I understand how not everyone would be a fan of the aspect switching, My wife and I watched it through as I made them and found for us it got less noticeable, but people can feel differently about that part of it. I like the widescreen for the majority of it so I chose not to alter that, you may feel free to alter it for yourself if you want to put in that amount of work. Thanks for noticing the audio transitions that took an awful lot of time to get right and found helped make the aspect change that little bit less jarring.
Hi, I am interested in seeing how you did, too, if you could send me a PM with a link…
About the aspect ratio, these link explains a little bit about it: https://bluray.highdefdigest.com/7254/friends_complete.html
https://forums.thedigitalfix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=611329
Friends was actually shot with the 16:9 ratio in mind. The cropping in this case was for the DVDs and of course, broadcast (4:3). Since there’s additional image in the Blu-rays, it would not make any sense to remove image just to make everything look the same.
Further explanation about aspect ratios:
This is an old 4:3 TV, and also reality if you are using an iPAD, which uses the same aspect ratio:
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And this is what everybody is using now:
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Back when we had DVDs, all contents (Widescreen or not) had to be put in discs within that frame:
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Of course that changed into this, for Blu-rays:
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The 1920x1080 resolution implies a 16:9 frame while 720x480 is of course a 4:3 frame.
So let’s say I have a random TV show, like Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), one that has been projected with the 4:3 ratio in mind, and has been released both in DVD and Blu-ray also that way… in 4:3.
This is how the Enterprise from TNG was projected to be viewed by us:
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The director didn’t care about opening the left/right sides.
This is what the above image would look like in any 4:3 screen:
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And this is what it will look like in any modern WIDESCREEN TV:
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Why there are black bars on the sides? Because you are trying to insert a 4:3 image into this here:
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And into this 16:9 frame the 4:3 image will fill from top to bottom (or bottom to top), but it will not be WIDE… enough.
If it was wide enough, then it would look like this:
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Let’s also assume the wider image from the TNG crew is from FRIENDS, which is also 16:9.
This is, of course, how any content with a different aspect ratio from 4:3/1.33:1 would appear in an old TV set:
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And this is how this wider image appears in a modern WIDESCREEN TV:
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No surprises that it fills the screen because they both share the same 16:9 ratio (16:9 = 1.78:1). If the image was in fact 2.35:1 then black bars (top and bottom) would also be noticed in this same WIDESCREEN TV.
Bottom line: since you have the same content in two aspect ratios, making them look the same means sacrificing the picture to cut the sides, since they can only look the same if not wide enough (which is how 4:3 already is).
And in the case of FRIENDS that means removing content from the 16:9 version, because that one (released in Blu-ray) is wider than the 4:3.
Both 4:3 and 16:9 have the same HEIGHT. It’s just that 16:9 is wider.
I am being painfully obvious, yet it’s necessary to explain all of this because not many people understand why things are the way they are. The black bars (on the sides or top/bottom) are there for a reason.
If you always want to fill 100% of your screen you are either going to distort or crop the image, applying zoom.
EDIT: correction: I said 720x480’s frame used the 4:3 AR but that’s not true… my bad:
https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/threads/why-720x480.229867/
http://www.miraizon.com/support/info_aspectratio.html
It’s more complicated than that, so search for this resolution and/or DVDs and ARs for further details.
They shot Friends on film which is widescreen. At the time they were not worried about 16:9 aspect ratios because no one had TVs like that, so the extra space was just cut off on televisions. Around season 4 the networks started telling him to account for 16:9 because the transition to widescreen was imminent, but he said he was skeptical and didn’t do what they asked.