Welcome to the widescreen Page. Here you will learn about the widescreen format and why you may choose to use it while recording video.

First lets start on the definition of widescreen. The webster dictionary defines widescreen as: "of or relating to a projected picture whose aspect ratio is substantially greater than 1.33:1" This means that widescreen is a format that is wider horizontally than a normal television screen. You may be familiar with the "black bars" at the top and bottom of your screen when watching a widescreen movie but the bars are not acually covering information, they are simply unused space. Now that you know what widescreen is lets get into more detail.

You ask: "Why the @$#$!À would I ever want to use widescreen. I'm fine with normal video." Well, I answer: There are many reasons why you may want to shoot in widescreen. They are: • To get more of what I'm recording(see next section for more info) •To have a more artistic way of composing shots •To be ready in a few years to move to HDTV(High Definition Television) • To give your home movies and video projects that "cinema" feel • To be able to watch amazing quality video if you have a WS tv

Those are some reasons for shooting in widescreen.

There are a few different ways to shooting in widescreen: ¥ Shoot in your camcorders "WIDE" mode ¥ Use a widescreen adapter to obtain a widescreen picture ¥ Matte the top and bottom of the screen to look like letterboxed widescreen. I have read many widesceen pages that insist that using your camcorders wide screen mode reduces reslolution but have found that it works fine for me. I don't see any lose in quality on my widescreen tv. This is the cheaper way to go but you can get good results. An widescreen adapter anamorphicly squeezes the widescreen image onto your screen. Thes are very expensive($400+) and are not needed for even serious videographers unless you are going to blow up your footage to film. Look below for an explanation of anamorphic video. You can also put mattes on top and bottom of the frame simulating the black bars.

An example of anamorphic widescreen video.
An example of properly letterboxed widescreen footage. I letterboxed this footage with a Plug-in for iMovie by Virtix Media called 16x9 converter.
Here is a link to Virtix Media's Web Page.
An example of normal 4:3 video.
An example of widescreen video. Notice how you can now see the whole candle in the frame thanks to the extra room provided by widescreen.