Ever went to an electronic store and saw a video playing on a wide HDTV and everyone in the video look extra fat? Aspect ratio is not well understood, even by the people who deal with them everyday.
Simply put, most video designed for TV have a "normal", or 4x3, aspect ratio. Newer "wide" TV has a 16x9 aspect ratio. If you play a "normal" video on a "wide" screen without adjusting, everything will look fat. If you play a "wide" video on a "normal" screen, everything will look skinny.
This becomes a problem when you want to transfer a video from one aspect ratio to another. For example, you found there is a nice option to record at 16x9 on your DV camcorder, and it makes the recording look professional. However, now you want to burn it to a DVD and the DVD authoring software only output to 4x3.Use River Past Video Perspective to adjust the aspect ratio. You can use "Pan and Scan", which chops off the sides of the wide video to make it fit in a normal screen, or use "Letterbox", which adds black strips.
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