UFO in widescreen

Hi all,

All this talk about widescreen versions of UFO got me thinking
about the episode MINDBENDER, where Straker is watching footage
from UFO in a theater. The projected image always struck me as
being slightly wider than a TV set. So for fun, I just
took screen captures of a scene from A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
as it originally appeared in that episode, and then how it
appears in MINDBENDER:

http://ufoseries.com/temp/aspect.jpg

As you can see, they do chop off a little more off the top and
bottom of the image than they do on the sides, to make it more
widescreen. This is not as widescreen as HDTV, however, so
even more would have to be chopped off for that.

Marc

> So for fun, I just
> took screen captures of a scene from A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
> as it originally appeared in that episode, and then how it
> appears in MINDBENDER:
>
> http://ufoseries.com/temp/aspect.jpg

Also, a curious thing about that scene in MINDBENDER -- at
first glance, we appear to be looking at the theater screen at
an angle. However, if you compare the image with the
original, you'll see that they've cropped more top/bottom
the right side of the image than the left (e.g. look
how far down the image is cropped into the window
on Mary's house on the right, but it's cropped
much less on Straker's car ceiling on the left).

So I guess we are viewing the image straight-on, but
they've bordered it with black to make it look like
it's seen from an angle. I guess this is a special effects
shot -- the theater screen was probably blank when
they were filming, and then they later superimposed the
image.

Marc

Colour film stock at the time was not as sensitive as it is now. There was
probably not enough light thrown by the projector for a reasonable exposure.
In any case, without the camera and projection being locked in synch then
the image would flicker badly.

The image supposedly on the screen was probably cropped to widescreen within
the context of the episode as Straker was supposed to be viewing this
section of his life as a film rather than a TV episode. All cinema films by
this point were shot to be cropped in projection (if they weren't anamorphic
which is/was even wider). Many cinemas by that time - and even more so now -
were incapable of showing the full academy frame (although the screening
theatre at Pinewood where this was shot would be able to).

All TV shows at the time were shot to be shown full frame. (Without going
into aspect ratios in unnecessary detail).
Yours John

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc Martin" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2006 7:40 PM
Subject: Re: [SHADO] UFO in widescreen


> So for fun, I just
> took screen captures of a scene from A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
> as it originally appeared in that episode, and then how it
> appears in MINDBENDER:
>
> http://ufoseries.com/temp/aspect.jpg

Also, a curious thing about that scene in MINDBENDER -- at
first glance, we appear to be looking at the theater screen at
an angle. However, if you compare the image with the
original, you'll see that they've cropped more top/bottom
the right side of the image than the left (e.g. look
how far down the image is cropped into the window
on Mary's house on the right, but it's cropped
much less on Straker's car ceiling on the left).

So I guess we are viewing the image straight-on, but
they've bordered it with black to make it look like
it's seen from an angle. I guess this is a special effects
shot -- the theater screen was probably blank when
they were filming, and then they later superimposed the
image.

Marc



Yahoo! Groups Links

--- In [hidden email], Marc Martin <marc@...> wrote:

> All this talk about widescreen versions of UFO got me thinking
> about the episode MINDBENDER,
 
> http://ufoseries.com/temp/aspect.jpg

Ed and Mary look very thin to me..? I noticed on the various video
recordings I have of AQOP that the dimensions appear different between
broadcasts/ recordings, yet all were viewed on the same equipment back
then! :-/

My current TV has many different ratio aspects, with 4:3 being the
smallest and therefore the most annoying to watch, although that's
with the DVDs nowadays. This 'widescreen' ratio seems to play havoc
with everything and it drives me crazy....! ;-)

Sarah

> Ed and Mary look very thin to me..?

Yes, I did "frame captures" on the DVD, which takes the "non-square"
pixels meant to be seen on TV and turns them into "square" pixels
on the computer. So they are indeed too thin -- I should have
resampled the image to make it the correct ratio, which would
have fattened them up a bit.

Marc

> Yes, I did "frame captures" on the DVD, which takes the "non-square"
> pixels meant to be seen on TV and turns them into "square" pixels
> on the computer. So they are indeed too thin -- I should have
> resampled the image to make it the correct ratio, which would
> have fattened them up a bit.

