HD to 16 mm, non-transparent

Use this to convert a video shot with the HDTV 16:9 aspect ratio compromise to the 1026:749 ratio resulting from shooting on 16 mm film with its 10.26 mm width and 7.49 mm height. And, no, 1026:749 cannot be expressed by smaller numbers (at least not integers) because, even though neither 1026 nor 749 is a prime number, the two share no common divisor. This is rather surprising as various film formats tend to follow the ancient rule that the two sides of an image should be a ratio of two small integers. Many think the reason for this rule was that ancient Greeks had some profound philosophical reasons for it. And not just because not all cultures on the planet were influenced by the Greeks. Personally, I suspect the reasons were quite pragmatic: It is easy to produce a canvas or papyrus, or whatever surface, cutting it down to the ratio of two small numbers, as you can just cut a stick of a random length, then use it to measure the width of four stick lengths and height of three stick lengths (or any other ratio as long as it involves small numbers). You can then make a larger or smaller copy because you can recreate the surface by using the same ratio just with a different stick. Of course, nowadays, we can measure things with a microscopic precision, but that wasn’t the case until around the 20th Century! And, seriously, folks, has anyone ever heard of a film screen with the width-to-height ratio of 1026:749? Of course, 1026/749 = 1.369826352 (etc), while the Academy Ratio is 1.375:1 (which actually is 11:8, a ratio of two small numbers). It has a non-transparent background.








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