Pan and Scan

Pan and Scan is a technical method that makes it possible to show a film with a widescreen aspect ratio on a narrower screen by adjusting the height of the widescreen material to the height of the replay screen. Those parts of the widescreen image that do not fit in the replay screen are simply cut off.

The advantage of this form of transferring widescreen films into 4:3 video format is that it does not leave black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. The obvious disadvantage is that the original aspect ratio and some of the original material get lost. An alternative method for making such adjustments is letterboxing.