What does 4:3 footage cropped like 2:35 widescreen look like on screen.
 

We've seen a cropped 1:85 (standard widscreen i.e. November) on the screen but what does a 2:35 (extremely wide) look like on the bigscreen or widescreen TV. Has it been done before? If so does it look pixelated.

NOTE: Not concerning HD cams this is a SDef question?

On my 57" HDTV, it looks pretty good, (DVX100A 24pA).

A film I directed will be shown this friday, and we will get to see what it looks like this thrusday, through a digital projector (no specs as of yet) from a laptop onto a large screen. I'll tell you what that looks like.

depends how you shoot it.
if you only get a regular DV camera, the best is to use a 16/9 anamorphic adapter and add the bar for 2.35.
i can not believe that a video running on less than 400 lines can give good result on even a medium sized screen.
cropped 16/9 on big screen already looks fuzzy.

The image quality is the same as 4:3 cropped to 1.85:1. The only difference between the two is that there's more black on the top and bottom.

But no one has seen it on screen?
 

No one here has seen it transferred to film? How did November look to you in theaters? That was cropped

I haven't seen it transferred to film.

But there isn't any difference in image quality between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 when they're cropped from 4:3. Something cropped to 2.35:1 doesn't get blown up any more than something cropped to 1.85:1.

A 2.35:1 image just takes up a smaller portion of the screen.

I have seen 4:3 cropped to 16:9 and it looks **** projected, so I imagine 16:9 cropped to 2.35:1 would look similar. As suggested, an anamorphic adapter might help but I can not comment on that.

Hows that so. When you see a 2:35 in the theater, the curtains extend wider.
 

I saw Inside Man this weekend and it was 2:35. The screen before the feature was 1:85 but the previews/film started it opened wider. When I saw War Of The Worlds in D.C. the curtains stayed the same (it was 1:85).

The theater that opened wider probably had an anamorphic projector. Good for them . . . that's increasingly rare.

On a 16:9 TV, all widescreen images are 16:9; anything with a wider aspect ratio just has black bars on the top and bottom of the image -- a tiny bit for 1.85:1, more for 2.35:1.

So you all are saying that there are black bars on the movie screen.
 

When a movie is 2:35 it has blackbars on the screen (IM TALKING ABOUT THE THEATER NOT TV)?

Not on the film itself, but there's something similar going on.

35mm film is 4:3. When a 1.85:1 movie is projected, the projecter has a "gate" which blocks the top and bottom portions of the picture, cropping the image to 1.85:1. This gate can usually be set to multiple aspect ratios, including 2.35:1. So, if the projected image is matted using the gate, you could say it has the black bars on the top and bottom, but it's not on the film itself.

If a film is shot with a 2:1 anamorphic lens, then film is still 4:3, but a wider picture is squeezed onto the film, and looks vertically stretched, just like "squeeze modes" and anamorphic adapters will produce in video cameras. When the film is projected, it's projected anamorphically, and the math works out to an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, no matting required.

SD video cropped to 2.35:1 would probably not be projected anamorphically. That being the case, its quality would be the same as the 1.85:1 video.

the quality you get from cropped video is the same than no cropped video except.... that once cropped, you usually project a bigger picture of the cropped version (to fill the screen).
So imagine if it is bad on regular 4/3 SD it will be anyway worse with a cropped picture (less pixel, bigger screen).
Fact is that DV projected bigger than 12 or 15 feet will look bad.

Thanx Guys
 

My question has been answered.