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:
- Open the movie in QuickTime Player
- Select the “Show Movie Properties” Menu
- A Dialog Box comes up, click on “Video Track”
- Uncheck the check box that says “Preserve Aspect Ratio,”
- 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.
- 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.
Thankyou – just what I’ve been looking for. I’ll try it !