Mixing ARs

[JaddziaDax]

I'll usually go widescreen, I like it more..

Unless it's the case of my pokemon video which some of the sources had already been cropped "formatted to fit your old tv" style... I would have felt bad cropping it off even more just to make it all widescreen, so i cropped the widescreen to fullscreen.

[Pwolf]

I'll usually go widescreen, I like it more..

Unless it's the case of my pokemon video which some of the sources had already been cropped "formatted to fit your old tv" style... I would have felt bad cropping it off even more just to make it all widescreen, so i cropped the widescreen to fullscreen.

I think that would be case where I might go 4:3.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Before I say anything, it might be worth mentioning BestFit() since it has pictures and stuff about mixing different AR's

CROPPING:

• Use 16:9/Widescreen because:
  -[most] people have two eyes, so our field of vision is naturally more horizontal/wide
  -generally, people look left/right more than they look up/down because of our landscape POV, so wider is more comfortable.
  -wider is more cinematographic; it gives a completely different feeling with black bars on the top/bottom*
  *depending on monitor size; but more movies are coming out in their original 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 Aspect Ratio's anyway...
  -additionally, the geometry [related to width vs surface area] makes it better for compression at higher resolutions.
  
  Use 4:3/Fullscreen because:
  -cropping to 16:9 may cut off important stuff if you're not careful
  -cropping to 16:9 blows up the central pixels of the video which sometimes looks bad depending on the source
  -cropping to 16:9 may require you to upscale to 848x636 first in order to look decent
  -if pillarboxed to 16:9, you still get the full picture
  -It has an oldschool feeling
  
  In terms of quality (data lost):
  I felt like doing the math using 720x480 as a reference resolution, and it turns out that cropping 4:3-->16:9 and 16:9-->4:3 both result in a total of 86400px being cropped off, meaning regardless of which way you crop, the quality will be 25% less (or at least there will be 25% less data). This kind of borderlines on being a big deal, and not being a big deal... so IMO cropping has to be done on a case-by-case basis.
  
  In terms of viewing:
  Most monitors these days are widescreen, so a 4:3 video will be constrained by the height of the monitor. Thus, if the top/bottom are cut off, the remaining image will be blown up and you might see compression artifacts; yet a 16:9 video with the sides cut off will look the same. So if you are concerned with quality, cropping 16:9-->4:3 isn't such a bad idea. Ironically, this is the opposite I would have argued when I first joined the site and most monitors were fullscreen (where a 4:3 video with the top/bottom cut off would look the same; but a 16:9 video with the sides cut off would look blown-up).

BORDERS:

• You can also mix different AR's by adding borders (letterboxes/pillarboxes). But I would only do that if you don't have many transitions between ARs, otherwise it is too noticeable and becomes a distraction. So it might be alright for a MEP, or if your video has clear break points. (Actually, on a widescreen monitor, 4:3 footage pillarboxed to 16:9 looks no different than the original). Keep in mind borders also add unnecessary bitrate to your encode, so files are bigger than they have to be. You'll also have people complaining your video didn't fill their entire monitor.

EFFECTS:

• Another way to mix them is to use some sort of effect, like stylized borders, camera movements, multiple windows, video overlays/backgrounds etc... you can be pretty creative... but honestly I rarely encounter videos where it doesn't distract from the main content of the video. As with any effect, use with caution.

MY THOUGHTS:

• If you are really worried about quality, crop 16:9-->4:3, and it won't be as noticeable; but if your sources look good enough, cropping 4:3-->16:9 is generally more appealing. That's what I usually do anyways... but I don't carelessly chop off the top/bottom. In my editor, I work at a resolution of 848x636 and overlay 78px letterboxes on the top and bottom. The 16:9 footage remains untouched, but the 4:3 footage has the top/bottom covered (nothing is cropped yet). If anything important is covered, or if it looks strange, I'll pan the 4:3 footage up/down. Then I'll export at 848x636, and crop to 848x480 afterward.

[Pie Row Maniac]

I'll compare the two, sticking with the least ridiculous looking one.

[outlawed]

You can mix AR however you like as long as you can effectively argue why to the average bitch-ass internet forum warrior.

[Kireblue]

I try to avoid mixing aspect ratios when making a multi anime AMV. If a the AR of one of my sources doesn't match the majority of my other sources, I usually decide not to use it. On the rare occasion when I do mix ARs, I crop my widescreen footage to 720x480