By the way, that's a second way that they could make a widescreen
version of UFO -- they could "squash" the image, making everyone a
little fatter. This has the advantage that you don't need to crop
as much from the top and bottom, but the drawback is that everyone
looks fat. Probably some combination of cropping and squashing
would provide the "best" widescreen image.

Marc

--- In [hidden email], Marc Martin <marc@...> wrote:
 
> By the way, that's a second way that they could make a widescreen
> version of UFO -- they could "squash" the image, making everyone a
> little fatter. This has the advantage that you don't need to crop
> as much from the top and bottom, but the drawback is that everyone
> looks fat.  

It possibly *was* how 4:3 used to be shown on widescreen when these
TVs first came out, as everyone suddenly looked so much wider than
they did - bizarre !? I've never got used to it. With most of my
favorite programmes, I've now got the options of stretched, squashed
or chopped - er - I mean cropped, if I want the 'privelige' of
viewing them on the entire screen ;-)

>Probably some combination of cropping and squashing would provide
>the "best" widescreen image.

I just wish we still had the option to buy a decent sized screen in
4:3!


Sarah

> I just wish we still had the option to buy a decent sized screen in
> 4:3!

I guess that means that my 18-year TV set has become a "collectors
item"... :-)

Someone who receives the "Family Room HD" channel has promised to
sent me a photo of his TV screen showing UFO, so this will give
us a better idea of what they are doing to make it widescreen.

Meanwhile, my source who reported many months ago that UFO
was being remastered in HDTV says that the UFO was transferred
with black bands on both sides of the picture, so no attempt
was made to make it widescreen. This seems to conflict with
the viewing reports I have from the broadcasts, although
certainly the channel could be enlarging the picture to
fill the screen.

Marc

Hi all,

UFO fan Jesse Garnier has sent me photos of his TV set while
UFO is being shown in HDTV on Dish Network. You can compare
this with the corresponding frame captures I took from the
DVD releases:

http://ufoseries.com/hdtv/

Assuming that Jesse's TV does not automatically zoom in on
4:3 material, one can easily see that the top & bottom of
the original frame are cropped off on the HDTV version.

Marc

On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 07:15:48 -0700
Marc Martin <[hidden email]> wrote:

> By the way, that's a second way that they could make a widescreen
> version of UFO -- they could "squash" the image, making everyone a
> little fatter. This has the advantage that you don't need to crop
> as much from the top and bottom, but the drawback is that everyone
> looks fat. Probably some combination of cropping and squashing
> would provide the "best" widescreen image.
>

Some TVs do this automatically - they avoid the squashed look by
stretching the picture in a non-uniform manner, so that it's
widened in a graduated way. It works quite well. I can't see
this being done on the actual medium itself, though. If a
widescreen version was ever released, I'm sure it would simply be
cropped - like the widescreen versions of 'The Sweeney' that
were released a few years ago. The 4:3 versions that were released
in the box set that was released later are much better.

James

--
Dig It : a forum for Beatles fans - http://beatles.dyndns.org/

On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:32:39 -0700
Marc Martin <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> UFO fan Jesse Garnier has sent me photos of his TV set while
> UFO is being shown in HDTV on Dish Network. You can compare
> this with the corresponding frame captures I took from the
> DVD releases:
>
> http://ufoseries.com/hdtv/
>

Very interesting! Nicely done, Jesse & Marc - thanks.

James

--
Dig It : a forum for Beatles fans - http://beatles.dyndns.org/

--- In [hidden email], Marc Martin <marc@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> UFO fan Jesse Garnier has sent me photos of his TV set while
> UFO is being shown in HDTV on Dish Network. You can compare
> this with the corresponding frame captures I took from the
> DVD releases:
>
Whatever the inherent problems of converting a 4:3 aspect ratio to
widescreen, in my view widescreen is an infinitely more impressive way
of viewing. To me those widescreen images have way more impact than
the standard captures. And they suit the futuristic content. The last
time I saw square-ish images that seemed appropriate to the content
was a screening of James Cagney's Angels With Dirty Faces (1938). But
that was on a cinema where the size of the screen did justice to the
film.

