Windowbox (film)
Encyclopedia
Windowboxing in the display of film or video occurs when the aspect ratio
Aspect ratio
The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that are described by just two measurements,...

 of the media is such that the letterbox
Letterbox
Letterboxing is the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the film's original aspect ratio. The resulting videographic image has mattes above and below it; these mattes are part of the image...

 effect and pillarbox
Pillar box (film)
The pillarbox effect occurs in widescreen video displays when black bars are placed on the sides of the image. It becomes necessary when film or video that was not originally designed for widescreen is shown on a widescreen display, or a narrower widescreen image is displayed within a wider...

 effect occur simultaneously. Sometimes, by accident or design, a standard ratio image is presented in the central portion of a letterbox picture (or vice versa), resulting in a black border all around. It is generally disliked because it wastes much screen space and reduces the resolution of the original image. It can occur when a 16:9 film is set to 4:3 (letterbox), but then shown on a 16:9 TV or other output device. It can also occur in the opposite direction (4:3 to 16:9 to 4:3). Few films have been released with this aspect ratio—one example is The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course is a 2002 Australian comedy-adventure film based on the nature documentary series The Crocodile Hunter, starring Steve Irwin and his wife Terri Irwin. The Irwins play themselves filming an episode of The Crocodile Hunter while trying to protect a crocodile....

, which had numerous scenes with Steve
Steve Irwin
Stephen Robert "Steve" Irwin , nicknamed "The Crocodile Hunter", was an Australian television personality, wildlife expert, and conservationist. Irwin achieved worldwide fame from the television series The Crocodile Hunter, an internationally broadcast wildlife documentary series which he co-hosted...

 & Terri Irwin
Terri Irwin
Theresa Penelope "Terri" Irwin, AM is an Australian-based, American-born naturalist, author, the widow of Australian naturalist Steve Irwin and owner of Australia Zoo at Beerwah, Queensland, Australia...

 using widescreen pillar boxing.

Deliberate windowboxing

On rare occasion, a picture will be windowboxed on purpose. During the opening, documentary-style sequence of Rent
Rent (film)
Rent is a 2005 American musical drama film directed by Chris Columbus. It is an adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name, in turn based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème. The film depicts the lives of several Bohemians and their struggles with sexuality, cross-dressing, drugs, life...

 on the Widescreen DVD release, the picture is windowboxed to suggest an older camera meant to present at a 4:3 aspect ratio; as the movie transitions from that segment, it then expands horizontally from a windowboxed 4:3 to a letterboxed 2.39:1
Anamorphic format
Anamorphic format is a term that can be used either for: the cinematography technique of capturing a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film, or other visual recording media, with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio; or a photographic projection format in which the original image requires an...

 aspect ratio. Another example is in the movie Brother Bear
Brother Bear
Brother Bear is a 2003 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures, the forty-fourth animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics. In the film, an Inuit boy pursues a bear in revenge for a battle that he provoked in which...

, wherein the movie is windowboxed up until Kenai, the main character, becomes a bear. This is to show that his world-view, and his perspective on nature, has widened.

Windowboxing has also been used in the instance of transferring films with the academy ratio
Academy ratio
The Academy ratio of 1.375:1 is an aspect ratio of a frame of 35mm film when used with 4-perf pulldown. It was standardized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the standard film aspect ratio in 1932, although similar-sized ratios were used as early as 1928.The Academy ratio is...

 of 1.37:1 to video, as evidenced in recent DVD releases of older films shot in this standard. This is to compensate for the overscan
Overscan
Overscan is extra image area around the four edges of a video image that may not be seen reliably by the viewer. It exists because television sets in the 1930s through 1970s were highly variable in how the video image was framed within the cathode ray tube .-Origins of overscan:Early televisions...

 on many 4:3 TVs which cuts off part of all four sides of the image. Windowboxing ensures that either more or all of the image is visible on these TVs; in a best case scenario the TV overscan cuts off nothing but the windowbox borders. It originally was used only for the credit sequences in 4:3 films, where the text could extend out to the very edges of the image, and then gradually was adopted for use throughout the whole film.

Critics often argue that windowboxing of this ratio is unnecessary due to the image loss caused by overscan being negligible. Moreover, for those who watch such films on computer monitors or newer TVs, both of which have less to no overscan, the black borders around all four sides of the image are visible, effectively shrinking the image on those displays. Windowboxing on video also reduces the total amount of resolution the image effectively uses, although defenders of the process argue that the lost resolution is negligible.

Defenders also argue that the prevalence of credit sequences being windowboxed on recent DVDs suggests a natural progression towards the full presentation being windowboxed, just as widescreen presentations progressed. However, letterboxing never ensured that the TV displaying it was showing the full image, just that it was present in the signal, while anamorphic enhancement
Anamorphic widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen, when applied to DVD manufacture, is a video process that horizontally squeezes a widescreen image so that it can be stored in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVD image frame. Compatible playback equipment can then re-expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen...

on DVDs was designed to maximize the resolution used by widescreen films on the format, again with no compensation for overscan.

Defenders further argue that the traditional method of cropping 1.37:1 aspect ratio films to fill the 4:3 (1.33:1) ratio of standard definition video causes visual information, however negligible, to be permanently lost from the film. However, critics point out that this situation could be remedied by letterboxing the 1.37:1 image instead of windowboxing, while windowboxed images are often still in a 4:3 aspect ratio, meaning the lost image information wasn't restored by the process. Furthermore, DVD video has slightly more horizontal resolution than analogue video, giving it an effective aspect ratio of 1.38:1 which allows for a nearly full-screen 1.37:1 image to be stored without cropping, although whether this extra image information can be properly displayed depends on the equipment used.

Ultimately, the use of 4:3 windowboxing on video is dependent of whether or not one feels the issue of overscan is best solved via hardware (through the use of newer equipment, to the detriment of those with older displays) or via software (through the use of windowboxing, to the detriment of those with newer displays).
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