
Why Is Netflix Secretly Cropping Movies? - nreece
http://flavorwire.com/404511/why-is-netflix-secretly-cropping-movies
======
devindotcom
Netflix almost certainly just licenses the pan-and-scan versions of movies for
maximum compatibility.

I really don't know why this is blowing up all of a sudden. We've had pan and
scan versions of films on TV and streaming for decades.

The only really troubling thing is that there's no "The film you're about to
see may have bee modified from the original version" warning at the beginning
of some, and it should definitely be clear that is the case.

~~~
ricardobeat
Because now there is no technical reason to not have it as an _option_ instead
of forced upon us.

~~~
thwest
No technical reason, but all of the praise and success of Apple's lack of
options certainly makes the case for business reasons.

~~~
gcb0
That's nonsense. Apple is not praised because of the lack of option!

it's praised by some despite the lack of option!

it's a price they paid to have somethings, because you can't have it all. it's
not the feature per se.

~~~
Trufa
I don't say you have to like Apple because of the lack of options, but for
many, the lack of options is a feature.

The last thing I want is an iPhone - Android flame war, but something I don't
like about Android, is that I constantly have to be searching for the ideal
well... everything, since basically everything is changeable, I've gone
through 4 music players, and have been disappointed several times, I did found
a great one eventually, but in this case, I (and I said I god damn it) would
rather have it Apple's way even if it's not perfect, it works if you do it
their way.

~~~
delluminatus
In this case it sounds like it's the quality of Apple's default music player
that you appreciate.

Imagine if their default music player was disappointing, and you couldn't
change it... the lack of options would be a detriment, not a feature.

People don't like that Apple doesn't let you change things, they like that you
don't need to because the default setting is good enough.

~~~
freyr
But you could go one step further, and ask "Why is their default considered so
good by a broad audience?"

This could be attributed to how they identify (what they consider) the most
important options, focus entirely on those, and implement them well.

The complexity of a system can go up exponentially with the number of
features. If development resources were infinite, this wouldn't be a problem.
But it is finite, and more complexity can lead to more bugs, more confusing
interfaces, less maintainable code, and a host of other pitfalls.

In that case, if a lack of options is allowing Apple to a product that's
better overall for most of its users, that's a definite feature.

------
kijin
Whenever I watch a movie with some of my extended family, there's always
someone who asks why the movie doesn't fill the entire screen. They want
either the black bars removed and the area filled with images (like Photoshop
Content-Aware Fill?), or the whole movie zoomed in (cropped) so that the sides
are lost. I, along with some of the other serious movie-watchers in the
family, have to convince these individuals every time that no, that's not how
you watch a movie. (My favorite argument: "That area is reserved for
subtitles.")

But I don't think most of the general public cares about the aspect ratio,
only about utilizing the maximum square footage of their overpriced TV.
Netflix is just catering to this demographic, just like DVD vendors who came
up with 4:3 versions of 2.39:1 movies. The number of customers who complain
about the wrong aspect ratio is probably much smaller than the number of
customers who complain about the black bars.

~~~
stcredzero
_> Whenever I watch a movie with some of my extended family, there's always
someone who asks why the movie doesn't fill the entire screen._

I'm seeing more and more things like this, which seem to fit into a category
of "geometrical illiteracy." Making 4:3 video wider to "use the pixels" on a
widescreen just looks wrong. It makes people look squatter than they actually
are. Many diagrams and animations on Discovery channel shows that supposedly
fall into the category of "science education" seem to be made by scientific
illiterates. Apparently, the visual artists are looking up all of the terms in
the script and description, but who have no real understanding of the
underlying concepts. Wildly incorrect geometries are present in the majority
of these.

A prime example. The a plane moving as in the animation shown would produce
forces in the _exact opposite direction!_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggP32UJeTHQ#t=865s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggP32UJeTHQ#t=865s)

If this is what a large fraction of human beings are like, how are we supposed
to maintain a democratic and technological society?

~~~
chrisrhoden
That clip is from a show called, "Penn & Teller Tell a Lie," wherein they
present lies (and one truth) as fact.

Additionally, you probably misheard when Penn said, "centripetal force," and
assumed he said, "centrifugal force."

