Removing letterbox bars on DVDs, redeye reduction and elimination
Original column publication July 11, 2002
Q: I love my DVD player, but I hate the black bars above and below the picture in most of the movies. Why do they make them that way, and can I get rid of the bars? Why do’t they make the DVDs full screen?
– Ted Bielecki, Mt. Pleasant
A: When DVD was introduced, it was meant to be a format for movie buffs, much like the laserdisc format that preceded it. Most serious movie collectors prefer the widescreen format as it shows the entire frame as the director intended it. What you refer to as “full screen” is properly known as “pan and scan.” This is because when a pan and scan video is made from a widescreen original, an editor selectively zooms up on different parts of the frame, cutting off the sides. If you own both the widescreen and full screen versions of a movie, compare similar scenes from both and you will see what is missing from the full screen version. Some DVDs do offer both the widescreen and pan and scan versions on the same disc. If you have a widescreen only DVD and you want to get rid of the black bars, you can eliminate them if your DVD player has a zoom feature. Pressing the zoom button once or twice will zoom in on the center of the picture and greatly reduce or totally eliminate the black bars. You will be missing some of the picture from the sides of the frame, but you would be missing it in the pan and scan version anyway. This way you can enjoy watching your widescreen movies as if they were full screen now, and in the future if you get a widescreen TV like the new HDTV models, you can watch them widescreen as well.
Q:I have had several small cameras with “redeye reduction”, but I still get red eyes in my pictures. Doesn’t redeye reduction work?
-Jerry Rutledge, Mt. Lebanon.
A: Your camera has redeye reduction, not redeye elimination! What it does is give your subjects smaller red eyes than they would have had without it. Clever marketing ploy, isn’t it? It’s technically truthful advertising, but it can be quite misleading. What causes the red eyes so often seen in pictures taken with small cameras is the closeness of the lens to the flash. That’s why very rarely see red eyes in pictures taken with cameras that have detachable flashes. The flash is kept far away enough from the lens to avoid the redeye effect. There isn’t much you can do to avoid redeye with a compact camera. If your camera has a zoom lens, make sure when you use it with flash you zoom it to the widest position and leave it there. When you zoom the lens to bring your subject closer, it also has the effect of bringing the lens and flash closer together. Kodak has a line of cameras that incorporate the flash into the lens cover, lifting it above the lens when it is opened. For a small camera, these do better than most at avoiding the redeye effect.