I am concerned that whatever is produced, we have a choice of how to
view it and can individually decide which evil is the lesser one.

David

> Whatever the inherent problems of converting a 4:3 aspect ratio to
> widescreen, in my view widescreen is an infinitely more impressive way
> of viewing. To me those widescreen images have way more impact than
> the standard captures.

I agree that the second and third images look okay in widescreen.
But the first one looks a bit too "chopped off" (although if they
had shifted the image up a bit, it probably would have been okay).

In the late 80's / early 90's, I used to put black cardboard strips
on the top and bottom of my TV screen to hide the Japanese subtitles
on my letterboxed laserdiscs, and I also tried watching some
UFO episodes this way. For the most part, it looked good this way.
However, I don't think I was cropping it quite as much as these
HDTV versions. I think UFO would work better in a slightly less
widescreen aspect ratio... say, 1.6 instead of 1.8.

Marc

I only want to see any film or TV episode in the format in which it was made
and designed to be experienced. That goes for the sound being in mono if
that's what was intended and the picture being in black and white if that's
how it was shot.

To show them in any other form is to bastardise them and is in no way
different to hacking chunks from a painting, dropping sections from a
symphony or bowdlerising a novel.

Regards
John


----- Original Message -----
From: "pointy100" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 7:45 AM
Subject: [SHADO] Re: UFO in widescreen


--- In [hidden email], Marc Martin <marc@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> UFO fan Jesse Garnier has sent me photos of his TV set while
> UFO is being shown in HDTV on Dish Network. You can compare
> this with the corresponding frame captures I took from the
> DVD releases:
>
Whatever the inherent problems of converting a 4:3 aspect ratio to
widescreen, in my view widescreen is an infinitely more impressive way
of viewing. To me those widescreen images have way more impact than
the standard captures. And they suit the futuristic content. The last
time I saw square-ish images that seemed appropriate to the content
was a screening of James Cagney's Angels With Dirty Faces (1938). But
that was on a cinema where the size of the screen did justice to the
film.

I am concerned that whatever is produced, we have a choice of how to
view it and can individually decide which evil is the lesser one.

David







Yahoo! Groups Links

> I only want to see any film or TV episode in the format in which it was
> made and designed to be experienced.

My feeling is that there was so much overscan in television sets back
in 1970, that directors certainly had to take into account that most
television sets would be chopping off a significant portion of the
edges anyway. So why not chop off that amount from the top and
bottom of the frame?

Marc

To take into account the variation in the framing of domestic TVs, film
cameras used for TV production had ground glass screens etched with a "TV
safe" area in the viewfinder. (I know because I used to use cameras with
this marking).

Despite the rounded corners, the difference between the TV safe area and the
full frame had little effect, certainly the difference at the top and bottom
of frame was marginal. Even if you wanted to, there would be only a
negligible amount that you could crop at the top and bottom of frame before
you encroached on the TV safe area.

Regards
John

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc Martin" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 6:58 PM
Subject: Re: [SHADO] Re: UFO in widescreen


> I only want to see any film or TV episode in the format in which it was
> made and designed to be experienced.

My feeling is that there was so much overscan in television sets back
in 1970, that directors certainly had to take into account that most
television sets would be chopping off a significant portion of the
edges anyway. So why not chop off that amount from the top and
bottom of the frame?

Marc




Yahoo! Groups Links

--- In [hidden email], "JKS" <jks@...> wrote:
>
> I only want to see any film or TV episode in the format in which it
was made
> and designed to be experienced. That goes for the sound being in
mono if
> that's what was intended and the picture being in black and white
if that's
> how it was shot.
>
> To show them in any other form is to bastardise them and is in no
way
> different to hacking chunks from a painting, dropping sections from
a
> symphony or bowdlerising a novel.
>
> Regards
> John
>

Absolutely! I'm with you 100% on this one John.

