Stretching Videos: Good/Bad Idea?

[sanlyn]

If you neither see nor hear any video/audio difference, it doesn't matter. If you do see/hear it but don't care, it doesn't matter. To some, it matters a great deal.

Yes: there's a big difference between CD Audio, iTunes, NetFlix, and better reproduction gear and methods. Some people insist on the latter; iTunes, NetFlix, et al, don't get their business. And there are still plenty of people who won't allow CD audio into their music system. That's just the way it is.

Regular DVD and BluRay don't look the same to me, even on a smaller TV like a 32". But that's a tricky proposition. It depends on the players and the monitors, and on the production crew who make the masters and discs. Some mastering shops know how to massage both compression technologies, and some just threw anything onto a disc with the expectation that most people will buy anything that moves and makes noise. There are too many variables for anyone to make a case about which is "better" for video in practice, all theory aside. While resolution is important, it isn't the #1 priority in final image quality, as any high-end photog or colorist will testify. Fashion and wedding photogs are pissed today that editors demand digital-only work, while art directors and printing experts curse the disappearance of far superior film mastering. The same is true among movie makers, who would rather work with film than with anything else. But there are still a few bright spots around: Telarc and a few other CD production outfits still use only 2 microphones and master to analog tape. You can certainly hear the difference. Well....some people can, anyway.

[SoupOrJuice]

Makes sense. I also figure it makes a difference at distance - the guy we bought our current TV from said you should buy size proportional to average distance from the TV when viewing. Also, was he right in saying that because we have a glass door behind our viewing screen that LCD is a better option over plasma in that viewing condition?

[sanlyn]

And not so good either. There's no 'almost' here. There's no 'wiggle room'. You either show it in the original aspect ratio or you don't. If you don't then you have no claim to being a good encoder, no matter what 'tricks' you use to make it look 'not so bad'.

I Disagree.

My post is based on Youtube videos only.

Anytime was told that the "right" or "wrong".

We arent talking about "encodes" but about being good or bad to watch. Only this.

Look and tell me:

Original (384x288 - DAR 12:7)


Resize1 ( 960x720 - DAR 4:3)


Resize2 ( 1080x720 - DAR 3:2)


Whats better for YT??



Claudio

You're reinforcing manono's point. But if you like it, keep doing it. You're in this hobbt for yourself, not for someone else, and that's what these activities are ultimately about. If things keep going the way they are with the average consumer, you'll one day be able to earn good bucks damaging and distorting video on a mass production basis. At least for now, the pro shops (uTube not being one of them) are doing it correctly most of the time.

[SoupOrJuice]

Okay so, in Claudio's post there, I didn't see much of a difference, other than things being larger. Looked like the ratio was on par?

[Cauptain]

You're reinforcing manono's point. But if you like it, keep doing it. You're in this hobbt for yourself, not for someone else, and that's what these activities are ultimately about. If things keep going the way they are with the average consumer, you'll one day be able to earn good bucks damaging and distorting video on a mass production basis. At least for now, the pro shops (uTube not being one of them) are doing it correctly most of the time.

sanlyn, you talk about a "standard". I agree

You also talk about making it my hobby. I agree.

You also talk about me, in the future, make money distorting / damaging videos, correct?

Thinking this, "INSTAGRAM" would be a failure because it takes away the "purity standard" of the photos. It distorting / damaging the photos, right? Incridible, they make a LOT OF MONEY using "non standard theory"on it. Well, I think they are wrong, correct?




Claudio

[Clockwork]

Thinking this, "INSTAGRAM" would be a failure because it takes away the "purity standard" of the photos. It distorting / damaging the photos, right?

That's "artistic license" at the whim of the "artist".

Mangling aspect ratios to forms they were not shot in or intended to be viewed with is another matter.

[sanlyn]

I don't care how much money they make. They're not getting any from me or from anyone I know.

[Cauptain]

That's "artistic license" at the whim of the "artist".

Mangling aspect ratios to forms they were not shot in or intended to be viewed with is another matter.

But I was talking about being a "standard", what has changed and it worked very well.

Not always what's in the rules is the most correct, sometime it's just easier for most people.



Claudio

[Cauptain]

I don't care how much money they make. They're not getting any from me or from anyone I know.

Of course, I just quoted do not always need to follow a pattern, we can try to change a bit and see people's reactions.


Claudio

[sanlyn]

Makes sense. I also figure it makes a difference at distance - the guy we bought our current TV from said you should buy size proportional to average distance from the TV when viewing. Also, was he right in saying that because we have a glass door behind our viewing screen that LCD is a better option over plasma in that viewing condition?

