Apple TV Aspect Ratio

I just bought an Apple TV2, but it does not correctly display video. I am using the optical audio out which works fine.
I am using a Sharp XV-Z10000 projector, which natively displays 720p at 1280x720. My projector does have a DVI input with HDCP. It does not have a HDMI input. I have a converter for HDMI to DVI. It works perfectly for all of my HD sources if I use their HDMI out to the converter and then to the projector's DVI input.
When using Apple TV, however, 16x9 images are squeezed into 4x3 images, and 4x3 images are squeezed into what appears to be a bit narrower than 1x1. There is no setting on the Apple TV that can be changed to fix this problem. Furthermore, the Apple TV says it is ouputting 1024x768 in the About section, so it appears to think it is connected to a 4x3 disply. Any thoughts?

As you probably know, officially AppleTV 2 only supports 720p out.
DVI and by extension HDMI to DVI is not officially supported - it may work it my not.
Suspect this is an HDMI negotiation issue between the AppleTV2 and the 'converter'.
AppleTV1 and 2 have always been more fickle about HDMI connections than mostother devices - Apple adhering more tightly to specs, getting it wrong or HDCP effects??? No one really knows I suspect.
AC

Similar Messages

16:9 Apple TV export playing with incorrect aspect ratio in iTunes.

Hi, I've exported a 16:9 PAL movie from FCP using 'Export for Apple TV' which plays fine in Quicktime (1024x576 m4v file), my problem is when I import it into iTunes it changes the aspect ratio to 720x576. If I 'show in Finder' and play the iTunes import using Quicktime it plays fine (1024x576).
So it seems a problem with iTunes?
If anyone else has fixed this problem I'd love to know how.
Many thanks,
Dave

For anyone interested...
I've been in contact with Elgato http://www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mainmenu/home.en.html
regarding this as they are part of this issue.
They have confirmed that there is a bug in the latest releases of iTunes that is causing the problem.
They have been communicating their information to Apple but have had little response to date.
Maybe we'll get a fix when Apple could be bothered.

Aspect ratio of iPad mirror is not 4:3 when mirrored with Apple TV

Hi Everyone - I have just bought an Apple TV 3 and installed the device yesterday. I am using an LG HDTV and an iPad3. Everything works fine except one thing: When I mirror my iPad in landscape on the TV it appears with a wrong aspect ratio. This means I am NOT seeing a 4:3 picture of my iPad content on the screen, it rather looks like a 1:1 ratio. So the picture is "pressed together" from the left and the right. Any ideas how to solve the problem?
Before you answer - I am not talking about the black bars that appear when you mirror the 4:3 iPad on a 16:9 TV screen. This is not my problem and I know that black bars will appear eventually. I just do not get the proper aspect ratio of the iPad 4:3 on the TV screen - it rather appears as a square on the screen. This is only when I select mirroring - using airplay to see movies, youtube etc work perfectly fine.
Thanks very much for the help.

I have now reset my TV but unfortunately the problem remains. I also do not have the possibility to set the horizontal / vertical stretch of the TV when the input signal is via HDMI - so also no option.
I could actually live with the wrong ratio presentation when mirroring the iPad.
What I find really annoying is that my photos do not scale properly. When I start a slideshow on Aple TV from the iPad, the photos, which have been taken in a 2:3 aspect ratio, do not come up properly on the TV screen. They are pressed together from the sides, so people are too thin (well - some may like it but that is a different topic ).
Apple TV works totally fine with all other applications, ie YouTube videos. These are presented perfectly! This is why I think it has something to do with how photos are sent to Apple TV - this must be different from videos and maybe somewhere there is the reason.
If you have any other ideas I would appreciate your help. Thanks

Aspect Ratio and Itunes/Apple TV

So I recently bought an apple tv and have set it up in my room. I have been trying to play my tv shows that I already owned on my computer. My movie files are programed as 4:3 but in any other video player I can set it to play in 16:9 and they look exactly how they should. So now if I try to play my movies through itunes so I can see them on my Apple Tv they are all smashed. Is anyone else having this problem? There is no way to change the aspect ratio in Itunes. So I either have to wait until they make that an option, Watch the movies on my laptop, or watch them all smashed on my Tv through Itunes. I hope they fix this soon

Welcome to the Apple Communities.
If you don't wish to re-encode everything, the AR is controlled by flags rather than being encoded into the movie video data, you can change these flags as indeed you do when you watch them on your mac. I'm not sure which application you use to change the flags on your mac but it may well allow you to save the changes. if it doesn't there are a number of applications such as Quicktime 7, which will let you save them.

