If you have ever been annoyed by stretched or squished video, or if you can’t stand those black boxes that take up half your TV screen, this article explains why this happens and how you can fix it. And if you pay attention, you might pick up some pop music trivia as well.
Is it Hip 2 B []?
“In '87, Huey Lewis and the News released, Fore!, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip to be Square", a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself.” -- Patrick Bateman
I couldn’t agree more! It is hip to be square and conformist (just like all my friends), at least when geeking out over video standards. Especially when pondering one of my personal favorite subjects - square and rectangular pixels. The current proliferation of analog and digital video and computer formats offers little hope that anyone but the uber-geekiest among us can keep afloat in this sea of shape-shifting bits. Fortunately for us who are workin’ for a livin’ in the video world, people get it wrong all the time (even “professionals”) and need to be schooled. Improper or incomplete understanding of pixels can taint the presentation of even the most perfectly polished production. So here is an overview on this most elusive agent of confusion - I’ll try to keep it short and sweet.
Pixels are the Heart and Soul of digital video
The word pixel is a short hand term for “picture element.” In computer/digital video terms, it is the smallest bit of information that can be displayed by a computer’s graphics card or a TV’s display technology (LCD, plasma, projection, CRT, etc.). In general, more pixels equal higher resolution, which correlates to higher (potential) image quality. The number of pixels on a screen varies according to the resolution settings. For instance, if your computer display is set to a resolution of 1280x1024 (a common format known as SXGA) your computer has 1,310,720 individually addressable dots arranged in a grid with the above dimensions. Although these dots are almost too small for us to see, they combine to make the pictures you see on the screen. Even though we think of them as dots, they are actually small square points.
It should be noted that pixels generally refer to the resolution of a digital display, whereas traditional analog video resolution is defined by the number of vertical lines – 480 lines for NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) video and 576 lines for PAL (the European video standard). Although the standards reference a certain picture width that corresponds to a certain number of pixels, these are really just samples of the analog signal that are gunned onto a screen one line at a time (actually this is a simplified definition since most analog video is interlaced, meaning only half the lines are displayed at one time; but that is a blog for a different day).
Check back next week to learn more about how pixels impact video quality.
Jeff Maslouski is manager of post production and is truly capable of putting a room into a hypnotic trance with his excruciatingly precise explanations of all things technical.
