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The
Full Picture …
The quick and easy guide to anamorphic
video
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by: Chris Bainton
There
are two major benefits associated with the DVD medium as far
as home theatre owners and users are concerned - the enhanced
audio capacity of the digital medium and the improved images
it can generate. DVD also allows greater flexibility in the
way we view movie images, with viewing angle selection, picture
zooming and other features (when encoded on a disc).
However, the biggest visual boon of the DVD movie medium, as I see it, is the capacity to view movies in the format in which they were envisioned by directors and cinematographers and recorded for viewing in cinemas. Invariably this means a rectangular widescreen presentation and it's a different viewing proposition when compared to the more or less square images we are restricted to with VHS tape movies and conventional television broadcasts.
The conventional television based viewing world we have been face with uses a 4:3 aspect ratio (four units wide for every three units high), where widescreen television viewing has a 16:9 aspects ratio (or 16 units wide for very 9 high). The dimensions of widescreen style presentation vary with the rectangular image getting longer and narrower with different formats.
Some movies on DVD are presented in 4:3 format but other and most new transfers to DVD are presented in their original widescreen format. When widescreen movies are viewed on conventional televisions (and with some extreme aspect films viewed on 16:9 widescreen televisions) dark bands appear above and below the actual image on the screen. The overall image is also altered so that viewability and clarity becomes an issue.
This brings us in a very roundabout way to a technique and feature called anamorphic enhancement and what a boon it is to DVD movie lovers.
Anamorphic enhancement is all about getting the maximum quality out of DVD movie images and in particular the most picture and best quality on the newly emerging widescreen televisions format It's sometimes called '16:9 enhancement'. It's a special presentation feature of DVD where the video on the disc contains the maximum resolution possible by contemporary standards and allows maintenance of that quality into the near future.
Anamorphic or enhanced DVD-Video discs store images that have been manipulated along the vertical plane to contain around 25 percent more information. It is done to expand the image to fit widescreen television screens without losing quality. Any manipulating of original images will cause a loss in quality and we all know that DVD is about achieving superior (read 'maximum potential') image quality.
We're talking about quality with existing technology, not touted high-definition systems like HD-DVD (High-Definition DVD) which is most likely years away. Having said that, it is much more preferable to plan and prepare for the future as much as possible than not - and anamorphic capability is part of that preparation.
When viewed on a conventional 4:3 television enhanced images fill the screen (there are no black bars top and bottom), but appear to be taller and thinner than normal. That's because we have squashed the picture like a concertina to make it fit in a narrower screen size.
You sometimes this phenomenon occurring during the introduction titling and edit credits with television broadcasts of older Cinemascope-style movies before the panning and scanning cuts in with the action footing. (I remember seeing Clint Eastwood stretched like this at the start of some of his Spaghetti Western efforts such as A fistful of Dollars).
It's unnatural and we act adversely to it because of this. DVD players with Anamorphic enhancement can be easily optioned for standard 4:3 viewing or an enhanced 16:9 picture. In other words the titles are sideways compatible.
Anamorphic technology works with widescreen televisions and while these are relatively expensive at present the format is seen by many as the future in home theatre, and could even be the television standard, being spurred on by DVD and other digital entertainment systems emerging at the moment, particularly digital television broadcasting.
The anamorphic image is pre-stretched to the 16:9 as perfect ratio dimension to prevent image quality loss. If you have a widescreen television the DVD player automatically outputs a widescreen image. If it's a conventional 4:3 aspect ratio television, the DVD player removes the vertical enhancement so the picture fits perfectly on screen.
Different DVD producers have different ways of highlighting that a disc is Anamorphic: by labelling it as 'Anamorphic', '16:9 enhanced', 'widescreen enhanced', 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen', or simply 'enhanced for widescreen television'. There are manufacturers who aren't producing widescreen enhanced discs and they are not exploiting the full potential of the medium.
Some manufacturers include the widescreen enhancement on their discs and don't even tell us on the labelling or packaging. To check if this is the case, go into your DVD players menu and temporarily select the 16:9 viewing enhancement (in effect telling it you have a widescreen television). If the resulting picture from the DVD disc is elongated vertically, you have an anamorphic disc and if it remains in perspective it's non-anamorphic.
Using or selecting the Anamorphic of 16:9 widescreen enhanced option in your DVD player menu will let you take advantage of the performance potential of enhanced discs. Use component video connection and you can realise the true potential of DVD-Video … and get the full picture.
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