I think I have found something worse than Pan and Scan. It is called Matted. I just found out some of the DVD's I own are not really widescreen the way they were in the theater. Instead they were pan and scan chopping off the sides, then the top and bottom was chopped off to make it a widescreen film again. So I lost the sides, then the top and bottom. Why would a studio do this?

Shouldn't the people who put out movies be forced to say when something is matted, rather than saying widescreen.

I'm cutting corners, but here’s a simplified answer.

The ratio of the original negative can be different from the theatrical presentation. The original negative may contain additional information at the top and the bottom.

For the theatrical presentation, the image is matted to widescreen (OAR). The information that is lost in the matting, was never intented to be seen.

In the widescreen dvd-release, the matting is the same as in the theatrical release. It is not pan & scanned from the theatrical version and then matted again...

For the 4:3 release (if such is created), the mattes are removed and this will show you more image in the top and the bottom, but is not the OAR and can show boom mikes etc.

Except in the case of Back to School, in which they did put black bars on a P&S version, and call it widescreen. Was kinda pissed about that when I bought it, but what can ya do?

Could you name some of the titles in question?

robocop by mgm comes to mind.

matting is a valid form of widescreen.

there are films that are hard & soft matted

hard means that the film was shot without anamorphic lenses so that the image is not stretched-i believe, but am not certain, that the 4:3 frame is matted in camera.

soft matting is essentially the same thing, except that instead of the bars being printed on the actual film, the 4:3 picture is either matted at the theaters, or it is matted when the theater prints are struck, but it originates as a 4:3 full frame (which is what is usually used for tv showings and full frame dvds)

if a film is matted on disc, that is the way the picture was meant to be seen in the theater.


or were you just goofing?

so soft matting is where the movie that is shot in 1:85, is pan and scan on full screen right?

soft matting means that the original film was shot 4:3 open matte-

the mattes were then intended to be applied for widescreen theaters to get the composition to 1.85 (or greater).

even though the full 4:3 image is printed, all the shots were composed by the director and dp for that 1.85 area inside the 4:3 area.

its done that way to save cost (anamorphic lenses are expensive), and to facilitate the transfer for non widescreen showing (like syndicated tv, wal mart dvds, etc).

But then you have instances such as the upcoming release of Gus Van Sant's Elephant which includes the original fullscreen aspect ratio and then a "cropped" widescreen version for widescreen TVs. The OAR on this is fullscreen and then you get the widescreen version which literally does chop off the top and bottom of the picture. At least they're including the OAR version on the disc.

This is discussed in the dvdtalk review of the disc:
http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=10444

Explanation of widescreen matting with photo examples:

http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen_matted.shtml

Not true.

Nothing was cut off on the sides. It was regularly matted.

I think we need some specific titles as examples, and also how you came about your information.

wasn't the artisan release of Bride of Re-Animator have some sort of matting?

Back to the Future 2 and 3 were matted as well weren't they?

99% of all movies with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and about 50% of all movies with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, are matted.

That's the way widescreen works. Get over it.

Bride of Re-Animator has a full-frame open-matte video transfer with extra picture at the top and bottom of the frame. The disc is also encoded with a special subtitle track that can basically paste letterbox bars over the picture to bring it to the theatrical aspect ratio.

This was an early experiment for doing a dual-aspect ratio release. Obviously, it is non-anamorphic. The experiment proved unpopular and no other discs are authored this way.

50% of 2.35:1 is matted? I would disagree with that percentage. Very few of my films with that aspect ratio are Super 35.

As per several of the responses posted here, having some specific examples of films that you think are improperly presented on DVD would be helpful. Matting is typically how theatrical films are presented in ratios ranging from 1.66:1 up to 1.85:1. If the DVD is matted this way as well, this is a correct presentation of the original theatrical aspect ratio.

Or am I missing something? Are you talking about something like the modified aspect ratio of the recent Kung Fu TV series release? That one was mastered on DVD in a different aspect ratio (1.78:1) from the broadcast of the original series (at 1.33:1) by masking off the top and bottom of the frame, because the producers thought that it would be cool, I suppose.

