Video Pixel Aspect Ratio - Fitting rectangular pixels into square holes

One of the more annoying idiosyncrasies of digital video is that images often look distorted on a computer monitor: they’re either too wide or too skinny, especially when working with widescreen footage. This can lead to a crisis in confidence – often late at night, usually on deadline – as to whether you can trust your eyes, or if you are doing the right thing. In this article, we will help explain the tricky subject of pixel aspect ratio or “PAR” for short, including PARs for common video formats. In our next article, we will discuss strategies for mixing non-video assets such as photographs and scans with your digital video, including how not to make a client’s logo – or the clients themselves – look too fat or too thin.

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