007 - Aspect Ratio

I spent a long time at the beginning of this project trying to decide upon what aspect ration to output the final video. There are numerous standards to choose from. (16:9) would be the smart choice here so as to conform with most modern television sets and PC monitors.

However after researching some feature length and short films I began to appreciate a more extreme widescreen format. I find the super widescreen experience you get at the cinema to be far more theatrical and exciting. From an artistic point of view I think there are opportunities for more dramatic close-ups and creative compositions.

The aspect ratio standards for general theatrical releases is (2.39:1), more than double in length than the height of the screen. Blu-ray disk release standards are very similar at (2.40:1), at a full HD resolution of 1920x800.

One thing I've had to be constantly aware of in this project is timescales. More specifically, animation render times. Careful management of the screen output size could alleviate severe render times. So in order to make a more informed decision about screen aspect ration and potential speed of frame outputs I though I'd work out how many pixels each option contains. Here were the results in order of total pixels:

16:9 1920x1080p Full HD = 2,073,600 pixels
2.40:1 1920x800p Full HD = 1,536,000 pixels
16:9 1280x720p HD = 921,600 pixels
2.40:1 1280x533p HD = 682,240 pixels

Diagram I did to investigate the differences in size between formats

You could argue that there is an advantage to using the 2:40 ratio as less pixels will be involved in the rendering process.

Example of how the final video will look proportion-wise

So the final output I've decided on will actually conform to the 16:9 ratio but will be letter-boxed to suit the 'Panavision' format. This should aid in ease of playback with most screen sizes, formats and internet video hosting sites.