Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Anamorphic VHS?

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Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 04-08-2008, 04:25 PM:

O.k it's common knowledge that most DVD's these days are recorded with anamorphic compression (19:6 compressed into 4:3 and then pulled back out by the DVD player), however I have never seen this with VHS video (untill now). I'm a bit of a collector of letterbox VHS movies and I just picked up a copy of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when I saw it on the shelf in a second hand store.

Anyway I've just sat dow to watch the video. There were a few trailers at the start that looked ok and then into the film. The film is letterboxed at about 1.85:1, but after watching the first few minutes I started to notice that the image didn't look normal, it looked stretched out vertically. Anyway my TV has a button that will do an anamorphic on the picture (if for some reason you don't want to use your DVD player to process the anamorphic). So for fun I pressed the button and the picture jumps into a 2.35:1 ratio and it looks normal. So it slighty confused me, I've never heard of Anamorphic VHS before, but it looks like I've just purchased one. [Confused]

Plus, I just check to find out what ratio the movie was shot in and IMDB does list it as a 2.35 'scope film.

Strange.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 04-08-2008, 04:36 PM:

The letterboxed LaserDisc for Die Hard was like that too. Drove me nuts.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 04-15-2008, 01:16 AM:

It was a transfer method devised by some drugged out freaks in Hollywood. The theory went like this. Letterboxing to 2:39:1 at that time was a no-no. People wouldn't accept it. Likewise there was this problem with Pan&Scan.....seems the studios were facing large lawsuits from the pan&scan videos being causing serious movie-buffs to jump from windows.

The idea as to compensate for the two incompatable aspect ratios of tv square and scope by cheating on all the available parameters -- this way nothing stood out too badly. They would introduce a SLIGHT letterbox, but not nearly enough so that it was the full 2:39:1. Then they would crop left and right side of the screen very slightly, probably no more than many theatres who cheat on scope width. Then the piece de resistance -- they'd introduce just a SLIGHT anamorphic compression. They cheated enough on all the available parameters that could be cheated on so that on only very rare occasions would they need to ever so slightly cheat and pan the position of the transfer muliplex camera to follow action. To the average joe, none of the cheating was enough for them to notice or maybe if they noticed, not enough to make them complain or take back the tape.

For those like you who were savvy enough to realize that there was compression introduced, at least with most CRT sets, they could do exactly as you did -- reduce the horizontal drive control on the back of the set and bingo....everything is good again.

I do know that there were quite a number of transfers made in anamorphic on U-matic; they were only for studio execs screening rooms. Too bad none of the studios had the sense to get in cahoots with the TV manufactures back then and get them move the horizontal drive control up from of the sets and lable them as "CinemScope" so with the flip of the switch they could restore an anamorphic tape.

Interestingly, not only would this cheating process restore the picture, but being that the scan lines were now compressed horizontally into a smaller viewing area, the apparent resolution would increase dramatically. How do I know? Because I have a friend who used to do the transfers for a number of the mucky-mucks. We used to watch these tapes all the time with the drive decreased. To bad it never caught on.