While Super-35 has been used very frequently in the last 10 years, a lot more films have been shot in true anamorphic CinemaScope or Panavision.

To be honest, every film requires cropping on all 4 sides to create the correct framing as intended by the filmmakers. Even Panavision films have to be framed correctly...even 65mm!

I'd be pissed if I were to "accidentally" buy Back to School.

Turner planned on releasing a matted version of Gone With the Wind a while back, but so many people complained they changed their minds and released it with the OAR. I don't actually remember this, but an old film professor of mine seems to remember it pretty clearly.

*edit*
Thought I'd add a little more after re-reading the thread. I believe the starter of the thread wasn't referring to standard matting, which is a normal presentation for theater and dvd, as has been noted. I think he's talking about the same thing that supposedly was going to happen to GWTW. It's for home video/DVD releases. A studio has already released a pan and scan version of a film and rather than resourcing from the negatives and making a new release with the OAR they simply cut off the top and bottom to make a letter boxed look, but nowhere near the OAR. Which sounds like is what happened with Back To School as well.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a title that I can think of which is matted.

I found out by listening to a conversation between a guy who owns a DVD store and a very knowlegable customer. I was in line, and the two of them were talking about why matted DVD's are horrible.

They explained that matted widescreen is when you take a movie, pan and scan it so it fits a tv screen, and then you cut the top and bottom off that screen, so it has the widescreen aspect ratio. They said you get more of the shot from a pan and scan DVD then from a matted widescreen DVD.

That's just not how it works. I know some 1.33:1/1.37:1 films have been altered to 1.78:1, but that's not the rule. It's the very small exception.

Here's a diagram of how it works:



The white box represents the whole film frame on 35mm. It's not exact, though. The red box is the portion of the screen meant to be presented. The blue box shows the 1.37:1 frame without mattes and with a tiny bit of cropping on the sides.

This is how 99% of matted widescreen films are supposed to be exhibited as. The top and bottom are simply dead space, with the intended image in the middle.

Please note, though: The images used are exact frames from the P&S and 16x9 versions of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. However, a large bulk of the film was shot in VistaVision, at an aspect ratio of about 1.50:1. This is one of the scenes shot in normal 35mm, meant to be matted by the projector or in transfer for video.

The diagram is essentially the same for theatrical presentation, except that it'll obviously vary from theater to theater depending on the way the projectionist has it framed. The better ones follow correct guidelines for 1.85:1 films.

I am confused. If the red box is what we see in the movies, then the pan and scan version on video would have the sides chopped off the red box???

And matted would be that new full screen red box that had the sides chopped off, but they would also cut off part of the top and bottom to bring it back to widescreen?

Is that how it works? I am not asking about how they make something widescreen for a movie. What I am asking is this: is there more shown in a pan and scan full screen than in a matted widescreen?

No, you have it wrong. In most cases, the full-screen video version would be the full white box in that image. The widescreen video version would be the red box, which is what was shown in theaters. For films shot this way, there is no "pan & scan" version. The fullscreen version really does show more. Now, it's never anything important, since it's all stuff that you wouldn't have seen in the theater. Other times, what you see in the white box is stuff that the director didn't want you to see (boom mics, undressed sets, etc.) so the fullscreen video version would be pan & scanned (hopefully.)

For 2.35:1 aspect ratio films, they can either be anamorphic or Super 35. If it's anamorphic, then the red box is what's actually shot on film (except the box is 2.35-shaped.) That has to be pan&scanned for fullscreen video, there's nothing above or below to open up.

What the original poster is talking about sounds like something else entirely that's only been done a few times. The way I read his post, is imagine the red box in that image as the theatrical version of the movie. Now, chop off the left and right sides to make it 1.33:1-shaped. Then, chop off the top and bottom to get it back to the original shape, but much smaller. I'd think that would be completely unwatchable...