anamorphic

Definition: Demonstrating a difference in magnification along mutually perpendicular axes: ~ distortion, ~ lens, ~ device. * Anamorphic lens systems usually have one or more cylindrical surfaces: they are used distort images and/or restore them to their original geometry. * Used in film and video to compress a wide-format  or panoramic view e.g. 16:9 to fit onto standard format e.g. 4:3. On digitization, the pixels are proceesed to stretch to panoramic format.
Anamorphous analogue
Anamorphic lenses are effectively analogue image compression devices: a wide field scene can be squashed in from the sides in the camera so that it fits onto standard format film for recording. To uncompress the image on projection, corresponding anamorphic optics expand the image to fill the screen in the original true geometry.

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