What is an aspect ratio?
A. Aspect ratios are the different screen sizes that a movie can be filmed in. Also known as OAR (Original Aspect Ratio). This is usually the director’s choice, and it usually can range from 1.85:1 to 2.35:1. That is, the screen is 1.85 times wider vs. tall. Standard television is currently 1.33:1.
Aspect ratio refers to the ratio of width to height of a television set. Traditional television sets have a 4:3 aspect ratio. Widescreen television sets have a 16:9 aspect ratio. Traditional television sets are almost square in appearance; widescreen displays are more rectangular. DVD has the unique capability to display movies in 3 different ways: Widescreen, which provides a special “anamorphic video” signal that, when processed by a widescreen television set, fills the entire screen and delivers optimum picture quality . There is a Pan and Scan version that fills the screen of traditional 4:3 television sets with an entire picture, much like watching network movies, and then there is a special letterbox mode that provides horizontal bands at the top and bottom to, in essence, create a widescreen picture in a traditional television set.
An aspect ratio refers to the dimensions of a television screen or other screen. The ratio refers to the width of the screen in relation to the height of the screen. The aspect ratio of today’s traditional TV is 4:3. For comparison, the aspect ratio of a square screen would be expressed as 1:1 or 4:4. The aspect ratio of HDTV will be 16:9. This is similar to the aspect ratio that many motion pictures are shot in. The 16 refers to the width of the screen and the 9 refers to the height of the screen.
Every photo or movie has an attribute called an Aspect Ratio. The aspect ratio is the relation between the horizontal and vertical sizes of the photo. To calculate the aspect ratio simple divide the width or a photo by its height. For example TV in normal mode has an aspect ratio of 4:3 or in other words if we were to divide the width of the screen by its height the result would be 4/3. TV in widescreen format on the other hand has an aspect ratio of 16:9. When we take a photo with a camera light that travels through the lenses hits a sensor (a film in traditional cameras or a CCD in digital ones). The sensor in turn translates the light into a two dimensional photo. The sensor itself has physical attributes such as width, height, granularity (in films) and number of pixels (in digital CCD sensors).