4:3 aspect ratio (standard screen) apple tv compatibility issues

Hi folks,
I'm hoping somebody can help me out. After reading through the forms I already
know the bad news that Apple TV doesn't support 4:3 standard screen aspect ratio. Unfortunately, this is the type of TV that I have with no abilities to change it. Does anybody om this form know of a work around to this issue? My TV is not a HDTV but has the proper video (blue,green) inputs. I'm currently in the process of purchasing a new advanced AV home entertainment receiver that's able to support all types of video inputs so here's my question. Does anybody know of a AV receiver, or do they make an AV receiver that could recognize the Apple TV's 16:9 wide screen aspect ratio and convert it to 4:3? I have a $40.00
digital converter box that does this so I'm thinking there's got to be an AV receiver that perhaps can do this.
Bob

Welcome. Will just add again, it is more up to the TV being able to deal with it. But as mentioned, if the TV has the component (or is it composite, I always forget ... why oh why did they name them so close) jacks, I would say there is a very high chance it will work just fine. Believe the setting in the AppleTV at setup would be 480i (or 480p)...one of those. If you pick the wrong one, it will figure it out and restart to let you choose the other.
The movies I play all play fine. I will admit I get many from BitTorrent and convert them to MP4 and haven't had any issues. And those I rent/buy from iTunes all play well.
The only place that is really a pain is the browsing of movies in the iTunes store from the AppleTV when viewing on a 4:3 TV. It all gets scrunched so reading the words below the images of the movie is a bit difficult, but not impossible. That is really the only place I wish worked better, but do understand they never meant for it to play on a 4:3 set (even if that set allows it).

Aspect Ratio on Apple TV??

I've downloaded several episodes of different series (brand new ones as well as old) on iTunes and I'm getting black lines on the sides of my TV on every single one. I have the ATV connected to a Panasonic Widescreen TV using the HDMI cable. I've changed the TV Resolution on the ATV from 720p HD to 1080i HD to 480p and keep getting the same lines.
1. Why is this?
2. Is there anything I can do to get the widescreen ratio?
Thanks

playadelcarmen wrote:
I've downloaded several episodes of different series (brand new ones as well as old) on iTunes and I'm getting black lines on the sides of my TV on every single one. I have the ATV connected to a Panasonic Widescreen TV using the HDMI cable. I've changed the TV Resolution on the ATV from 720p HD to 1080i HD to 480p and keep getting the same lines.
1. Why is this?
2. Is there anything I can do to get the widescreen ratio?
Thanks
the appletv will display the content in the correct aspect ratio. most tv shows on itunes are 4:3, and as such your TV is correctly displaying it as 4:3 (ie black bars left and right).

Using "One Step DVD from Movie" on my IMac 10.8.6 using Verbatim DVD-R ("Life Series") 4.7 GB 16X 120, I get a wide angle version of my two minute story rather than the 3X4 standard aspect ratio that I normally get and want. Help!

While using "One Step DVD from Movie" using DVD-R Verbatim ("Life Series" 4.7 16 X 120 min) on my IMac 10.6.8 I get a wide angle aspect ratio on the DVD not the standard 3X4 aspect ratio. The Quicktime Movie is is standard 3X4 aspect ratio and the video video footage is standard 3X4 aspect ratio? Advice will be greatly appreciated.

