Visual Compression: Difference between revisions

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[[File:compress.jpg|frame|Visual Compression in action. Note the ovoid shape of the sun.]]

This refers to a method of squeezing a [[Aspect Ratio|widescreen]] movie onto a television screen. How is this accomplished? [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Exactly what we said]] -- the original frame is "squeezed", or visually compressed, horizontally until it fits, likely using an anamorphic lens (which works not unlike a [[Fish Eye Lens]]).

Technically speaking, the anamorphic process is not used specifically to fit a widescreen image into a TV screen, but rather to fit a widescreen image into Academy ratio (4:3) film; then, when projecting, the same type of lens is used again to ''un''shrink the image, returning it to its original aspect ratio. (This proces uses up the maximum amount of grains/pixels in transit.) Visual Compression occurs when a film is recorded using an anamorphic lens, but then projected using a ''normal'' lens, which does not undo the "squishing" of the image.

Technically speaking, the anamorphic process is not used specifically to fit a widescreen image into a TV screen, but rather to fit a widescreen image into Academy ratio (4:3) film; then, when projecting, the same type of lens is used again to ''un''shrink the image, returning it to its original aspect ratio. (This proces uses up the maximum amount of grains/pixels in transit.) [[Visual Compression]] occurs when a film is recorded using an anamorphic lens, but then projected using a ''normal'' lens, which does not undo the "squishing" of the image.

Visual Compression can be thought of as a compromise between [[Pan and Scan]] and [[Letterbox]]; unlike the former, Visual Compression preserves the entirety of the original frame, and unlike the latter, there are no empty spaces above or below the frame.