You mean, a glass door that's always open to the outside, with no curtain to draw over it? An LCD is a better option, but it's a poor viewing setup to begin with. If you can draw a light-blocking curtain over that window for viewing, the TV wouldn't matter. An LCD that's set up for viewing in very bright conditions is really just compensating for your eyes and brain shutting down and reducing brightness because of the light and glare from the window. When the room is darker, the LCD's brightness, contrast and saturation are really whacked-out. In neither situation are you getting a properly balanced or accurate image. But very few TV owners would go through the trouble of calibrating a TV or PC monitor. The only people who would are those who are more serious about their viewing, and they tend to watch TV less anyway.

[manono]

Whats better for YT??

What's best is the original aspect ratio. If it's 1.33:1, then you upload 1.33:1, 640x480, or something like that. I upload videos from DVDs, but I don't upload 720x480 videos, but resized to square-pixel 640x480.

I have no idea what yours are supposed to be. But you do. In the genre I'm interested in (classic Indian film movies and songs), people are more and more stretching them to fill the screen, and it looks just ridiculous.

[GrafZeppelin]

Lol I didn't expect my simple and noobish thread has drawn attention quite a bit.

No idea if what I'm about to say is important, but here we go...

As I said, stretching or not is up to personal decision, though I'm against it with no exception and would try to brainwash.., uh I mean give advise to the people I know if possible. Maybe it isn't noticeable for videos like text slideshows, but for old TV shows and cartoons that are still 4:3, it kinda destroyed my enjoyment. And since I'm mostly dealing with round objects, this would look much better than this. And I can't forgive myself if I ever stretched my videos that way. Just hopefully that those people who stretched their vids know what they are doing and not just some airheaded sheep.

[manono]

but my question is this: If you're watching on a widescreen monitor (my monitor is an old LCD, not HD, and 16:9 physical ratio), how are you SUPPOSED to watch 4:3 videos?

Isn't it clear by now? As 1.33:1 with pillar bars on the sides when watching using a 16:9 TV set.

[sanlyn]

And consider: 1.3333:1 classic frames aren't the only movies that won't fill your 16:9 frame. CinemaScope and Panavision are wider than 16:9. Those play with black filler across the top and bottom. They won't fill the screen, either.

[SoupOrJuice]

To each his own, then. The black bars don't even bother me, but people I watch with get really bothered by them so they kind of force the stretch on me :/ I personally don't mind the stretch, but often heads and feet are cut off when stretched too, which DOES bother me greatly.

[sanlyn]

Ask them politely to cut the crap and display stuff correctly, or don't watch. Just because they're visual retards doesn't mean you have to put up with it. Apparently it's contagious.

[manono]

To each his own, then. The black bars don't even bother me, but people I watch with get really bothered by them so they kind of force the stretch on me.

...having black bars on the side of the screen, which to me is actually more noticeable than any squishing coming from forcing a widescreen ratio.

The second (and earlier) quotation implies you do object to seeing the black bars. Why should you care about what the ignorant think when watching at your house? When you're at their house you can't do much besides try and patiently explain why they're idiots.

And as sanlyn says, only a very small percentage of the movies and TV shows were made in the aspect ratio of today's widescreen (1.78:1) TV sets. Many are less wide (1.20:1, 1.33:1, 1.37:1, 1.66:1), or wider (1.85:1, 2.20:1, 2.35:1, 2.39:1, 2.55:1, 2.76:1). Very few of the available movies and TV shows will fit your screen perfectly. Therefore, many, if not most, times you'll have black bars on the sides or above and below. Learn to ignore the black bars.

[SoupOrJuice]

Because it's not my house. I'm 21, but still live at my parents and my mom has control over the aspect ratio when we watch films together. As for my first reply (the one you quoted second), I guess it was a little irrational because I thought you were calling people who do that a little stupid, which is kind of arrogant to assume that your way is always and forever better than what other people prefer.

Also, random question - why the hell do they sell TVs this size if no one uses that ratio?

[sanlyn]

As it works out, 16:9 came to be the more practical compromise that would accept a greater number of video formats without creating too much visual disturbance. If they had made them wide enough to accept CinemaScope, think how big the side bars would look with older formats, and some formats like Panavision and VistaVision would have bars on all 4 sides. And Cinerama wouldn't fit, either. Recall that the earliest TV screens were round, later tV's were curved with rounded corners, 4:3 flat screens didn't appear until late in the game, and many of those TV's had various mods and overscan designs that were never really 4:3 in the first place -- and add to that, no one made movies as 4:3 anyway, and certainly no one made round movies or movies with rounded corners and bulging sides.