Probably not the, "prime example," you thought it was.

~~~
stcredzero
_> That clip is from a show called, "Penn & Teller Tell a Lie," wherein they
present lies (and one truth) as fact. Additionally, you probably misheard when
Penn said, "centripetal force," and assumed he said, "centrifugal force."
Probably not the, "prime example," you thought it was._

1) If the plane would spin sound its own axis like that, the iced tea would
have hit the canopy. The diagram is just wrong.

2) They presented several truths and _one_ lie.

Are you trolling by "telling a lie?" You would have completely mislead anyone
who only took a casual glance at the video.

------
mullingitover
Call me crazy, but I doubt Netflix has permission to modify the films in this
way. Something tells me the studios are providing them to Netflix pre-cropped.

~~~
etler
Look at the Man on the Moon crop. It's clearly not just cropping off the
sides. It's anchored to the right. I also doubt Netflix either has a smart
algorithm that can figure out the focus of the scene, or hires a bunch of
people to choose the right focal point for every movie. They probably ask for
movies from their providers in 16:9 format and they show whatever they get.
They could ask for both formats and give users the choice, but I'm guessing
there might be extra licensing costs to get both, and the majority of their
users aren't cinephiles, and they just want their movies to fill the screen.

~~~
mikeryan
_Look at the Man on the Moon crop. It 's clearly not just cropping off the
sides. It's anchored to the right. _

That's what pan-and-scan is. Its done by the studio so they have some
"artistic" control of how the cropping is done.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_and_scan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_and_scan)

~~~
aspensmonster
I thought etler was saying that the Man on the Moon crop wasn't pan-and-scan
at all. It was just a complete lopping off of the entire left portion of the
film that didn't fit the aspect ratio.

~~~
mikeryan
I'm not saying its well done but just "cropping" would crop to the middle
"lopping off the left portion" is a film thats "panned" to the right.

------
wilg
What a misleading title! It's really not Netflix's doing, and it's definitely
not some kind of evil conspiracy.

The studio isn't going to pay for a new transfer just for Netflix, or maybe
they have a better one but are only realizing it on Blu-Ray. Netflix just gets
whatever version of the movie the studio happens to already have on hand,
which is likely the HDTV version, which is sometimes pan-and-scan.

But that doesn't make a very sensational headline.

~~~
smacktoward
Every transfer for home video I've ever seen has been anamorphic widescreen
since the earliest days of the DVD. There were a few releases among the very
earliest DVDs that were pan-and-scan, because the studios were afraid people
would freak out if they saw black bars on their TV. They didn't, so pan-and-
scan vanished. And that was back when 4:3 SDTVs were the norm, now almost
everyone has 16:9 sets, so widescreen transfers if anything would be more
easily welcomed now.

Considering how much of their libraries they have now mastered for DVD, it
would seem like it would take more work to go back and do a pan-and-scan
transfer than it would to just reuse the one they made for widescreen DVD.

~~~
josteink
> Every transfer for home video I've ever seen has been anamorphic widescreen
> since the earliest days of the DVD.

That's interesting because one of the things which disappointed me most with
DVDs was how immensely hard it was to get DVDs with actual anamorphic
widescreen.

Most movies was actually fullscreen or letterboxed, and for 2.35:1 films that
meant effectively 200 lines for film content.

This was after DVDs had been on the market for 5+ years mind you.

TLDR: An anecdote does not make facts nor data.

------
nwhitehead
My guess is that this cropping is being done by video editing service
companies at the request of the studios.

Netflix and a studio come to a distribution agreement. Netflix tells the
studio the technical requirements for the digital files to send over. The
studio realizes they don't have exactly the right format on hand, so they
contract out to some firm to encode their content. The studio may not realize
that there is an aspect difference, and the service company might
automatically adjust the cropping to make it fill the screen to fulfill their
contract and meet the technical specifications.

------
timfrietas
Ah, this is close to my heart, and I have worked in video and streaming video
for ten years, for many companies. Which is why I am so surprised the author
does not realize that Netflix is not making this decision--video is supplied
by third parties and sometimes this is out of control of Netflix or other
streaming video vendors. Sometimes the pan and scan version is all that exists
as a digital encode. Generally Hollywood studios are resistant to spending any
extra money or labor to put our widescreen versions that customers can't
generally discern from the pan and scan versions (and re-encoding costs are
often absorbed by the streaming video service, in this case Netflix).

Netflix is generally making a smart business decision here--expanding
selection and using a product that appears identical to 98% of viewers--and I
say that as one of the 2% who can tell and do care.

In short, the author should know this, and have said it themselves, citing
their video clerk experience--customers, if anything, think widescreen is the
inferior product.

------
joelmichael
I saw this interesting overview of the history of aspect ratios the other day.
There's a lot more variety than you'd think.

[http://vimeo.com/68830569](http://vimeo.com/68830569)

