If a movie was shot with an anamorphic lens or a hard matte, the two main formatting options are to letterbox the movie or pan and scan it. Most viewers are bothered by the black bars at the top and bottom of their screen more than they are bothered by the idea of not seeing the picture as it was originally filmed, so full-frame movie presentations are much more prevalent than letterbox presentations. Demerjian, what is control cable Dave. "Inside Aircraft Black Box Recorders." Wired. This format presents the full, wide picture on the middle of the television screen, with black bars above and below it. There are several ways of doing this, and the method the director chooses determines the video producer's options for modifying the film to fit a television screen. But you can divide up 60 fields so that you show only 24 frames per second, if you use a block of five video fields to show two film frames. The problem with letterboxing is that it shrinks the viewing area of the television screen, which, if you have a small set to begin with, can make it fairly difficult to see the movie.

If you can see any space between Lincoln's head and the edge of the penny, your tire's tread is too thin. The viewer sees the entire conversation with only the very edge of each person's face appearing on their screen, and nothing but blank space taking up the rest of the picture. The problem, of course, is that this image is severely squeezed, so that circles appear to be eggs and everyone's face is creepily elongated. Of course, you can't divide five by two evenly, so formatters have to stagger it. Once a film frame is scanned, it's very easy to divide it up into different video fields. When a soft-matted film is projected, the projectionist has to mask it correctly so that only the middle part of the picture appears on the screen. Some directors compose each shot with both the soft-matted picture and the full image in mind.

If 35mm film is used, this full image has an aspect ratio of 1.37:1, fairly close to television's 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Film chains are the cheaper option, but they don't make as good a copy. After all, that is the purpose of budgeting -- to make room for what we want and need, by cutting out what doesn't affect the quality of our lives. The other type of telecine, the one used for higher quality video copies, does away with the projector and the shutter. Also, their increased picture quality helps counteract the loss of resolution caused by shrinking the movie picture. The advantage of this format is that it uses the entire film area to record the movie picture as it will finally appear, so it doesn't sacrifice any resolution in creating a wide aspect ratio picture. With these huge numbers, not only is the image resolution exceptionally rich, the screen ends up being quite large. Technology has improved to the point where we don't have to build televisions this way, but much of the rest of television broadcasting equipment has been designed around this idea, so it is fairly entrenched for the time being. In this way, a software firewall can learn which types of information you want to allow into your network.

Believe it or not, an experienced repo man (or woman) can approach the vehicle, hook the towing apparatus to the car and drive off in about 10 seconds -- all without ever leaving the truck's cab. How do 30 pounds of air in your tires hold up 2 tons of car? The format is particularly common on DVDs because their increased storage capacity can hold both a letterbox version and a full-frame version, a presentation that uses the entire television screen. On a PAL or SECAM system, the electron beam passes over the entire screen 50 times a second, which means the television presents a complete picture 25 times a second. Some video producers did release movies this way when home video was just starting out, but these days, the only time you're likely to see this is at the beginning of movies, as a means of fitting wide opening credits on the screen. Usually, this means focusing on the elements of the picture that are most important to the plot, which is obviously a subjective decision. So if you are mainly interested in following the plot of a movie, and not so much in cinematography, a full-frame version of a soft-matted movie will probably suit you fine.