OAR stands for Original Aspect Ratio. The OAR is the shape the director intended his/her film to be viewed in. Below is a guide describing the different shapes of film and television screens, and explaining why preserving the OAR of a film is important.
First I will explain in simple terms the differences between movies presented in widescreen and pan & scan (or full frame). Second, I will lay the groundwork for an understanding of "aspect ratios." Thirdly, I will describe the advantages of viewing a widescreen movie on DVD (or VHS for that matter). Finally, I will explain why widescreen should be the preferred option for those wanting to bring the true theater experience into their homes.
A method of printing movies for presentation on television that modifies the rectangular theater image by trimming the sides and focusing on significant action within the newly truncated image.
The more controversial formatting issue is changing the shape of a movie's picture so that it fills a television screen.
Anamorphic widescreen is a cinematography and photography technique for capturing a widescreen picture on standard 35mm film, or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It can also refer to a related technique for maximizing picture quality in DVD video recordings.
Here you will find out the truth about the way movies are presented on video. This site features aspect ratio information, film formats, and examples that show the difference between widescreen and full frame/pan & scan.
This process of "reformatting" a film is called "Pan & Scan." Some also refer to it as "Full Screen". The term "Widescreen", or "Letterbox" simply refers to the original unaltered film as it was shown in the theater. There are several other ways that films are transferred to video, but we will examine the one that is used most often, and that is Pan & Scan.
Television screens today come in two shapes. The most familiar one is called 4:3, which represents four inches of width for every three inches of height. You can also buy wide-screen, or 16:9, televisions, which take the same shape as many movies.
Seen on a 4:3 TV this letterboxing format--named because it duplicates the effect of staring through a mail slot--leaves black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.
The main problem with 4:3 sets is getting the rectangular "peg" of wide-screen programming to fit the squarish "hole" of a standard TV. 16:9 TVs have the opposite problem: decades' worth of TV programming has been produced to fit the squared-off 4:3 aspect ratio, not the luxuriously wide space of a 16:9 display.
The concept is simple enough: aspect ratio is the fractional relation of the width of a video image compared to its height. The two most common aspect ratios in home video are 4:3 (also known as 4x3, 1.33:1, or standard) and 16:9 (16x9, 1.78:1, or wide-screen).
Whether you want a new bedroom set or a massive home-theater centerpiece, our CNET editors' guide gives you the full picture on shopping for a new TV.
The aspect ratio of an image is its displayed width divided by its height (usually expressed as "x:y").