Try this basic troubleshooting fix :
1 - delete the IDVD preference file, com.apple.iDVD.plist, that resides in your
User/Home()/Library/ Preferences folder.
2 - delete IDVD'S cache file, Cache.db, that is located in your
User/Home()/Library/Caches/com.apple.iDVD folder.
Click to view full size
3 - reboot.
4 - launch IDVD and try again.
Personally I would not the the one step method but create the iDVD project from scratch so you can make sure the widescreen option is not selected in the preferences and you can follow this workflow:
Once you have the project as you want it save it as a disk image via the File ➙ Save as Disk Image menu option. This will separate the encoding process from the burn process.
To check the encoding mount the disk image and launch DVD Player and play it. If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding was good.
Then burn to disk with Disk Utility or Toast at the slowest speed available (2x-4x) to assure the best burn quality. Always use top quality media: Verbatim, Maxell or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R are the most recommended in these forums.
OT

How do I get SD video (4:3 aspect ratio) to fill the entire screen?

Any 4:3 video I stream has black bars on either side of the picture. I have a Samsung HDTV, and I can stream content using its own pc to tv streaming software and 4:3 videos fill the entire screen. Or if I play a DVD with 4:3 aspect ratio that will also automatically fill the screen. With the Apple TV I cannot make it fill the entire screen. Is this something to do with the signal being transmitted over an HDMI cable?
Has anyone else had this problem, and if so how have you resolved it?

I know it is displaying 4:3 video correctly, however I'd prefer if there was some stretching (non-linear) so that it fills the entire screen. Having 2 big black bars on either side gets very annoying. There doesnt seem to be an option to fill the entire screen when streaming from the apple tv. There are options when streaming from Samsung's own software (I don't want to use samsungs pc share manager as the apple tv's user interface is much better).
Are my options restricted because the signal is transmitted through an hdmi cable? Seems to be what other websites might be suggesting.

Can anyone tell me if Quicktime Pro retains aspect ratio once a video is rotated?

I'm reluctant to purchase Quicktime Pro until I know the answer to this question and Apple Support doesn't seem to have anyway to ask, so I thought I'd try this group.
I took some videos with my iPhone (the long way), and need to be able to rotate them and convert them to avi files. I understand that Quicktime Pro can do the rotation and conversion, but I saw one review that said the aspect ratio is not retained, i.e. the video comes out flattend (wider).
Can anyone tell me if this is still true with QT Pro, or if there are other solutions for resolving this outside of QT Pro?? I have tried a number of other converters, and found one that rotates, but aspect ratio not retained.
Thanks in advance for any help shared!!!

I took some videos with my iPhone (the long way), and need to be able to rotate them and convert them to avi files. I understand that Quicktime Pro can do the rotation and conversion, but I saw one review that said the aspect ratio is not retained, i.e. the video comes out flattend (wider).
This may or may not depend on your specific work flow. Many "settings' saved to the original file by QT 7 Pro are merely "playback instructions" which may or may not play correctly in other media players while these same settings do work properly when saved/converted to a new file container. In addition, not being a Windows user, I don't know if there are are any significant differences between the Mac and Windows versions of QT 7. In any case, I just took a short sample clip, stored it on my hard drive via Aperture 3, opened the file in QT 7 Pro, rotated the clip in QT 7 Pro, and used the "Save As..." command to store the modified file. This modified file now plays correctly in current versions of the QT 7, MPEG Streamclip, and VLC media players. Have uploaded a copy of this file so you can download it, test playback in various players you normally use, and/or test convert it to your specific AVI audio and video compression formats.
SAMPLE ROTATED FILE
Can anyone tell me if this is still true with QT Pro, or if there are other solutions for resolving this outside of QT Pro?? I have tried a number of other converters, and found one that rotates, but aspect ratio not retained.
As indicated above, the file plays correctly for me in various media players and all media "Inspector" windows, including other third party media information utilities, confirm the correct dimensions and aspect ratio as displayed. As to AVI conversion, I test converted the uploaded file to AVI (DivX5/MP3) at original dimensions using VisualHub. (Also tried the VideoMonkey AVI encode but it limited the source 720p file to a 720x480 output and I did not know if you were agreeable to such a restriction.) Suggest you run similar tests with your preferred Windows converters to confirm/refute results on your system.

