Hi, successfully corrected AR to old existing media.

[lewcoors]

Thanks to this site I found an answer to an opportunity that the majority (apparently) don't understand. The opportunity for deeper understanding is the difference between an image not filling the display screen and the image being squashed or stretched to fill the display screen.

I googled "change aspect ratio", "correct an incorrect aspect ratio" etc. etc. but was met with commercial sites that would allow me to crop the media to the required ratio.
Useless.

Here, however, I found a link to VideoHelp and it does what I required.
I converted the target media with Prism to the required format and after two attempts converted that file to the correct aspect ratio.

SIZE does not matter, it depends on your point of view.

[hello_hello]

It's just a matter of resizing isn't it?

How do you know the second image is the correct aspect ratio?
It appears to be less incorrect than the first image, but is it supposed to be 4:3?

[johnmeyer]

The pic on the left in #1 is clearly closer to the correct AR. "Circles should be circles" is the usual test of AR, and there are lots of circles in that photo.

[hello_hello]

The viewing perspective makes circles look squished (what's the name of the shape I'm looking for?) when viewed from an angle, but I'll confess the circles are the reason I suspected the correct aspect ratio might be somewhere in between the two pics, however you could very well be right.... if the woman walking the horse has some seriously large thighs and a rear end to match.

It really takes a front-on shot of something known to be round or square to tell. I've driven myself mad in the past... taking screenshots and loading them into an image program and drawing circles or squares over them to make sure the objects are round or square etc, but it seems to be the only way to be sure. The brain can adapt to small aspect errors and tell you objects are round if you know from experience they must be. At least mine does. I can't trust it.

[manono]

It appears to be less incorrect than the first image, but is it supposed to be 4:3?

It's not. It's 1.2:1 (320x266). Or did you know that already and were asking if it shouldn't be 1.33:1? I think it should probably be 1.33:1 but the picture chosen isn't a good one to be sure. I do disagree with johnmeyer, though, as the original picture makes the woman look way too fat. If it's from a movie and we knew the name, that might help.

Edit: I got your picture later and saw it is 1.33:1, and I think that's probably more correct than what lewcoors did.

[lewcoors]

Hello - thanks for all your input.

The image is from the British drama Darling Buds of May and the female is a young Catherine Zeta-Jones, the image on the left is a you tube video I downloaded and because the program was originally broadcasted by the BBC on British television I assumed it should be 4.3, however I'm considering the possibility the downloaded video may have been cropped when it was prepared for upload and its aspect ratio changed. Thus producing a "thinner" image than 1st broadcast after my adjustment.

I don't have an original copy of the broadcast but as has been said we each mentally adjust images to fit what we expect e.g. the rotating concave mask appearing as a true convex face.

I will adjust the downloaded video to "thin" it in stages toward 4.3 to see where it looks best. Until it was pointed out my 4.3 correction looked correct (to me), now it does look too "thin"

to be continued....

[DB83]

It might assist if the two pics were of the same source. The horse appears to have eaten CZJ's arm in the right pic

Not critical here but wasn't 'Darling Buds' on ITV ? or am I confusing this with something else. And with the age of this could the exterior shots be on film rather than videotape ? Something else to affect AR.