I know this may sound nit-picking, but it is an error that you will find people make all the time, and people who should know better.  It is especially prevalent on imdb.com's technical specs pages.  It pops up even on the DVD and BluRay inserts.  Many times even film projectionists will write --1.33 -- on the leaders of sound movies that are full-frame, non-wide screen. 

Fact is, the correct aspect ratio for any full-frame, non-wide screen movie shot before the 1950s is 1.37:1, not 1.33:1.  It is the difference between silent and sound film.  The aspect ratio of silent film became pretty much fixed at 1.33:1.  When the composite sound-on-film print was introduced, the industry began fixing standards in earnest with the formation of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (later morphing into the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers or SMPTE).  Sound-on-film required the image to shift to make room for the soundtrack and so the aspect ratio of the image also changed as well from the 1.33:1 ar for silent films to 1.37:1 for the new sound format release prints (actually it's 1.375:1 to be exact).  So whenever you see the aspect ratio for a sound feature listed as 1.33:1 -- it is someone being inaccurate; you know it should be 1.37:1 if it has sound. 

Thing is, some would say it doesn't make all that much of difference, but why be inaccurate when you know what it should be...it would be like calling it 36mm film or saying LP record speed is 33 & 1/2; they are only slight errors, but they're still incorrect and there is no reason for it...it's just sloppy and it makes the person making the error look like they don't know really know as much about their subject, in this case film or LP records as they might claim.   

And that bring us to DVDProfiler.  It has the aspect ratio listed very often as 1.33:1 for sound films released prior to 1953 and that would be incorrect.  The SMPTE spec for the aspect ratio of all non-wide screen films (or spherically imaged film prints) is 1.375:1 or commonly rounded as 1.37:1ar  I am not sure where the profiles are sourced for the DVDProfiler content, but if they are imported from IMDB.com, then I can see how that error is perpetuated as IMBD list that error embarrassingly often for a move datatbase.  DVDProfiler should allow for the error it to be manually corrected by the User should he or she choose to do so.  In fact, I would go so far as to say, if we need to have to have only one aspect ratio listing for non-wide screen sound films, it should be 1.37:1; at least then the error will be for silent films which are far fewer in number than sound films, so that way if there is an error, it will occur much less often only on the silent films listed in one's library.

Quoting CinemaDude:

Quote:
Thing is, some would say it doesn't make all that much of difference,

The fact is it really doesn't make much of a difference (3%), and people who want to put in 1.37:1 can do so. I sometimes do that myself, but all I really want to know is if the presentation is widescreen or not, and both 1.33:1 and 1.37:1 tell me the same thing: not widescreen.

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