16:9 Viewed on a 4:3 Monitor
 

I own a switchable 4:3/16:9 monitor and will be shooting with the XL2. I know that when I view 4:3 footage on a 4:3 monitor some of the image will not be visible on the screen. So my question is, when I view letterboxed 16:9 footage on my 4:3 monitor, will the top and bottom of the 16:9 shot show the full frame, and the left and right sides be "overscanned" and off-screen?

I think that the above link doesn't fully answer yr question.Top and bottom will be shown, slightly blown up, so will be the horizontal dimension, but this means horizontal overscan (partly off- screen).

Why do you say that some of the 4:3 image will not be visible when viewed on a 4:3 monitor? While there may be some overscan, broadcast monitors (in contrast to consumer TVs) should show pretty near the whole image and most have an underscan setting that shrinks it a little more so you do see the entire image. If you set the monitor to 16:9 mode, those I've seen fit the image to the screen in the horizontal dimension, leaving black bars at the top and bottom since the 16:9 image is proportionally not as tall for a given horizontal distance as is 4:3 (16:9 works out to 4:2.25).

Right Steve for a monitor in underscan mode. Many monitors don't have underscan setting, and then, a general overscan rules exist. Used to be 10% for tube equiped CRT monitors/TV's. 5% for transidtorized sets and up to 5% for pixel based devices. For analog sets, the overscan was needed mainly for horizontal phase tolerences, ageing and thermal effects. For digital display devices, overscan is needed only for horizontal phase (=linesync front to active line delay)tolerances

Right, I knew that <g>. But I was under the impression that most monitors, as distinctly different critters from consumer TVs and intended for critical viewing and image evaluation, were normally set up for minimum overscan, certainly much less than a typical consumer television set.

It has been my understanding for many long years now that underscan is somewhat a diagnostic tool as well as a sort of representation of the potential screen real estate lost on the average consumer TV set. That is, the bezel on most older TV sets was somewhat rounded, as were the tubes. A flat image was not possible then and variations of manufacturers and their frames (the bezels) varied. It was a given that title safe was 10% and action safe was 5% in 4:3 analog.

I have been wondering of late if there is an actual title safe for 16:9 as most displays for widescreen are either flat plasma, LCD or flat tubes. Most picture areas are very nearly squared off, that is the bezel isn't as curved as they used to be so the area of image lost isn't as high.

To the question, if you have a professional monitor, you should see edge to edge with the black bars top and bottom, on a 4:3 sized tube, in 16:9 mode. If you have a 4:3 set without 16:9 mode, you will get anamorphic display but it won't show any more screen than you are seeing in 4:3 so, whatever amount of the picture you don't see in 4:3, you will also not see in 16:9 without going to underscan, if you have that available.

As for myself, I have 2 great older Sony PVM monitors with 4:3 only. There was a mod to some Sony PVM models that added a 16:9 switch on the back. I am wondering how they accomplished this and how much trouble it would be to add my own 16:9 switch. I would think all I would need to do is decrease the height of the sweep on the tube some known percentage.

My 2 cents,

Sean McHenry

Professional (broadcast...) monitors' overscan is set for representing consumer TV settings. Also save area's for titles...are possible. 16:9 in CRT monitors (and some high end consumer TVs) is indeed done by reducing the vertical scan amplitude. Several broadcast monitors have this function build in.