Quoting Grendell:

Quote:
You asked this question before, SpikyCactus. And in that thread, the general concensous was not "agreeing with Ace."

That was about whether we should round very small variations off to the common ARs, not whether we should count the mattes. At NTSC DVD resolutions, 2.40 would be 720x356 and 2.39 would be 720x357 and it doesn't make sense to worry about the difference, which is at the floor of the margin of error caused by the sampling rate. It has nothing to do with this issue.

yup... agree as well.

I agree with everyone!

I’m happy with the answer from Ace about mattes and learnt a little more about DVDs in the process.

In terms of what aspect ratio we record, then I don’t much care which way it’s done, as long as it’s done the same way by everyone.  I guess I like Grendall's idea of recording it as accurately as possible, but because of the way the edges of the mattes aren’t always very defined (they can spread across several pixels), trying to do it this way would mean different people would come up with different measurements (depending on which line of pixels he/she decided was the last one).  This would affect the final result on many occasions.  However, I’m not sure if that’s a better way to do things than using a system which inherently only provides an approximation, but makes disagreements over the submitted data less likely.  Trying to define what the last line of pixels to be measured should be, would not be easy to do.

Paul

Quoting widescreenforever:

Quote:

One thing though Theater screens are almost always 1:85 .....

Yes, but the size of screen in a theater has little importance, since the image is projected. You just "see" what I showed in my diagram and do not mind if what you do not "see" is screen, curtain, or wall.

Quoting widescreenforever:

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nice display Yves ...   

One thing though Theater screens are almost always 1:85 .....

Aren't they generally 2.39:1 with curtains that can be drawn to change them to 1.85:1?

Quoting stevegblair:

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The curtains across the top and bottom are what move in any theatre I've been to recently. So, the screen starts out closer to 16X9 and then "shrinks" by having the top and bottom cut off to 2:35 (or whatever aspect ratio is required).

That doesn't sound right. How would you move a curtain at the bottom of the screen? You'd need a rod about 70 feet wide with a heavy curtain on it and either no support in the middle or a support that would be on the floor in the front and the bottom of the curtain would either expose a bunch of wall on scope movie or be on the floor in flat movies. The pictures on the Wikipedia article about movie theaters mostly show scope screen and the whole idea of Cinemascope is that it's larger than other movies. Take a look at movies that change aspect ratios, like Brother Bear or The Simpsons movie. Clearly, the scope sections are meant to be wider than the rest of the movie, not shorter.

High Def Digest wrote an FAQ on building this sort of system at home, which confirms that the vast majority of commercial cinemas are set up this way.

I seldomly ever go to the theater. But I noticed the same thing (blinds coming from the top and bottom) I think it was the last time I went. I remember this because of thinking how odd it was... as it was the first time I ever seen it.

Quoting Addicted2DVD:

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I seldomly ever go to the theater. But I noticed the same thing (blinds coming from the top and bottom) I think it was the last time I went. I remember this because of thinking how odd it was... as it was the first time I ever seen it.

Same as mine.