Letterboxing (filming)
video formatting effect
Letter-boxing is the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the film's original aspect ratio. The resulting video-graphic image has mattes of empty space above and below it; these mattes are part of each frame of the video signal.
Etymology
The term refers to the shape of a letter-box, a slot in a wall or door through which mail is delivered, being rectangular and wider than it is high.
Early home video use
The first use of letter-boxing in consumer video appeared with the RCA Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) videodisc format. Initially, letter-boxing was limited to several key sequences of a film such as opening and closing credits, but was later used for entire films. The first fully letter-boxed CED release was Amarcord, and several others followed including The Long Goodbye, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The King of Hearts. Each disc contains a label noting the use of "RCA's innovative wide-screen mastering technique".
In cinema and home video
The term "SmileBox" is a registered trademark used to describe a type of letter-boxing for Cinerama films, such as on the Blu-ray release of How the West Was Won. The image is produced by using a map projection-like technique to approximate how the picture might look if projected onto a curved Cinerama screen.
On television
Digital broadcasting allows 1.78:1 widescreen format transmissions without losing resolution, and thus widescreen is the television norm.
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