Watching fullscreen on a widescreen movie?

[jason]

Is there a program that can pan & scan a widescreen, giving fullscreen results?

[yoda313]

Some programs have an autocrop feature.

Powerdvd has it. I forget what its called. But you can have it zoom in depending on the ratio whether its 2.35:1 or 1.77:1.

However remember since you are doing this in software it will leave everything off on the edges. YOU WILL ONLY SEE THE PART YOU ARE ZOOMED IN ON.

It won't magically make a widescreen dvd into a tv print that you see thats cropped and then manipulated to pan when the shot wasn't designed for panning (in otherwords it won't track from the far left to the far right to keep the field of interest focused dead center - it will simply stick in the center and the object thats moving will come in from the right and move out to the left - it won't follow)

Your best bet for reliable results is to simply purchase the fullscreen version of the movie in question. Then at least it will be consistent and won't feel forced.

[jason]

I wonder what software the makers use when formatting the fullscreen movies. It's just pan & scan of the original widescreen.

[yoda313]

Well you have to remember thats a studio doing it. They have way more resources than we do to do this sort of thing.

[tomlee59]

I wonder what software the makers use when formatting the fullscreen movies. It's just pan & scan of the original widescreen.

You seem to be making the assumption that there's some one-click software tool that automatically does pan and scan. If so, I'm not sure why you would make such an assumption. Think about the decisions one must make to perform such a conversion. A lot of judgment is required, and that's not something computers are good at (yet). To say "it's 'just' pan and scan..." is to underestimate what's involved in the process.

[edDV]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_and_scan

Most pro level editing software can keyframe and spline these 2D moves.

[DereX888]

Is there a program that can pan & scan a widescreen, giving fullscreen results?

NO! There are no programs for P&S and never will be
Pan & Scan is a process made by a human being who "manually" (visually?) made arbitrary decision and selection of which parts of the widescreen picture should be seen in the full screen version. It is more than editing, it is like re-directing already completed film work (directing it again).
Same as with "real" directors, those who do P&S do better or worse job, depending on many factors.
It is an art in itself (albeit inferior to the "real" art of directing the movie of course).

"Programs" or functions (i.e. the ones in your players) obviously are not human, have no brain.
They won't "pan" to the left or right of the widescreen frame when needed. And even if they do (as in "keyframing and following programs" as edDV mentioned) they still won't know what to zoom-in or zoom-out, which portion or detail of the widescreen frame to intersect with the existing scene to "make sense" what is seen in the full screen version.
They won't do *many* things human "P&S director" does, because you need a brain and sense of direction to do that.

They simply "crop" both sides of the widescreen picture and show you the middle part as "full screen".

That's a HUUUGE difference if you think of it
Mere cropping is really far from Pan & Scan

[edDV]

I was saying that jason could use those programs to do his own pan and scan if he wants to. It would probably take a few days per movie.

You would need to do one for 4:3 and another when you get your 16:9 TV since most movies are 2:35 to one (21:9) or wider.

Or you could learn to like letterbox.

[Noahtuck]

Ummm....

Why do people want to cut out or lose half of the visible video because they think they are missing or losing some of the video because it does not fill their entire TV screen on a 4:3 screen??

[DereX888]

Or you could learn to like letterbox.

best (and easiest) option IMHO

Ummm....

Why do people want to cut out or lose half of the visible video because they think they are missing or losing some of the video because it does not fill their entire TV screen on a 4:3 screen??

Force of habit maybe?
I know a person who prefers to watch 4:3 P&S movies on his old tube tv even though he also has larger 16x9 nice plasma (well, probly same size when watching in 4x3, but that's not the point).
We were actually discussing it once, and he showed me as example one of the old films ("War Wagon" IIRC, or one of other John Wayne's cheesy flicks from that era) where the P&S version made in the 90's have actually looked better than the original 16x9 version (I watched both and I agreed). I remember one of the scenes was "created" from zooming on a smaller portion of the original frame (kinda like making a "detail" scan) and interwoven into the panning shot, it made that particular scene much more dramatic and not as static as it was in the original. You'd have to see and compare both.

But anyways I am sure such "artsy" work on P&S version of any films is as rare as unicorns IMHO all the 4x3 versions are probably only slightly above crude cropping of the widescreen sides

/edit
also if someone still uses large 4x3 projection tube like my uncle, I can somewhat understand his need to "fill the screen" rather than view full uncrapped widescreen frame as letterboxed.

[jason]

I was just wondering, thanks everyone.

[jagabo]

Many media players have zoom with "touch window from outside" (ie, crop), and "touch window from inside" (ie, letterbox or pillarbox). With the former you can usually adjust the position with the arrow, or some other, keys. So you become your own pan-and-scan tech.

[Cornucopia]

You know, while I personally abhor 4:3PnS, I think it would be an interesting exercise to get AVISynth to output/frameserve something like it.

Think about it. All it would take would be knowing the EXACT version/runtime of a film (you could keep a database for this), and then creating a script for each version that does the zoom/crop/move etc. AVISynth is great at this. The script could be similar to a subtitle track that has timings and properties for each keyframe. This would also allow the opportunity for the scripts to have customized alternate versions.
You could even create a GUI to assist in generating the script...hmm...



Scott

[edDV]

You know, while I personally abhor 4:3PnS, I think it would be an interesting exercise to get AVISynth to output/frameserve something like it.

