The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the width of the image to its height, expressed as two numbers separated by a colon. That is, for an x:y aspect ratio, no matter how big or small the image is, if the width is divided into x units of equal length and the height is measured using this same length unit, the height will be measured to be y units. For example, consider a group of images, all with an aspect ratio of 16:9. One image is 16 inches wide and 9 inches high. Another image is 16 centimeters wide and 9 centimeters high. A third is 8 yards wide and 4.5 yards high.
In still camera photography, the most common aspect ratios are 4:3, 3:2, and more recently being found in consumer cameras 16:9. Other aspect ratios, such as 5:4, 6:7, and 1:1 (square format), are used in photography as well, particularly in medium format and large format.
With television, DVD and Blu-ray, converting formats of unequal ratios is achieved by either: enlarging the original image (by the same factor in both directions) to fill the receiving format's display area and cutting off any excess picture information (zooming and cropping), by adding horizontal mattes (letterboxing) or vertical mattes (pillarboxing) to retain the original format's aspect ratio, or (for TV and DVD) by stretching (hence distorting) the image to fill the receiving format's ratio, by scaling by different factors in both directions, possibly scaling by a different factor in the center and at the edges (as in Wide Zoom mode).
4:3 (generally named as "Four-Three", "Four-by-Three", and "Four-to-Three") for standard television has been in use since television's origins and many computer monitors employ the same aspect ratio. 4:3 is the aspect ratio used for 35 mm films in the silent era and used today for film production under the name Super 35. It is also very close to the 1.37:1 aspect ratio defined by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a standard after the advent of optical sound-on-film. By having TV match this aspect ratio, films previously photographed on film could be satisfactorily viewed on TV in the early days of the medium (i.e. the 1940s and the 1950s).
16:9(generally named as "Sixteen-Nine", "Sixteen-by-Nine" and "Sixteen-to-Nine") is the international standard format of HDTV, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television PALplus. Japan's Hi-Vision originally started with a 5:3 ratio but converted when the international standards group introduced a wider ratio of 5⅓ to 3 (=16:9). Many digital video cameras have the capability to record in 16:9, and 16:9 is the only widescreen aspect ratio natively supported by the DVD. DVD producers can also choose to show even wider ratios such as 1.85:1 and 2.39:1[1] within the 16:9 DVD frame by hard matting or adding black bars within the image itself. Some films which were made in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, such as the U.S.-Italian co-production Man of La Mancha, fit quite comfortably onto a 1.77:1 HDTV screen and have been issued anamorphically enhanced on DVD without the black bars.
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