Aspect ratio query FCP

Hi there, wonder if someone can help with this/
I have filmed a short piece of PAL SD footage in 16:9 format on a Sony Z1 camera.
The finished job is to be 16:9 SD output to DVD PAL.
Can some one confirm what settings I should use from the easy set-up menu for capturing the project? should I be capturing footage as anamorphic?
The reason I ask is that I am being given contrasting info from the chap I am sharing the editing with and don't want to get it wrong from the start.
On his FCP system he is saying that his sequence is NOT set as anamorphic, his browser and canvas viewers are NOT anamorphic, yet he says that the project is still 16:9 ? He says that he is viewing via an external broadcast monitor in 16:9 and only this will show the 16:9 true aspect of the project?
If he clicks sequence settings, sure enough there is NO tick under anamorphic, likewise in the logging list window, yet he still says the finished job will be 16:9, how can this be? i am really confused by this.
I just want the finished job to be as shot from the Sony Z1 camera and to able to view the footage as shot in my browser & canvas windows. I was under the impression that my Z1 footage is anamorphic as it wasn't shot in HDV mode?
Any help would be appreciated
Thanks
Stuart

Hi Stuart
Import it as anamorphic. This will ensure that the right flags are set in QuickTime so it will display correctly on your screen. If you end up sending the final project to tape, either system will still look right when that tape is played, but what's the point of editing in the wrong aspect ratio? The only difference between SD 4:3 and SD 16:9 is that they are displayed differently. The information each format contains is otherwise identical. So go ahead and tick the anamorphic box that Apple have provided so that your pictures are stretched to the correct aspect ratio. In that way everything will look right as you edit, and any graphics you apply won't turn out short and fat in the finished product.
Ian

Aspect Ratio Problem with Onlining

Hi,
I checked the old posts and couldn't find an answer.
I'm using Ken Stone's article to online my project. I followed the instructions except for the point right after the new online file is created and just before you capture footage. He says to change the Audio/Video Settings to go from Capture Preset (DV to OfflineRE NTSC (Photo JPEG) to DV NTSC 48 kHz). I did that. I also changed the Sequence Preset (which wasn't mentioned in the article) from Offline RT NTSC (Photo JPEG) to DV NTSC 48 kHz.
When I captured the full-res footage, the clips were squeezed to look more widescreen. The image hadn't been cropped, just stretched.
These are the sequence settings for my offline project:
Frame Size: 320x240 Multimedia Large (4:3)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square - (Anamorphic 16:9 box not checked.)
Field Dominance: none
Editing Timebase: 29.97
Quicktime video Settings
Compressor: Photo - JPEG
Quality: 35%
These are the sequence settings for my online project:
Frame Size: 720x480 NTSC DV (3:2)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: NTSC- CCIR 610/DV(720x280)- (Anamorphic 16:9 box not checked.)
Field Dominance: Lower (even)
Editing Timebase: 29.97
Quicktime video Settings
Compressor: DV/DVCPRO - NTSC
Quality: 100%
I filmed the original footage on miniDV (NTSC) with a Canon GL2 3CCD camera. The footage was onlined with a Sony DCR-HC32 1CCD miniDV (NTSC) camera. I'm using FCP 5.0.4 on an apple powerbook g4. OS 10.4.8
I'm sure the solution is something small that I'm missing. Thanks a lot for any help!

Hey you might have already done this but check the settings of the new clips not just the sequence. Right-click on one of the affected clips in ur browser then go down to item properties-> format and see if the anamorphic option is ticked on these. Hope this helps,
Howard
G5 iMac 20inch, Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.7) FCS 5.1, 500GB External