~~~
awongh
wow, that was well made and informative. I had no idea that that's where the
16:9 aspect ratio came from (the mean ratio of the two most disparate ratios
in film)

------
grbalaffa
HBO and the other "premium" cable channels also do this. Not every single
time, but much of the time. Try watching any of the Lord of the Rings movies
on HBO or Cinemax for example. They're all 16:9, even though they were 2.39:1
"scope" in the theater.[1]

Forcing everything to be 16:9 has become the new "pan and scan", and it's
actually been around for a while.

[1] Some of the time a movie has been filmed in a format which contained extra
space on the negative, such as "Super 35", and in some cases the 16:9 might
actually be showing _more_ of the image rather than less, but it's very hit-
and-miss and requires a custom transfer and master of the movie (which HBO has
been known to do in at least some cases).

------
atwebb
Isn't it just the content providers sending altered movies?

~~~
bhouston
It most likely the content providers sending Netflix these alterned movies is
as it is way too much work for Netflix to do this cropping themselves. I think
it is customary for every film to have a "pan and scan" version created by the
studios/content providers:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-and-scan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-
and-scan)

Now, Netflix may be at fault for purposely not requesting letterboxed formats,
and opting for the cropped 16:9 versions.

~~~
baddox
To nitpick, Netflix wouldn't want to request letterboxed formats. They should
want the native format, because I'm confident that every video player they
support will do the letterboxing for them.

~~~
kevinpet
They definitely do not do a good job of checking what formats they're getting.
If you watch Star Trek or The Twilight Zone on a 16x9 TV, you'll actually see
bars on left and right because it's encoded for 16x9 even though the source is
4x3.

------
jordanthoms
Ugh. Now I need to look up each Netflix movie to see if they have messed with
it before playing?

Shouldn't be difficult to give us an option, Netflix is already encoding in
many different formats.

~~~
kmfrk
Reminds me of the good old DVD days where I had to always check for two
things: region restrictions and "anamorphic" format.

I somehow still have to deal with region restrictions today, because
technology.

~~~
jfb

      I somehow still have to deal with region restrictions today, because technology.
    

Actually, it's because licensing.

~~~
lostlogin
It's awful. I'd get Netflix in a heartbeat if I could do so easily, but I need
to get a VPN and fart about to make it work. And in the evening, the last
thing I want to do is fix stuff, after a day of all sorts of
format/file/network battles (radiology department job). Fix the licensing
stuff and I'll pay.

~~~
jfb
No argument here. It's changing, but keep in mind that many of these licensing
deals were multi-year, and that therefore the technical decisions necessary to
support these deals have been baked into standards since day one. Thankfully,
Blu-Ray is the last physical format we'll have to grapple with.

~~~
lostlogin
Yeah, a reasonable attitude like yours is what I need. I skipped blu-ray and
went straight to digital. Discs in the bin etc. I think I jumped too soon.
Meta data accuracy, library software, media servers etc have all changes
vastly in the time I've been purely digital and every change is awful. My last
change over was so awful that I said never again. I'll see if that holds, but
having a third part sort it for me seems ideal.

~~~
Daiz
I wish I could go fully digital but sadly the only way to get high quality
"DRM-free" (in the sense that at least it's easy to strip the DRM) video today
is by getting BDs. It saddens me that the actually good digital options are
pretty much all illegal.

Admittedly I do currently have a Netflix account as well, mainly for some
casual watching. I wouldn't be paying for it if it wasn't for MediaHint,
though, which allows me to watch everything available on US Netflix.

Though speaking of DRM, incidentally just 10 minutes ago I was trying to show
an example of some horrible subtitling on Netflix to a friend of mine and ran
into a DRM error with Silverlight (it was claiming my time and date were
inaccurate)... took a while to figure out how to solve it. Ah, DRM, always so
friendly to legal consumers.

