displaying Quicktimes with correct 16:9 ratio

[Chris Babbitt]

I’ve done this before, and I wish I could remember precisely what I did, but I found the solution somewhere on this forum. What I do remember is that Quicktime does not recognize the 16:9 flag that automatically displays anamorphic video properly, so you have to manually set-up a special sequence with the proper pixel dimensions for a 16×9 aspect ratio (I’ve forgotten precisely what those dimensions are) and then manually unsqueeze the video using the distort function in the Motion tab. Then, after you export it, Quicktime will display it as 16×9. Perhaps if you do a search of this forum, you’ll find the original post that helped me solve this issue. There is something in the FCP manual about this, but it is rather vague.

[Don Greening]

[paul nevison] “is there a bug with 720×576 footage perhaps”

I don’t know about that but how about a workaround that will at least get your exported QT movie into the aspect ratio you want?

Open up your movie using QT player Pro. Choose: Window>Show Movie Properties. Highlight the video track then click on Visual Settings. Uncheck Preserve aspect ratio then change the dimensions in the scaled size boxes.

You’ll have to figure out the pixel conversion with your PAL video but, for example, here in NTSC Land the NTSC DV P.A.R. is 720×480 whether it’s anamorphic or not. To properly display a widescreen version I have to change the P.A.R. to 853×480. Make sense?

After you’ve made your changes in the movie properties window you can save those changes and you’re done.

– Don

[Chris Borjis]

all of this stuff is not necessary, really.

just google “quicktime aperture” THAT is what you need to do.

[Vidar Vikingsson]

I work in PAL, and when I need QuickTime movies to display in 16:9, I do as Don Greening said above, and change the pixel ratio to 1024 x 576.

I did google “quicktime aperture” and only found some baffling stuff for developers working in Leopard….

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/Conceptual/QT7-2_Update_Guide/NewFeaturesChangesEnhancements/chapter_2_section_13.html

I really do not get what this is about. Anyway, I’m still on Tiger, so I guess it’s not for me yet.

brimstone

[Dave Mac]

paulos,

Since QT 7.1 came out, there has been a feature in the “pro” version of QuickTime Player (you should have the pro version if you have FCP). More clearly, QuickTime Pro should be enabled if you have FCP installed.

I am currently running OS X 10.4.11 with FCP 6.0.2 and QT 7.3 on a PPC dual G5.

If you open your QT movie file in QT Player, then select “Show Movie Properties” from the Window menu (or Command-J), you’ll see the tracks listed in the top portion with a set of tabs for controlling various settings below.

You need to select the “movie wrapper” track (usually the one with a Format of “-NA-” and a Name with the filename of the QT movie). Once you select this track, you’ll see a set of tabs in the bottom portion of the window, the last of which is Presentation. Click on this tab. Under the General settings, the last one will be “Conform aperture to.”

This is what controls how your movie is viewed. (As others have mentioned, you can mess with the scale settings of the Video Track, but it isn’t necessary.)

For a 16:9 video, if this setting is unchecked, you should see everything squeezed horizontally into a 4:3 frame. Likewise if you check it and select Classic or Encoded Pixels, you will get the same 4:3 look. With it checked and either Clean or Production selected, you’ll get a properly formatted video image (16:9). The Clean option crops a portion of the image (don’t know exactly how much), whereas the Production option shows the full image in the correct aspect ratio. When I check the setting it usually defaults to Clean (and then I change it to Production.

—–

As an aside, though related to viewing video in QT Player rather than in FCP, there is a preference setting in the General tab of the QT Player preferences (in the QuickTime Player menu, not in the Movie Properties window) to “Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility” that, when enabled, is supposed to make the video gamma such that the video shown in QT Player will look like it does in FCP, etc.

Unless things have changed, FCP used to expect that the system display settings have a gamma of 1.8. So, if you’ve profiled the displays via the System Preferences, you supposedly can check this option so that your video looks like it does in FCP (provided you are not using a display profile with a gamma of 1.8, in which case there shouldn’t be much of a change).

In other words, FCP doesn’t use ColorSync (system display settings/profiles), but apps like Aperture, iMovie, iPhoto, and QT Player do. This is why I have hardware calibrated my displays with a gamma of 1.8 (so that FCP video looks as good as possible, considering video in FCP Viewer or Canvas windows are never going to look as good/accurate as on an external preview/broadcast monitor).

Hope this helps…

Best regards,

Dave

[Paul Nevison]

Hey Dave and others,

thanks all for the input. Dave’s solution worked perfectly…..this has been a problem that has bugged me for such a long time….nice to have a solution now!

cheers

Macpro Duel core 3Ghz
4.0G RAM
OS 10.4.10
QT 7.2
FCP 6.0.1
AE CS3
BMD Decklink HD Extreme 6.6
PAL Land

[Chris Babbitt]

Whew!
Thanks Dave. I’m going to save your post for future reference.

[Scott Roberts]

Thanks for posting this fix!!! Damn! Why doesn’t QT default to how we are expecting it to look? Is there a global setting for this . . . seems this has to be set for each new video you load.

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