I've noticed while watching Swank Digital movies that they use the widescreen dimensions of a movie theater, not a widescreen tv. On my 4:3 tv, this makes the picture take up only half the screen. To me, it really hurts the quality of the movie. I wouldn't mind if they used the 16:9 dimensions of a WS HD TV, but at the current resolution, it bothers me enough that I'm less likely to view any more of their movies. Has this been an issue for anyone else who likes their movies?
I can't comment on Swank, but last year Torrid released Penetration Nation in that same super-widescreen format, and it bugged me as well. It looks like it would be letterboxed even on a widescreen TV, so you can imagine what it was like on my 4:3 TV. I think it was the first time I saw a porno in widescreen, and I thought all widescreen porn would be like that, and I complained about it a lot here for a few months. And then I finally saw a porno in 16:9 and I was like, "Oh, that's not so bad. I can certainly live with that." But that super-duper-widescreen format was stupid.
I put Penetration Nation in my computer now and played it in fullscreen on my 17" lcd monitor, and then measured the picture with a ruler. The actual picture is about 5 1/2 inches high and about 13 inches wide on my computer screen. And get this: there are dark grey bars above and below the picture, and then black above and below that. In other words the DVD has a 16:9 format, but is letterboxed up to 16:9 since the actual movie format is so wide.
I do have to wonder if something is wrong with me if Katsumi was being DPed on my computer screen, and I was just measuring the size of the picture with a ruler and hardly even noticing the content of the movie.
I love anamorphic widescreen for Hollywood movies but for porn? I figure a lot of people still watch porn on a 4:3 set and I don't really see much of an advantage to making the picture smaller than it already is.
I agree, I love 16:9 for Hollywood movies, but for porn, I wish they would just stick to 4:3 for now. But if you're gonna do 16:9, make sure you do it right and it gets no wider than that. Private has done ok along those lines and I can live with their 16:9 movies.
Yes. I watched Just 18 5 the other day and on my regular TV, the picture was stretched all to hell. Fixed it (partially) by changing the output of my DVD player to widescreen or letterbox (forget which exactly). That basically blows the picture up to 4:3, so the dimensions of the actors and stuff is correct but you lose some of the frame..like you would watching any standard hollywood movie (usually 2:40:1, 1:85:1, 2:35:1) that is presented on VHS/DVD as "full frame".
My TV is pretty big, so watching widescreen movies is normally no problem...but I won't be buying any more Swank stuff till they sort their widescreen shit out.
Edited by - Von Hugenstein on 1/6/2007 1:47:31 AM
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Darth-Morpheous Deactivated User
1701 Posts 3/02
Posted - Jan 6 2007 : 12:44PM
Outside of people who are still watching ancient 4:3 T.V.s, I can't imagine complaining about seeing more background on the sides as opposed to black bars. The few Widescreen movies I have so far look awesome! I for one can't wait for porn on HD-DVD.
Yes if I compare a Private Tropical in Widescreen (later editions) to a Swank Title in Widescreen. The difference is incredible. Swank Titles has some hot looking younger girls but the flawed picture quality cannot be overcome by this.
Edited by - something different on 1/6/2007 4:34:47 PM
LOL! Well, my 4:3 TV isn't exactly ancient. I think I bought it in 03, or thereabouts.
And honestly, who really cares about seeing the background? The main subject in a porn flick is naked people. Lovely sets and props can enhance the experience. This I won't deny but I'm not really looking at that stuff anyway. I don't watch porn in order to admire the landscape. Hollywood movies don't suffer from the widescreen treatment because they're meant for a screen that's large enough to virtually swallow a viewer who sits close enough.
Porn goes straight to the humble small screen every time. I'm sure a widescreen porn DVD is "fabulous" for a guy who has a 60" widescreen set but a lot of porn viewers don't happen to have such a luxury item in their possession.
Even small widescreen sets are relatively expensive at this point in time. Getting cheaper but still not anywhere near universal.
The simple truth is that somebody is going to end up watching black bars one way or another.
I don't think any of us have a problem with 16:9 WS, its when the studio screws up the dvd and it is much wider than that. I can live with small black bars on my "ancient" tv, but when its 25% top black bar, 50% picture, 25% bottom black bar, it really affects the movie. In the meantime, I'll try and see if my dvd can adjust to take care of the error in the dvd authoring and get it to 16:9.
