car dash layouts are across no up/down.  There's lots of video people who use vertical video too.  all those banners you see on the sides of websites are vertical not horizontal.  Signs on the side of buildings are vertical not horizontal.  Those are based on the limitations of where the media is.

[[BTF] Reflex]

I'm with the letterbox people,   unless its some standard comedy movie..  then IDC, fullscreen it if you must.

Pan and scan weirded me out the first instance of it I saw,  so unnatural.

[peewee_RotA]

Here's a funny paradox:

A wide screen movie squished to fit in a full screen ratio, played on a wide screen web page using vertical letterbox.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjF5mEr2ewE&feature=related

[[BTF] Reflex]

Love that movie...

now if we can just keep it from exploding!







Hey Lazlo,  wanna see a demonstration of gravity?

[peewee_RotA]

Hey Lazlo,  wanna see a demonstration of gravity?

My parents used to call me Lazlo because I spent all of my time in my room playing quake2.

[X7]

Hey Lazlo,  wanna see a demonstration of gravity?

My parents used to call me Lazlo because I spent all of my time in my room playing quake2.

You are still in you room playing quake2   



X7

[peewee_RotA]

Hey Lazlo,  wanna see a demonstration of gravity?

My parents used to call me Lazlo because I spent all of my time in my room playing quake2.

You are still in you room playing quake2   



X7

Actually I'm in my living room, but point well taken