Think about it. All it would take would be knowing the EXACT version/runtime of a film (you could keep a database for this), and then creating a script for each version that does the zoom/crop/move etc. AVISynth is great at this. The script could be similar to a subtitle track that has timings and properties for each keyframe. This would also allow the opportunity for the scripts to have customized alternate versions.
You could even create a GUI to assist in generating the script...hmm...



Scott

You would also need damped s-curve spline pan/zoom motion or it will be too abrupt.

[vhelp]

You know, you could do this manually, sit there all day going through a series videos (well, it would prob take the whole day for one video) and move around this wire frame inside a video as it plays or each frame increments manually.

Unless there were some clever algorithm that could track certain movements and move the wire frame automatically. The problem with this is that they don't have intellence. There could be multiple areas in the image that is moving and how it would know what to focus on and then apply the PAN & SCAN is behind me. But still do-able indeed.

The gui would be an easy task:

1. create a form, add a image control, decode a frame, and obtain an image and then assign it the the forms image.
2. with the user behind the monitor, observe the scene for the focus, and move the 4:3 square wire to that area.
3. using the wire, select that area and it is saved as a new image and inserted into another (avi) timeline forming the PAN & SCAN

A bit crude but workable with a few adjustments.

-vhelp 5131

[TBoneit]

I seem to be out of step since I always preferred the OAR letterboxed to the Pan and Scan versions. I always wanted to see the entire movie.

Now that I've switched to a Widescreen TV I'm still watching Letterboxed movies on My HDTV. Tonight Dishnetwork is showing West Side Story on MGMHD preview channel. I'm guessing it's 2.35:1 on a 16:9 screen. I could of course hit the Zoom button on the DVR's remote so it fills the screen but then I'd lose the action on the sides of the screen.

Note: I do use the Full Zoom on Letterboxed SD to get rid of the black bars on all four sides.

Oh well......

[DereX888]

Yeah, I hate P&S or whatever cropped too (should really call it what it is: crapped).
Films should be seen the way they were meant to be seen by their directors
(with exception for intelligently colorized B&Ws if the original flick was without color only due to budget constraints)


Cornucopia: great idea, but unfortunately about 10 years too late IMHO.
Not that I would use it, but I'm sure there would be many people who would have prefer it back then.

BTW
Have anyone seen ANY 4x3 tv or monitor in any stores lately?
I can't remember when I saw one last time, but I bet it must have been at least 5 years ago, maybe as far back as 2002-2003.

[Cornucopia]

DereX888, yeah I wish I'da thunk it a few years ago (not 10, that would have been too early for AVISynth--sorry, I'm not gonna reinvent the wheel right now, I'm too busy reinventing fire!)

edDV, I agree with you wholeheartedly. But you could put the intelligence into the GUI app, once the zooming/cropping parameters have been worked out, AVISynth will follow it. Heck, with condtional action based on time, using things like the "Ken Burns Effect" script, or "Zoom", "ZoomBox", etc. It's surely possible. The GUI could have 2 windows, a "before" and an "after". The keyframes could be marked manually, and then the app could generate the tweens for the rest of the script.

Ahh, well. Moving on...
All of a sudden, in the last 6 months I've gone from 1 good 4x3 CRT + PC w/ CRT to that, plus 1 widescreen laptop, a widescreen LCD HDTV and a nice widescreen Plasma HDTV, and more. I'm not looking back.
Never liked PnS and never had a problem with Letterboxing, but now the arguement is a no-brainer (don't use "moot point", as it doesn't really mean the way most people use it). The world seems to have changed along with me, as there's a very small minority of new sets sold that aren't DTV, much less widescreen. (And here I'm not talking about the display technology, but the form factor).

To the OP, did you find what you wanted?
Hopefully, you'll realize it's ultimately more enjoyable to see the ENTIRE picture as created by the production company. And it's easy to get a larger screen, so the "smaller size" argument against letterboxing isn't as strong as it once was either.
As in many things in this forum, it's easy to go down (in pixels, compression, quality), much less to go up.

Scott

[DereX888]

DereX888, yeah I wish I'da thunk it a few years ago (not 10, that would have been too early for AVISynth--sorry, I'm not gonna reinvent the wheel right now, I'm too busy reinventing fire!)

Hahaha Scott... just try not to get burnt
(yeah, that would be too early for AVISynth, and I don't think there was any other tool as suitable for this purpose)

As in many things in this forum, it's easy to go down (in pixels, compression, quality), much less to go up.

Actually, it is with every thing "in this forum".
All of it is one-way process (down, never up) since you can't re-create same resolution from lower to higher, better quality (more bits) from higher compression to lower, or 16x9 back from 4x3, no matter what tools you use I really can't think of any exception to "one-way (down)" rule... the only one I could come up with, video restoration, is not "going up" with anything either: it is more like garbage removal + playing with few adjustments within existing frames only...

[MysticE]

Is there a program that can pan & scan a widescreen, giving fullscreen results?

If you simply want 'fullscreen' results ConvertXtoDVD3 will do this easily. You won't be panning and scanning, but it will fill a 4:3 TV completely. Under video resize you simply choose 4:3 and tick 'Pan-Scan'. And yes you will lose quite a bit of the image off the sides, but it may suit your needs.

If you feel like it you can also go to 'user definded' and add a slim black border (pad) all around to minimize any overscan loses.

This is from an older version but is pretty similar.

[jason]

Thank you Mystic, that software works pretty well.