So I'm left wondering what is really going on here.
Tony C. indicates that some studio is incorrectly putting a 16x9 letterboxed image into an anamorphic 4x3 frame. I'm not clear if Tony means that Swank Digital is doing this, or if he means that Torrid did this on Penetration Nation.
The only other possibility I can get from this is that Swank is filming everything at 2.35:1 (cinemascope) and doing anamorphic widescreen. That seems really unlikely for a porn studio though. Scope isn't even used by all hollywood studios.
Suggestions for bandwagon to narrow this down:
1. Make certain your DVD player is set up properly. If your TV is 4x3 (which I think it is), make sure the DVD player is set up to send a signal to a 4x3 TV. 2. Look for objects on screen that should be circular. Do they look circular, or do they look oval? If circles are circles, then the aspect ratio is correct. 3. Either by eye, or with a piece of tape or something, compare where the black bars are on a regular hollywood DVD and one of these Swank Digital DVDs. Make sure that you use a 1.85:1 DVD from hollywood. Many tell the exact aspect ratio on the back, so this shouldn't be too hard.
16:9 is 1.77 aspect ratio. If a 1.85 is presented in native format, it will be slightly letterboxed on a 16:9 monitor, and on a 4:3 monitor it will be slightly more letterboxed than a 16:9 presentation.
I made a screen capture of Penetration Nation to show how wide the picture was. Not that it matters, as that movie is from 2005. screen cap As you can see, the whole image is about 16:9, but subtract the black bars and the actual movie is even wider than that. Perhaps that is what Swank is doing. Wait a minute, if these are Denys Defranco movies, then I understand. The scenes on his websites are really wide, also.
I've downloaded the screen capture and cropped the image portion out. The original was 852 x 480 pixels or 1.775:1, which is pretty much exactly 16:9.
The cropped image is 852 x 359, or 2.373:1 . To be exactly 2.35:1, it would need to be 852 x 363. That seems close enough to me to mean that this video was originally framed at 2.35:1 . I *think* this solves the mystery.
Tony, I stand corrected. You know I thought that image looked a little funny, but since it's just girls' backs and some scenery, it was hard for me to tell.
To test your theory, I resized the original image from 852x480 down to 64 hex 480, effectively squeezing it back into a 4x3 frame (64 hex 480 is 4:3). The resulting image looks far more "correct" than the original, and I now clearly see what you mean.
What a cruel trick of math that when you squeeze 16:9 into a 4x3 frame you end up with something that looks very close to 2.35:1. The math: 4/3 x 16/9 = 2.370 (repeating 370). ...and just so happens to match what I measured above.
Now some good news. I don't have one of these to test with, but I think you can fix this if you have a 4x3 TV. Here's how: Change your DVD player's setup and tell it you have a widescreen or 16:9 display. It will then *not* stretch the image and *not* add the extra black bars, and you'll get a 16x9 image in a 4x3 frame on your 4x3 set.
With a widescreen TV, I think you're screwed with this title. Again, I don't have one to test with, so I'm not sure.
Thanks for the help. Compared to the screenshot for Penetration Nation, I'm getting an even more pronounced black bars for the Swank movie, Slut Swapping. I did however experiment with my dvd player and I can indeed pan in a little without degrading the picture quality to get it to about 16:9 which is accepatable. DrPorno, I'll see what happens if I set my dvd player to 16:9 instead of 4:3.
Typical setup for a WHOLE lot of homes is, when a big screen (i.e., widescreen, 16x9) TV is bought, it goes into the FAMILY room, and the regular (4x3) TV gets sent into the basement or bedroom. That's certainly what happened at my house, and at 90% of the homes I know with widescreen TV's.
Now, guess how many guys like watching porn in their FAMILY room.
It doesn't take a genuis to realize that most porn gets watched on 4x3 screens. So, if any pseudo-artsy types with delusions of grandeur want to make widescreen porn, they should be required to put a warning label on the box, and on their internet ads. eBay ought to adopt that requirement, too.
I finally got to watch a recent Swank DVD (shot in widescreen) on a widescreen TV, and they certainly don't use an anamorphic or similiar process for their widescreen format. WTF is going on over at Swank? What's the point of a ws format that looks fucked up on every possible TV? Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Posted - Jan 5 2007 : 12:13AM
