Letterbox

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For the mail collector, see letter box.

For the outdoor treasure hunt hobby, see letterboxing.

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Letterboxing is the practice of transferring widescreen films to video formats while preserving the original aspect ratio. Since the video display is most often a more square aspect ratio than the original film, the resulting video must include masked-off areas above and below the picture area (often referred to as "black bars," or, more accurately, as mattes). Letterboxing takes its name from the similarity of the resulting image to a horizontal opening in a postal letter box.

Letterboxing offers an alternative to the pan and scan or full screen method of transferring a widescreen film to video. In pan and scan, the original image is cropped to suit the 1.33:1 (or 4:3) ratio of the television screen. In contrast, letterboxing preserves most of the original composition of the film as seen in the theater.

Some filmmakers state a preference for letterboxed videos of their work. Woody Allen, for instance, insisted on a letterboxed release of Manhattan. Director Sydney Pollack expressed a preference to preserving the widescreen in a bonus segment of the DVD of his film The Interpreter despite that film existing in pan & scan as well as letterbox versions. One exception to this preference is Milos Forman, who finds the matting distracting. In any case, most video releases are made without consulting either the director or the cinematographer of the film. Videocassettes of films were often only released in pan-and-scan versions, but DVD releases tend to offer the option of pan-and-scan or letterboxed versions.

High-definition television (HDTV), a newer digital video system, uses video displays with a wider aspect ratio than standard television and is slowly becoming the broadcast standard in the United States. The wider screen will make it easier to make an accurate transfer of widescreen films. In addition to theatrical films, some contemporary television programming is being produced in widescreen and high definition; and, when viewed on a conventional television, it appears in letterboxed format. Programs broadcasted in HDTV are sometimes letterboxed in standard-definition television (SDTV) sets.

In Europe, letterboxing has long been the standard for showing widescreen theatrical movies on TV, partially because the PAL TV system with its higher resolution does not degrade letterboxed images as much as the American NTSC system. Together with the advance of digital broadcasting, which allows widescreen, 1.78:1 (or 16:9) transmissions without loss of resolution, 1.78:1 widescreen television is now slowly becoming common on European television for made-for-TV materials. Although this is not true high-definition TV, it does use the same aspect ratio. The majority of programming in countries like Britain and France is now made in letterbox format; in Germany most made-for-TV programming is still broadcast in 1.33:1 and full screen.

Of course, on a true widescreen television set a 1.78:1 picture is no longer letterboxed since it fills the entire screen. However, movies made in even wider aspect ratios, such as 2.39:1 (or 2.35:1 based on old convention), are letterboxed to some extent even on 1.78:1 television sets, but with thinner black bars.

Sometimes, by accident or design, a standard-ratio image is presented in the central portion of a letterboxed picture, resulting in a black border all around. This is referred to as "matchboxing" and is generally disliked because it wastes a lot of screen space and reduces the resolution of the original image. This can, for instance, be seen on some of the DVD editions of the Star Trek movies whenever the widescreen documentaries included as extras use footage from the original TV series. The alternative would be to crop the original 1.33:1 TV images horizontally to fit the 1.78:1 ratio. This is referred to as "tilt and scan."

Pillar boxing, or windowboxing, refers to what happens when a 1.33:1 image is displayed on a wider screen, adding bars on the side. "Pillar box" comes from the similarity of this display to free-standing mailboxes in the UK and the British Commonwealth.

See also

• Active Format Descriptor (AFD)
• List of film formats
• motion picture terminology
• pan and scan
• widescreen

External links

• The Widescreen and Letterbox Advocacy Page
• Why Widescreen?
• Widescreen Resources & Informationde:Anamorphe_Bildaufzeichnung

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