pan-and-scan
Widescreen-to-television conversion
Pan-and-scan is a technique for adapting widescreen films to standard television screens by cropping the frame and shifting the visible area to follow the action.
The method sacrifices portions of the original composition—often cutting characters at the edges of a shot.
Before widescreen TVs became common, most home video releases used pan-and-scan: The pan-and-scan version cuts half the actors out of the dinner scene.
Cutting to resize
- reformattingChanging structure or layout
- fullscreenEntire monitor occupied
- 4:3Width-to-height screen proportion
- telecineReel-to-video conversion device
transfer · framing · recomposition · zoom · extraction · VHS · broadcast
Fourth-to-last twentieth-century decade
- 1990sFinal twentieth-century decade
- analogComparable equivalent
- syndicationMulti-outlet content distribution
cropping
Cutting to resize
- reformattingChanging structure or layout
- fullscreenEntire monitor occupied
- 4:3Width-to-height screen proportion
telecine · transfer · framing · recomposition · zoom · extraction · VHS · broadcast
1980s
Fourth-to-last twentieth-century decade
- 1990sFinal twentieth-century decade
- analogComparable equivalent
- syndicationMulti-outlet content distribution
pan-and-scanletterboxing
Clue-following container search outdoors
letterboxed · widescreen · OAR · matted
pan, scan, pans, scans, panned, panning, scanned, scanning, scanner