Cropping is a method to remove parts of the left and right sides of a widescreen movie so that it fits into another aspect ratio, without stretching the image or filling the blank spaces with letterbox bars.

With the Advent of widescreen television, a similar process, removing large chunks from the top & bottom to make a standard 4:3 image fit a 16:9 one, losing 25% of the original image, is coming into use. This process has unfortunatly become standard in the United Kingdom, at least in TV shows where many archive clips are used, which gives them a zoomed in, cramped image with much important picture information missing and with blurry picture because of the greatly reduced resolution. Sadly this is preferred to a process called pillarboxing , where black bands are placed down the sides of the screen and allows the complete image to be show. Due to the fact that many viewers dislike black bands on their screen, this process is seldom used. At least this was public opinion in the mid-90s, when widescreen TV first arrived, but letterboxing and pilalrboxing is much more accepted by the public, Production techniques have yet to change to reflect this, unfortunatly.