plebz wrote:I've been wondering something, so much that I had to join to ask. I am not defending the Orange Bricks, but I have noticed that while the top seems to be cut off a bit (from when it was cropped to 16:9), the sides actually have MORE footage than the 4:3 Dragon Box. So, my question is, why is this, and is this the case with the blu-rays as well? I've been thinking about picking them up at some point (I would go with the level sets, but those were discontinued) so cropped is now my only option.
I'll try and explain without using terminology that might confuse.
Most film stock is wider than 4:3 (the 'legacy' TV aspect ratio.)
Because of this, animation (and live action) that was recorded to film stock instead of video often has extra material on the side (a background or character frame 'photographed' to the 35mm wouldn't be drawn to the exact 4:3, as things might have to be moved, or something might have to be reused later, etc.)
So you end up with more on the sides. Sometimes this is fully 'produced' content (with the animation finished) other times stuff fades away as people stopped drawing (this is easier to spot in 4:3 releases of movies that were drawn 4:3, but intended to be shown 16:9, characters feet missing on the bottom etc.)
In the cast of Funi's DVDs and BDs for DBZ, since they crop the top and bottom, they can capture this extra side material without pulling the 'camera' back (which would have blank space on the top and bottom) since that space will be cropped out and not part of the image.
For a show like say, Buffy, it means a few foreign DVDs actually filmed it fully as if it were a film, and they have widescreen DVDs despite the creators openly not wanting that to happen(and the show wasn't produced as such, so you have equipment in shots, and occasionally even crew.)
For a show like Friends, you had some of the crew go back later and do a native widescreen version of that, occasionally cleaning up gunk on the sides to do a nice widescreen version (which they actually cleaned up again after missing some stuff the first time.)
In the case of DBZ using that extra space on the side means we get some extra little bits of backgrounds and occasionally part of an arm.
I bring up the other examples not because they have filmstock that matches DBZs, they don't, they have much nicer film masters that could be adapted to widescreen relatively 'simply', at least as far as aspect ratio goes, while DBZs filmstock was much closer to 1.33 (the 4:3 ratio used for legacy TV content.)
Here is an image of DBZ filmstock just to show you.-
http://i430.photobucket.com/albums/qq29 ... 803r4m.jpg
And to have it explained by people who actually had to deal with this type of film stock, here is an explanation why despite having high quality filmstock, the Star Trek TNG BDs are not widescreen.-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQtWeor58rU
