Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 1898)

Medium Aspect ratio
Widescreen (anamorphic) film projection 2.40 (also referred to as 2.35 and
2.39)
Footage with different aspect ratios can be combined using a variety of techniques, as
described in the following sections.
Letterboxing
Letterboxing preserves the aspect ratio of widescreen movies on a narrower screen. The
movie is scaled until it fits within the width of the screen, resulting in blacks bars at the
top and bottom of the frame.
1.78 letterbox
1.33 frame 1.33 frame 1.78 frame
2.40 letterbox 2.40 letterbox
Pan and Scan
The pan and scan technique crops widescreen movies to fit on a narrower screen. In some
cases, artificial camera moves may even be added to show the entire content of a
widescreen frame. Pan and scan does not preserve the aspect ratio of widescreen movies.
1.78 pan and scan 2.40 pan and scan
1.33 frame 1.33 frame
1898 Appendix B Video Formats