Wide Screen QuickTime Movies from Squeezed Material

Here’s a tip for delivering QuickTime movies using QuickTime 7 Pro Player that will open up and play straight away as 16:9 from material
that was originally exported as a 16:9 image squeezed into a 4:3 video frame.

To have squeezed QuickTime movies play in the correct 16:9 aspect ratio, you want to change the horizontal size to 1.78 times the height of the movie, for example, for a 320 x 240 movie, you want to change the horizontal dimension to 240 x 1.78 = 428 (rounding up to the next even number), here’s how to do it:

1. Open the movie in QuickTime Player
2. Select the “Show Movie Properties” Menu
3. A Dialog Box comes up, click on “Video Track”
4. Uncheck the check box that says “Preserve Aspect Ratio,”
5. Enter the new width in place of the old width (428 in the case of a 320 x 240 movie) in the text entry field labeled “Scaled Size”, then press return and you’ll see the movie change it’s aspect ratio.
6. Save the movie, now it will open up and play as a 16:9 movie rather than 4:3 with a squeezed image.

That’s it, this does require the player to scale in real time which might have a slight performance impact on slower machines. If things don’t play as expected on a video iPod, there’s a preference somewhere along the lines of “Play Widescreen” that needs to be set right.