1080p movies and black bars

(Ps. I had no idea where to post this!)
I don't understand why some 1080p video's show black bars and other's don't on my laptop with 1080p resolution. I noticed it's usually the 720p video's that show full screen but even those are random.

 

Is the source really in a 16:9 format or is it in 21:9? It could also be that while the video source is 1080p, the black bars are actually part of the source itself. I have seen that before.

 

Why we* degraded to 16:9 again?

*The industry, I'm not planing to do it anytime soon.

 

Why not? Cinema aspect ratio on 16:10 would have even wider black bars.

 

Such type of questions were very popular at the moment of 16:10 arrived.

Movies are usually too widescreen for 16:9. They are something like 2.2:1 or so. If you get 720p 16:9 video then most likely it was cut on the right and on the left to match those aspect ratio. Perhaps even it also has somewhat changed ratio so faces would be just slightly longer.

I suggest to download SVP (Smooth Video Project). It not just makes any video more fluid with higher frame rate but alo has an option to fulfill black bars with aka Ambylight function.

 

So what detail should I be looking at wanting a 1080p movie to have no black bars on my notebook?

 

Well, you could check if the file properties list the actual resolution at which the material was encoded. If the black bars were encoded as part of the file, you'd have to remove them with an editing program. If the source is 21:9 (cinema format), then you could always check the media player's options to see if you can set the video to span the full screen without respecting the aspect ration. Note that this will distort the image somewhat.

 

Yes, 21:9 is cinema format. Although many times it is remastered for 16:9 for Blu-ray. All depends on the studio and movie and a billion other things. If you're intent on watching 21:9 movies shoot for a 21:9 aspect monitor: http://www.amazon.com/VIZIO-XVT-Series-21-Cinemawide/dp/B008ESGRX4

Some movies are actually 2.35:1 which is typically 2538x1080 vs 21:9 of 2560x1080 so there will be small black bars on the left and right.

 

rofl

I don't know. I'm not sure how official this is. But a friend of mine got into a discussion about the aspect.. or really the width.. of the screen with a director from my hometown.. pretty famous in Hollywood. And he said (that he said, that they said) that a lot of directors generally created film in a way that extra width on the edges could be cut off. If tv or cinema stanndard required it. Even the ones who flag their movies as wide&high definition, and so on apparently do that (and it's true, you can see that when watching new film).

Only exception to that could be Josh Whedon with Firefly, maybe - that series is actually directed in widescreen, and designed for a widescreen target. You really lose essential references and events even when watching this in slimmer than 16:9. But apparently that's not something directors normally do.

But.. and I'm not a film-student or know any of this. But there was something about how the layout of the frame becomes very complicated as well when actually directing for a widescreen output. That's.. interesting to me. That it's probably as radical and difficult to create a portrait in double width as it is to direct a movie in widescreen.

 

Yeah, director/operator makes a tape where 1 frame is real big i comparison to finished product. Where you can choose different aspects