Pan and Scan¸ or P&S

Term used to describe a wide screen movie committed to video with a lesser aspect ratio. The picture is zoomed in on so that more or all of the TV screen is filled (to satisfy popular demand and improve vertical resolution), but both sides of the original picture obviously don't fit. A video technician "pans" the conversion machine (e.g. telecine) back and forth to capture the most important part of each scene while cropping the sides. Even film to film copies, notably 16mm and 8mm prints, have been made using the pan and scan technique. When you see the notice "... formatted to fit this screen ..." at the start of a movie broadcast on TV, that refers to the pan and scan transfer. In addition to losing "space" as the sides of the picture are cropped, movies as broadcast often lose "time" as they are "edited for (removal of possibly objectionable) content and to run in the time allotted".