Aspect ratio confusion HDV + DV = mess

Sorry to ask my second question in 24 hours. I think my new problem is as much a case of me not getting the concept as it is of me not understanding the software.
Thanks to the kind folk on this forum I managed to sort out my timeline and get all the clips to overlay properly. I then thought that rather than exporting the whole thing, I should just mark an in and out point on the sequence and create a QT (mov) file from that section, which I would then turn into a short (6 minute) DVD using iDVD. All of that seemed to go really smoothly and quickly BUT when I played the DVD on a Sony LCD TV I realised that the aspect ratio has gone wrong. There are black bars at the top and bottom, even though it is a 16:9 TV and the source material is 16:9 (albeit in different formats - see below). The people look a bit squashed on the TV screen and the aspect ratio of the video part of the picture when it appears on the TV screen is more like 2.35:1 than 16:9.
Then I looked back at the Canvas in FCE and realised that there are black bars on the Canvas above and below the video, which I had been ignoring because I thought they were background... I am praying that I don't have to re-edit the whole thing now. I measured (with a ruler!) the proportions of the image I am getting in the canvas and sure enough it is a black box at 4:3 aspect ratio with a video image in the middle at 16:9. I guess I must be sending a 4:3 image out to Quicktime at 16:9, which just squishes everything and leaves the black bars. I could cry, really.
Here is the tech information. I have a Sequence on the timeline from 3 video sources:
1. A DV clip that is 720 x 576 from a Sony camera shooting in widescreen mode
2. An HDV clip (now in Apple Intermediate Codec) that is at 1440x1080 from a Canon HV40
3. Another PAL DV clip at 720 x 576 which started life on the hard drive of a borrowed camera and had to be converted to something usable from a proprietary JVC format
I've just noticed - and this may not be important - that clips 1 and 3 have "anamorphic" ticked when you look at their properties in the browser, whereas clip 2 (the HDV one) doesn't have that ticked.
What can I do to rescue my project and create a proper 16:9 format DVD without re-editing for 50 hours?
Thanks
Andrew

Hello Tom, I just realised that you wrote the book that's sitting on the desk next to me... I thought that name looked familiar.
Thanks for your reply. My media is in pretty much equal parts: the performance I was filming ran for an hour and I kept all three cameras running for the whole performance. Having edited between the camera outputs now, the least used is from the JVC camera. The other two (HDV and DV) are roughly equally used but the DV was the wide shot so has no edits in the timeline sequence - the other two video tracks are above it. The sequence setting, if I'm looking in the right place, seems to be DV PAL 48kHz. I don't see a place to set the aspect ratio other than in the Canvas zoom where there is a "preserve aspect ratio" setting that is ticked.
Andrew

FCP QT Conversion, Why result in wider aspect ratio ??

When I export "selfcontained" QT from FCP, it is in the same aspect ratio as I see in canvas (4:3), however when I export the same project "using QT conversion", the exported movie file is saved and plays in wider ratio.
Please help, how could I keep it 4:3?
Also, I have my frame size set for NTSC DV (3:2), is this correct? I find myself still confused with a question that I posted previously: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12554373#12554373
Any advice, clarification would be appreciated!

Hi Joe,
this is helpful, thank you!
when I exported with "QT conversion", this time I went into "option">"size" and corrected into 720x480 4:3, before it was set as "compressor native" (640x480)and it exported the same ratio file as "selfcontained".
yes, I am using the old fashion 4:3, imported files are still images shot with a digital camera. unfortunately this camera doesn't record HD....
what I don't understand is the difference between NTSC DV 3:2 and NTSC 4:3. Even though my materials are in 4:3 ratio, if I choose NTSC 4:3 it gets distorted from the original image so I choose 3:2 in FCP.
Is this the distortion that you mentioned which happens only on computer screen? I would like to know which setting is true to the original materials not for playing back on computer but for creating DVD....?