If this is the price we have to pay for HDTV then I for one will
stick with the DVDs and standard TV. To clean up the images and
convert them to digital is ok (though I do find the pixellation and
jitteriness of over compressed digital conversions annoying). To hack
them around and mess about with the format is just wrong in my
opinion.
Much of the best of the sixties TV shows were made in black and
white, back in the days when the content was more important than the
presentation. Very few of the digital channels show b&w programmes
these days which is a great shame. Even UK Gold has stopped screening
Doctor Who's monochrome (and, arguably best) era.
Sorry. I drifted off topic there.


Kevin.

--- In [hidden email], Marc Martin <marc@...> wrote:
 
> UFO fan Jesse Garnier has sent me photos of his TV set while
> UFO is being shown in HDTV on Dish Network. You can compare
> this with the corresponding frame captures I took from the
> DVD releases:
 
> http://ufoseries.com/hdtv/


Thanks for these :-)

I was comparing these images to those on my TV and noticed your DVD
frame captures showed more of the image compared to my DVD! This
happened whether the DVD was PAL or NTSC, using three different
players viewed on two TVs in 4:3.

The only way I could see the same amount of picture as your frame
caps was viewing on my PC using Windows Media Player. Does anybody
have any idea why this is? It appears that even in 4:3, none of my
DVD players are able to show the entire image available, or, could
it be the 4:3 on the TVs that is responsible, both being *poxy*
widescreen! Does this also happen with your lovely old fashioned
4:3 TV Marc? I'd be interested to know! :-)


 
> Assuming that Jesse's TV does not automatically zoom in on
> 4:3 material, one can easily see that the top & bottom of
> the original frame are cropped off on the HDTV version.


Can you not find this out? If this TV is set to a different aspect,
this might change whatever is being transmitted anyway. The HD
images look very much like my `zoom' aspect, best described as 4:3
but enlarged to fill the screen, but with a slight loss of
definition.

As for assessing picture quality, there are just too many variables!
But I'd like to bet on these transmissions being the digital re-
masters. In the "Complete UFO" (either version), it says these re-
masters were sold *overseas* in 70 countries for broadcast, which
makes it even more sickening that ITV 4 is broadcasting horrible old
prints here in the UK. I expect it's a matter of economics, although
they've edited them in order to get in more adverts = more revenue.
They obviously could have bought the digital re-masters, or is this
back to the issue of ITV 4 not having the `bandwidth' or whatever,
to be able to transmit them? :-/



Sarah

> I was comparing these images to those on my TV and noticed your DVD
> frame captures showed more of the image compared to my DVD!

TV sets typically crop off the edges of the picture, to hide any
imperfections that my be there. One can have their TV serviced
to reduce the amount that is cropped -- it's usually just a
twist to a knob inside the set. Or one can sometimes find a
DVD player that allows you to "underscan" the output, which
compensates for the TV set "overscan".

A PC playing a DVD shows the entire picture.

My TV set also crops off the edges, but not to the same degree
as most, as I adjusted mine myself when I got it (probably better
to get an expert to do this, though).

> Can you not find this out? If this TV is set to a different aspect,
> this might change whatever is being transmitted anyway.

I suggested the possibility that his set might be zooming in on
the picture, but he didn't respond to this question, so I assume
that he thinks it is not. But I'll certainly leave that open
as a possibility.

Marc

Hi All :)

To be honest, I've watched UFO in all manner of ways over the years (4.3 TV,
Widescreen, Widescreen LCD, LCD Projection, Private projected LCD theater,
broadcast tapes, VHS, and DVD etc. etc. in just about all modes: normal, wise,
zoom, smart)... ...the new DVD's are orders of magnitude better than any
broadcasted versions (terrestrial, cable, satellite due to their (terrestrial,
cable, satellite) bad editing, cropping, commercials etc.) The DVD's show UFO
just as Gerry and Sylvia must have always dreamed they should be view...

...and the best UFO viewing I have had (by far mile!) is by sitting back
watching UFO from one of my computers (big LCD screen (viewsonic in movie
lighting mode) up close and personal) with surround sound (simulated stereodoes
a fair job), lights down low, glass of cola at the ready, and a nice big bag of
toffee flavoured popcorn... Everyone out so I don't get disturbed...

Mmmmmmmm...... UFO at it's best...

Best to all :)

Griff