Those who oppose distorting and mutilating video are perhaps overstating their case when they claim others are stupid (although, you have to admit, if someone can't even recognize that an image is stretched, cropped and blurred all to hell, they really have to be visually handicapped. It makes you wonder how they drive around town without smacking into stuff). I don't think the term "better" has anything to do with it. We're saying that stretching, cropping, blurring and creating your own artifacts by purposely distorting what the creator intended -- as well as working against and often defeating the corrections engineered into tv's to allow them to display various formats and up/downsample and handle motion correctly -- is not "better" at all, whether one prefers it or not. You can't claim that the damage done is "better". It's just as arrogant to proudly and happily proclaim one's ignorance not only as bliss but as clever and "better".

If you're living with your folks, you're stuck. I'd just get my own tv. You might not be able to connect to their cable (cable broadcast quality is so-so to low-low anyway), but you can watch movies the way they were created. I lived with a used 4:3 12" for a number of years (Ah, those good old professional poverty-student days). Imagine how surprised I was when I bought my first 32" and saw how much noisy crap had been in those 12" signals all along.

[SoupOrJuice]

I have a 23" monitor I use for gaming, if I used it for watching movies that'd be good too. Thanks for the long post, btw. Explained a lot.

Also, I guess I misconstrued what I said earlier. I agree that decimating what the original creator intended is objectionably wrong, but what Claudio is trying to do (connect the "mediocre" of both worlds to make something that appeals to more people) isn't inherently wrong, at least I don't think so.

[sanlyn]

We wouldn't maintain that it's wrong, immoral, etc. We're saying it's technically incorrect, on purpose, with no appreciable artistic or technical gain except as it appeals to certain tastes.

[jagabo]

Trying to get dim-level detail out of a backlighted machine simply defies the laws of physics.

You mean like the way a film projector starts with a bright white light, filters it through a colored piece of plastic, onto a silver screen?

[sanlyn]

Yes. Much better than tiny on-or-off plastic jellybean prisms that filter and re-colorize the glow of a backlight, with less precision than most film projection setups. Assuming some idiot didn't leave a stain on the silver screen by throwing a cup of soda at it.

The last I noticed in a couple of movie houses, film wasn't being projected. The sources are mostly digital now. You can tell the difference. Or, pardon me, I can tell the difference and so can my wife. The mileage of others might vary.

[jagabo]

Trying to get dim-level detail out of a backlighted machine simply defies the laws of physics.

You mean like the way a film projector starts with a bright white light, filters it through a colored piece of plastic, onto a silver screen?

Yes. Much better than tiny on-or-off plastic jellybean prisms that filter and re-color the glow of a backlight, with less precision than most film projection setups.

You made a blanket statement that it was impossible to get dim level detail out of backlighted machines. Not specifically about jelly beans.

[sanlyn]

I didn't say it was totally impossible. I hope I said that black level detail in LCD's is inferior to other display technologies. I'm not into the depth of the physics, I only know some general points from what I've read, along with what I'm looking at. If you want the math I guess I could look up some stuff. All I can say is, a dark night scene on an LCD is difficult to view; put the same scene on a good plasma or CRT and all kinds of hidden activity shows up in the deepest shadows, with deeper and usually blacker blacks. On the other hand, the kind of phosphor-based technology used in CRT/plasma and reflected-light methods used in projection systems have had more than a century of tweaks. Maybe LCD's will catch up. They're better than they used to be. But we still prefer to watch dimly lighted, moody stuff like The Godfather on a plasma or CRT.

[Brad]

Wow, I don't believe I had heard of seam carving until today... Creepy.

http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/site/seam-video.asp

[johns0]

Probably won't work with movie sources.

[jagabo]

Probably won't work with movie sources.

Agreed. It's a tool you might use for certain shots. It will never work for an entire movie.

[mazinz]

Here this compare shot is good as ever for this thread. On the left side is the original 4:3 and on the right is the 4:3 made for 16x9 that had to be stretched. Now if you are just viewing the 16x9 on its own most will not really notice the minor stretch. However if you then show them the original 4:3 it was made from, now you can see a pretty big difference between the two and why it is usually favorable to just say no to stretching and just stick with 4:3 if it was 4:3 to begin with

[NoBuddy]

@mazinz:
In your example the 16:9 picture comes from a cropped 4:3 picture, the stretching is minor- So it´s harder to detect.
Without cropping the effect of stretching is more visible (and hurting my eyes)