What is Pan and Scan?

[janlafata]

What is Pan and Scan? I've seen that option in some video apps and it is listed as an option on my home DVD player. The actual layout of the options are 4:3 Letterbox, 4:3 Pan and Scan and 16:9 Wide.

I'm not always thrilled when I get a movie where the letterbox is rather skinny, so I go to my players options and set it to 4:3 Pan and Scan and it expands the view just right for my tastes, with just a little bit of black on the top and bottom.

[Number Six]

Pan and Scan is when they re-edit a Widescreen film to fit a 4:3 Aspect Ratio Television. They go scene by scene shifting the frame to pick out what they feel is the best viewable content, and eliminate the rest.

[redwudz]

Wikipedia has a good explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_and_scan

[Marvingj]

pan & scan

To reformat a wide screen movie for a standard TV screen (which is more square) by reviewing the entire movie. As the original movie is played, a technician decides which part of the scene is critical and moves a standard TV viewing window left or right across the wide image to capture it.

Since almost half of the original scene is missing with pan & scan (all audio is retained of course), artistic elements may be degraded. For example, landscapes will always be clipped, and older movies might have two people conversing, each at opposite ends of the frame. Many feel that pan & scan destroys a movie's integrity and prefer the letterbox effect, which retains the full panoramic view. Others do not like letterbox because the image is vertically smaller on standard TVs.



pan%20&%20scan.bmp

[MysticE]

What is Pan and Scan? I've seen that option in some video apps and it is listed as an option on my home DVD player. The actual layout of the options are 4:3 Letterbox, 4:3 Pan and Scan and 16:9 Wide.

I'm not always thrilled when I get a movie where the letterbox is rather skinny, so I go to my players options and set it to 4:3 Pan and Scan and it expands the view just right for my tastes, with just a little bit of black on the top and bottom.

As many have noted this is not true Pan and Scan, but more of a zoom that's simply cutting off the sides as it's eliminating the bars.

In the early days of video this was a major problem as Panning and Scanning often produced some awkward transitions. Many directors at that time started to keep the main action in the 4:3 safe zone, Zemekis in 'Back to the Future' for one. There was also a time when movies were actually shot in 4:3 and 'masked' (cutting off the top and bottom) when projected WS at theaters. With 'Lethal Weapon' the full screen DVD actually showed more of the picture than the WS version.

[edDV]

Example of a true Pan/Scan converting 2.40 to 1 CinemaScope to 1.77:1.



Simple Pan-Scan just carves the center 4:3 out of 16:9 (no pan or scan).

[manono]

Example of a true Pan/Scan converting 2.40 to 1 CinemaScope to 1.77:1.

It sure looks to me like it's a Pan-And-Scan to 1.33:1. As you can plainly see, nearly half the picture is out of the rectangle. If it had been Panned-And-Scanned to 1.78:1, nearly 3/4 of the picture would still remain.

[edDV]

Example of a true Pan/Scan converting 2.40 to 1 CinemaScope to 1.77:1.

It sure looks to me like it's a Pan-And-Scan to 1.33:1. As you can plainly see, nearly half the picture is out of the rectangle. If it had been Panned-And-Scanned to 1.78:1, nearly 3/4 of the picture would still remain.

Correct 1.33:1
I was typing too fast.