~~~
lostlogin
Exactly. We got into the Sopranos and I got out a few series from the local
video store on DVD. This was a few years ago. Never again. The DVD player was
the wrong region, so I put it into the Mac. It played fine. I tried to output
the video on the Apple TV. Some kind of (according to apple forums) DRM
prevents this. I was in the brink of encoding the DVDs to a different format,
when it occurred to me to torrent them. I set off the torrent and the encode
at the same time, and a short time later stopped the encoding, and the torrent
had got enough to get us started. And I didn't have to watch the anti piracy
warning. How can legal be so hard and free be so easy?

~~~
DanBC
I agree that it's bafflingly hard to legally use legally bought media.

> How can legal be so hard

Because rights holders have weird beliefs and think that DRM is great, and
they won't sell the rights without DRM.

------
ultimoo
" and Milos Forman made a decision when he chose to show both Jim Carrey and
Jerry Lawler."

I'm amazed that Netflix edits the frame to a degree that may actually change
the meaning of a scene or a dialog. I know that cropping even a few mm off the
edges is bad, but 'cropping' one entire guy from a scene involving two people
is outrageous.

~~~
atwebb
Now, I'm not a fancy big city video-editor but I think it has more to do with
the characters placement in the original shot than the editing.

Begin Speculation

You can probably be pretty specific with your cropping placement but whoever
did the editing, likely didn't understand the meaning of both in the shot (I
would've missed it initially) and had a directive of, make this look good and
full screen, so they chopped it that way.

End Speculation

~~~
devindotcom
Yes, in pan and scan when there's a wide shot with two characters, it is
generally preferred to show one person in full at a time and cut between them
if you can.

Directors generally don't film with this in mind, so it can be rough on
certain styles and completely ruins some shots. Has for decades, nothing you
can really do if people won't watch letterboxed.

------
jordanthoms
I contacted Netflix support about this, and they claimed that this isn't the
case generally, but it might happen with some devices. Has anyone been able to
reproduce this?

~~~
gcb0
i would if they had any movie worth watching.

why people subscribe to a service that is 95% tv shows, and then complain
about the few movie image quality?

------
rmrfrmrf
I've actually noticed this (because, technically speaking, widescreen films
should still have black bars on them even with "normal" widescreen
televisions). I always assumed it was Netflix just accommodating the average
user who would get pissed that they bought a widescreen TV and the picture is
still showing up with bars on it.

Also consider that the average user usually watches television with their TV
that auto-crops and/or zooms and stretches pictures, not to mention
interpolates 120Hz viewing for a delicious soap opera effect.

I have to say, though, that cinemaphiles complaining about Netflix quality is
a bit like the audiophiles that buy $10k sound systems to listen to their MP3
collection.

------
wazoox
It's crazy; almost all forms of broadcasting are made without any
consideration of proper display. 4:3 TV shows from the 80s and 90s are cropped
to 16:9 (which kills the resolution to abysmal levels); films on VOD services
and TV are cut down from cinemascope to 16:9; black and white sources are
colorized and made weird and ridiculous. why on earth would I ever want to pay
for any of these services? Well, I don't. I don't watch TV anymore; I buy a
couple of DVDs here and there, and that's about it.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
If only we could make resizeable screens.

------
JulianWasTaken
OT: site is unreadable on my Android device with Chrome (latest).

It disables zoom but is too wide for the screen and doesn't reflow the text (I
should just turn off allowing sites to disable zoom...).

~~~
justincormack
I have disable zoom turned off but it didn't help it only turns off ability to
restrict zoom in not out. Apparently its for the hard if sight... Rotating the
screen was OK though here.

------
ChuckMcM
Well if you believe in conspiracy theories, Netflix subtly alters the film so
that if it shows up on Bittorrent they know where it came from :-)

But I suspect that Netflix isn't doing the altering, rather their source
material comes that way. Either because the distribution channel gets it that
way or because the content providers want it that way. Like the author I
suspect that if it wasn't being done by the media companies there would be a
big stink about it.

