Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: C. Chaplin's THE RINK letterboxed? &%$#@!

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-21-2008, 03:54 AM:

I just was handed an sDVD of Charlie Chaplin's THE RINK. It is letterboxed to what looks like 1.66:1; WTF?

I was walking out the door when I got this so I only gave it a cursory look -- I only skimmed thru a few minutes of it and so I don't know where this came from or who's the releasing company, but how can this be? I know the Chaplin estate has given rights of a number of DVD releases in various versions, but I have never seen one of his titles artificially letterboxed for the sake of.....what? This should be 1:33, no? What am I missing?

I'll go back this week and try to see who released this DVD.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-07-2008, 05:01 PM:

Had a similar problem with a recently bought DVD of Seven Days to Noon. The pixel aspect ratio was set incorrectly by whoever authored it. Although there's no cropping of the (Academy ratio) frame, the pixel aspect ratio is set to display it as 16:9, with the result that it appears anamorphically stretched. Tried it on 3 players/PCs with the same result, so the problem clearly isn't a default setting on my equipment. I managed to see the film without the stretch by ripping the DVD and reauthoring it in Adobe Encore with the aspect ratio set to 4:3, but 99.9% of everyone else who bought a copy will not have been willing or able to do that.

Posted by John Lasher (Member # 968) on 08-07-2008, 05:41 PM:

Some of Chaplin's films are presented on DVD "Windowboxed" (small black bars on all 4 sides) to compensate for overscan on a standard TV (I believe it's usually 1.33:1 w/i 1.66:1, or something close), nothing is cropped out, the image is just slightly reduced in size. Not having seen the DVD you refer to, I can't say whether or not that is the case, but see if there are black bars to the left and right, as well as top and bottom.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-07-2008, 09:41 PM:

John is correct that most of Chaplin's video transfers DO have small black bars around the entire picture to preserve the entire image. As far as 1.66? Could you have been watching it on one of those televisions or video projectors in 16:9 "stretched" mode? The Rink is one of Chaplin's Mutual films and is absolutely 1.33

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-09-2008, 01:16 AM:

Brad hits it -- yes, it was the damn monitor -- some consumer DELL crap with a 16:9 screen so when it went to AutoDetect, it streched the incoming to 16:9. The Barcos projected native at 1.33 and everything was fine. I just had to watch it in the booth stretched. No matter what I did with the little made-in-China menu buttons on the monitor itself, it refused to show the native ratio because it wouldn't do anything but auto detect and it did that incorrectly. Consumer crap. It needed a good whack with a hammer.