An open matte presentation should be entered as full screen.

But not all 1.85:1 films used soft mattes. Some were hard matted to 1.85:1. And some were just butchered on home video regardless.

Thus, I wouldn't assume anything. I would go by the packaging unless your research shows you otherwise.

Quoting Nexus the Sixth:

Quote:
I wouldn't assume anything. I would go by the packaging unless your research shows you otherwise.

The packaging hardly ever tells us how a fullscreen version was created, so that's really no help.

In most cases, you can really only be sure when you actually have the widescreen version available to compare it with. That, too, isn't very helpful, of course, but I'm afraid there really isn't an easy answer to this.

Personally, I tend to use "Full Frame" only for stuff that actually always was "Full Frame" in the first place, and use "Pan & Scan" for anything that was "modified to fit your screen" in any way. So although I very much understand that it isn't accurate, in my local database the term "Pan & Scan" is pretty much interpreted as "not in it's original widescreen aspect ratio". I can actually filter on that - I've just done that, and I can report that I've got exactly 51 DVD's with films that are (unfortunately) not presented in their original widescreen aspect ratio. That filter can come in handy: occassionally, I go through this list to see if any of them have gotten a widescreen release since I last checked. But if I list a number of them as "Full Frame", then that filter no longer works: the "open matte" transfers listed as "full frame" would then be lumped together which huge amounts of TV discs in the "full frame" format. So by listing some of these as "full frame", I'd actually be losing a bit of information that's valuable/useful to me.

Still, I do acknowledge that there's a difference between "Pan & Scan" and "Open Matte", but it's so hard to prove and/or document that I generally don't bother. But if someone actually bothered to compare widescreen and full frame versions with each other, and, based on that, claims it's open matte and should therefore be listed as "Full Frame", then I'd have no problem with that. So I'd generally tend to start out by assuming it's pan & scan, until someone manages to make a solid case that it isn't.

"Full Frame" is a strange term anyway. It could theoretically be argued that 1.78:1 is today's "Full Frame". I also have trouble with films in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio that are cropped to 1.78:1 for the DVD. There, too, I would like DVD Profiler to acknowledge somehow that I'm looking at a modified version of the original aspect ratio, but there's currently no real way to do that.

Quoting GSyren:

Quote:

Nowadays films are rarely released in fullscreen if they were shot widescreen, but for older DVD released this is a problem. Knowing that a release is not in the original aspect ratio is important, but open matte is less serious than P&S.

And of course with "independent" filmmakers, even more modern films can be Full Screen as filmed. I think in-house Troma movies are generally still Full Screen. When I'm in doubt I usually default to Full Screen because if it does turn out to be Pan & Scan, I'm still half right, whereas if I guess Pan & Scan and it isn't, then I'm completely wrong.

Quoting bigdaddyhorse:

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Quoting T!M:

Quote:


"Full Frame" is a strange term anyway. It could theoretically be argued that 1.78:1 is today's "Full Frame". I also have trouble with films in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio that are cropped to 1.78:1 for the DVD. There, too, I would like DVD Profiler to acknowledge somehow that I'm looking at a modified version of the original aspect ratio, but there's currently no real way to do that.

Sure there is, mention it in the notes section. Use a term that would only show for that, and you still search it with the "other" filter.

Or just use tags, which not only allows accurate filtering but also usage in custom HTML windows, e.g. displaying special icons based on the tags.

Quoting Lowpro:

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At the very least I should tag each profile a second time, the tag calling out the original aspect

Thanks. I do that as well, on top of the tags shown earlier

Quoting hydr0x:

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Quoting Lowpro:

Quote:
At the very least I should tag each profile a second time, the tag calling out the original aspect

Thanks. I do that as well, on top of the tags shown earlier

Do you get invited to many parties? 

That is just so awesome.

The conclusion that I draw from this thread is:
- When auditing existing profiles, don't change the AR unless it's obviously wrong.
- When creating new profiles, if in doubt use best guess.

That's just me, though. I'm sure some will disagree. For most new profiles this will hopefully not be a problem.