~~~
workbench
These are the opposite of subtle, more like "Netflix ruins the film"

~~~
dllthomas
I think you read half of the parent comment before replying, and missed the
point of that.

------
icodestuff
I just noticed this a couple weeks ago with "Serenity" \- I mostly watch TV on
Netflix, rather than movies - but they absolutely should be giving us the
whole picture. TV's have anti-letterboxing modes, and the people who don't
know any better than "the picture isn't taking up my whole TV" should use
them. And of course there's no reason whatsoever for them to provide anything
but the original version on the website.

------
ancarda
Personally I've never understood the 2.39:1 aspect ratio. My TV, computer
monitors, laptop and phone are all 16:9. TV shows I watch are 16:9 as well.
Other than 4:3, it seems like the universal ratio. So why are movies shot at
2.39:1, a ratio that causes black bars on any device you watch it on?

~~~
protomyth
Because 16:9 wouldn't exist except for the existing theater ratio of 2.39:1.
16:9 is a compromise between existing movies and academy ratio[1]. 21:9 would
have been a better ratio, but we got the compromise just like the resolution
is 1920 x 1080 instead of something that jived better with computers.

If you shoot a movie in 16:9 it will look cropped when viewed in a theater.

1) there is a YouTube video that explains it. I think it made HN a while ago.

------
circa
This also reminds me of how they take TV originals, like Seinfeld, for example
and originally shot for 4:3. They enhance them for 16:9. I would like to see a
comparison of that too.

However, I will admit I think the Seinfeld enhancements do look pretty good
from what they used to.

------
jccalhoun
Next you'll tell me that their movies are compressed and not at the same
quality as blurays!

------
jotux
Why is it a change without some giant announcement is suddenly some sort of
secret conspiracy?

------
area51org
There's an outside chance that Netflix only has a _license_ for the pan-and-
scan versions, and the studios want more $$$ for the widescreen versions.

------
rogerbinns
When I look for the majority of the movies in the article and linked site,
they come up as unavailable (US netflix). Kind of makes it all moot.

------
fernly
Does anyone know if Amazon streaming does the same?

------
shaggyfrog
I'm not sure if it's intentional irony or not, but the site is too wide on my
iPhone and doesn't allow me to pinch/zoom.

If the author intended that to inspire frustration with mobile readers... then
well played, sir/madam, well played!

~~~
crgt
Is fine in landscape on iPhone 5.

------
lo_fye
I contacted Netflix about this on twitter. They say it ain't so.
[https://twitter.com/lo_fye/statuses/357851185140596736](https://twitter.com/lo_fye/statuses/357851185140596736)

------
jbinney
Ironically, you can't resize the article to read the full lines on mobile
safari.

------
circa
That first paragraph had me rolling. I worked for Transworld from 99-2002ish
and had to explain the exact same thing to people. Got the same result. Glad I
can laugh at it now. At the time it pissed me off more than anything.

------
chiph
What are the chances that this person had the DVD flipped to play the 4:3
version of the film? (Studios sometimes release pan & scan and the widescreen
on the same disc, but on opposite sides).

~~~
joshschreuder
Does Netflix source their content from DVDs? I would have thought the studio
would send over some sort of lossless master file of the video which is then
scaled on Netflix's side.

~~~
chiph
Uhh, I was actually thinking about the DVD-by-mail service. But yeah, an
employee at Netflix could have flipped it when encoding it. But your
explanation with the studio sending a master is the most likely.

------
bgruber
this is usually the case when watching a movie on the HD feed of
HBO/Showtime/what have you as well. They're probably getting the same source
as netflix.

It seems that some directors have the clout to demand that their movies are
distributed in the original aspect ratio. Or perhaps they're willing to trade
some cash for control of that aspect of distribution.

------
shurcooL
The iPad app used to let you watch the movies in both portrait and landscape
modes. I found portrait mode worked better for me when watching a movie in
bed.

As of a month or two ago, they took away the ability to watch in portrait.
Why. It just made the app worse.

------
gcb0
summary: the article does not answer why.

------
hoodoof
The NSA wants the cropped out bit.

