A method of broadcasting a wide screen film on a 4:3 channel. Most of the time just the center of the image is shown. (The right and left edges are clipped off.)

"The process of formatting a wide-screen film onto video by selecting the area of the film frame to show in order to accommodate the different aspect ratios of wide-screen film and television. During the process, the transferred area of the film must be continuously selected, and scenes encompassing the entire width of the film are often panned or followed from one side to the other." (AMIM) On some videos, called "full frame."

A type of aspect ratio conversion where the smaller area of a new display is electronically moved left and right across the original source's wider area aspect ratio in order to follow action occurring at the sides of the original picture.

Method of fitting a widescreen aspect ratio movie onto a narrow 4-by-3 aspect ratio video display by the fitting the movie to the height of the video display and cutting off portions of its sides.

The process of transferring a movie or other source material to videocassette, DVD, or broadcast so that it fits the 4:3 aspect ratio of the NTSC system, as well as most current TVs. This results in a significant amount of lost picture information, particularly in the width of the image. At the beginning of a movie on videocassette, you'll usually see a disclaimer about the movie having been "...formatted to fit your TV." That means it's been converted to pan-and-scan.

The technique of reframing a picture to conform to a different aspect ration by cropping parts of the picture. Since the frame aspect of a standard TV set is different than that of a movie screen/widescreen HDTV, a significant portion of the picture will be cropped to fit the full TV screen. DVD-Video players can automatically create a 4:3 pan & scan version from a widescreen video by using a horizontal offset encoded within the video.