[FFmpeg-user] sntsc

[Mark Filipak]

On 12/26/23 14:37, Kieran O Leary wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On Tue 26 Dec 2023 at 17:25, Carl Zwanzig <cpz at tuunq.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 12/25/2023 1:04 AM, Mark Filipak wrote:
>>>
>>> Huh? "720x480 video with a display aspect ratio of 16:9" is what's on
>> most
>>> 'NTSC' DVDs.
>>
>> Huh? The vast majority of DVDs I've handled were 4:3 then maybe
>> letterboxed
>> to only show some wide-screen size (like 2.33:1).
> 
> 
> This is the opposite of my experience where widescreen DVDs were encoded
> anamorphically and were de-squeezed to the correct DAR. Very few were 4:3
> with burnt in letterboxes.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Kieran

The pre-2000/2001 DVDs labeled "Wide Screen" were letterboxed 4:3 DVDs that are also pillarboxed on 
16:9 screens. I still have a couple of them. DVDs are not optically anamorphic in the sense that 
CinemaScope is anamorphic. They were simply sampled with the highest resolution available to 
flying-spot scanners of the era. I don't think the word "anamorphic" applies because 720x480 (or 
720x576) are not pictures, they're data arrays populated by pixels (data).

-- Mark.