Opinions on mixing aspect ratios

[OropherZero]

don't get me started on the Crapness of Suzumiya Haruhi PAL dvds you don't want to be expanding that :/

[JaddziaDax]

wow it must suck being stuck in Australia O:

[AquaSky]

When dealing with mixed aspect ratios, I've just cropped the 16:9 to 4:3. It's yielded pretty good results for me. Either way, it's good to make them uniform, because leaving them mixed just ends up looking lazy.

[Kevmaster]

when you crop your 4:3 source to 16:9, you gotta make sure your source has good quality to begin with and you have a good script when you upscale it later on to a size like 848x480. I'd always prefer this way over cropping 16:9 to 4:3 though, simply because I prefer 16:9 over 4:3.

[Otohiko]

I find it completely non-distracting if a video switches between aspect ratios, BUT keeps consistent within separate sections. I don't really have a problem with MEPs that mix aspect ratios.

[DayWalker B.]

I find it completely non-distracting if a video switches between aspect ratios, BUT keeps consistent within separate sections. I don't really have a problem with MEPs that mix aspect ratios.

I completely agree.

[Bauzi]

My opinion is simpel (stretching):
4:3 -> 16:9 = crap
16:9 -> 4:3 = it´s ok for me. I don´t know. Most of the time I don´t notice it.


yeah, but overall I prefer the proper resize methods due to audience issues. I honestly don´t really care about wrong AR if they´re not to explict.

[Scott Green]

16:9 -> 4:3 = it´s ok for me. I don´t know. Most of the time I don´t notice it.

You sucks, I rememberz your ugly Unreal video in 4:3 >_>

to da threadz:
either get your ass to make 16:9, 4:3 or whatever your fucking source is in and dont letterbox ist >_>

/thread

[Phantasmagoriat]

I like cropping. [16:9 ftw]
I hate stretching.
I hate letterboxing.

Observations:
-cropping 16:9-->4:3 loses 24.53% footage area [24.444...% including stretch-factor]
-cropping 4:3--->16:9 loses 25.00% footage area [in both cases]
-The former will look pretty bad since there will be less width stretched over a larger display
-The latter looks exactly the same as the original because the width is not changed, so it fits the display the exact same way.
-obviously, you get the correct AR in both cases; which is what we want [well... usually... see last note]
-a 4:3 video will have the illusion of looking sharper on a widescreen display since it's not stretched to see the details... so if you know you have bad quality, people with widescreen laptops [like me] won't notice it as easily. I think this is the only advantage of 4:3...
-16:9 is more cinematic
-16:9 loses 1/4 of the image, but also gets rid of 1/4 filesize :)
-original 16:9 footage will look 25% better than any 4:3 footage [cropped or uncropped]
-if you are decent with avisynth, you can improve the quality anyway [my last amv was ~90% 4:3 originally... and I've even had good comments on the quality]
-in an AMV, you usually don't have the time to look at the top and bottom of the screen; and there is rarely anything important there anyway.
-if there is something important that would be cut, just pan the screen

...if I really cared about quality, I would stretch all my 4:3 footage to become 16:9, and only crop to 16:9 when a scene looks warped [usually when there are characters, or something that requires correct proportions].

I think that's all I got...

~Phan

[Niotex]

16:9 > 4:3