Aspect ratio issues in iDVD with mov files exported from FCE

Please help. I believe this is an iDVD bug. I have found some relevant discussion of it on online forums - but have not found a solution that works for me. I am looking for a workaround.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1356500&tstart=31
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
My 4:3 movies, exported from FCE in QT-with-conversion formats (any 4:3 format) - appear in iDVD with gray side-pillars (as expected for 4:3) AND with a black line (letter-boxing) at top and bottom - as would be for 16:9. It appears the aspect ratio is also distorted i.e. 16:9. (The iDVD project is set to 4:3.)
1- A 4:3 mov file exported from FCE using Quicktime Movie format (no conversion) does not have the problem, but I cannot de-interlace the video using this export mode.
2) A 4:3 mov file exported using QT-with-conversion mode (any 4:3 format) DOES have the problem. I need to use this mode in order to get de-interlace.
(Exception: 640x480 VGA mode does not have the black lines, and it displays correctly in dvd player on my computer screen - but on the TV screen, it crops content from the top and bottom of the movie, so this is not an option.)
3) In Finder, if you click on mov file exported QT-only (no conversion), it opens in the FCE viewer. If you click on mov file exported in any other 4:3 mode, it opens in Quicktime viewer (i.e. there is absolutely something different in the header/ID of these files.)
4) All mov files, regardless of export mode, show correctly in Quicktime viewer - no black line, no distortion. The problem does not occur outside of iDvd.
5) I tried passing the QT-with-conversion mov files through an Inverse-Anamorphicizer (per suggestion on forum - this apparently fixed the problem for some people) but the resulting output mov (i.e. the inverted product) still had the same problem.
I am, so far, left with this trade-off: Give up the de-interlacing, or live with the letter-boxing/ distortion. Neither is acceptable.
I am looking for a workaround:
1) A way to export de-interlaced 4:3 mov from FCE that shows in correct ratio in iDVD
2) A way to "convert" / re-head mov file after exported so that it displays corrrectly (inverse-anamorphicize) so that iDVD reads it correctly
3) Can the mov be de-interlaced after the fact (so I could use QT export without conversion)?
4) Something besides iDVD to put this together - that doesn't have this problem? (I like and want to use the iDVD menu/theme.)
5) Other?????
I also notice that all the QT-with-conversion mov files are 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the QT-only mov file, which is valuable and preferable to me. (I don't see any quality difference in the display...)

In the Preview window > top frame > middle button
do you have correct for pixel aspect ratio checked or not?
!http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee340/gogiangigo/Picture1-4.png!

Aspect ratio problem in Windows Media Player for DVD from DVD Studio Pro

So I made a DVD with DVD Studio Pro and it looks good in Apple's DVD Player, on an Insignia DVD player appliance and on Playstation 2. Both the movie and the deleted scene were 16:9 from camera to Final Cut Pro and they show that way in all these players.
But on Windows Media Player for Windows XP, the program thinks the movie is 4:3 and the deleted scene is 16:9. Nero's Showtime has the same exact behavior, but at least you can force aspect ratio on Nero.
Besides being longer, the movie is different from the deleted scene in that the movie was originally out of Final Cut Express on an older Mac and it was encoded big endian. The deleted scene was output from Final Cut Pro and encoded little endian. I didn't think it would make a difference, but I tried outputting the movie from Final Cut Pro on the newer Mac and it did come out little endian. I took that into DVD Studio Pro, got rid of the old VIDEO_TS folder and re-built the project, burnt a new DVD. Then I went back to Windows and...
...the same exact problem. Some of the people I give this DVD to will be using Windows Media Player to view it, which is why I want this to not be an issue at all. What am I overlooking?

Look, everyone here (who each have been creating DVDs for over a decade) is telling you the same story. WMP is buggy. Everyone in the industry knows that. Hardware manufacturers like Dell and HP, know that. Why don't you use the DVD player program that they put on the hard drive? Sure one "Hollywood" title works. Did I mention that WMP is buggy? Test a thousand titles, and I'm certain that you will find some discs have problems on WMP, and WMP alone. (And it isn't my assertion that Hollywood DVDs have issues in WMP, everyone is telling you that.) No one has a solution for this, except to not use WMP. Let me repeat once again, no one has a solution for this except to not use WMP. It is impossible to add any sort of programming to the disc that will detect which player is being used to play the disc and compensate for the problems of that player.
Let me put it this way, if you have a disc that plays fine on Zeus's device, and on Apollo's device, and on Hera's device, and on Hermes' device, and on Artemis' device, but you have problems with Athena's device, then logically, Athena's device has a problem... not the disc. Your own experience has proved this to be true. If you were having problems with every device used, THEN you could rightfully say that there is a problem with the disc.

Apple TV Aspect Ratio

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