Quicktime X and 7 aspect ratio problems

Question

I have scoured the net and not come up with a single solution to this issue.
I have hundreds of music videos, home videos etc in Quicktime 7 format. The ratio of these files varies at a pixel level, but are corrected in Q7 size feature.
It's not just an anamorphic issue, as many videos are cropped from a non anamorphic 4:3 'letter boxed' source.
Now QX does not display them correctly at all, which until recently wasn't the end of the world, but from the last update, iTunes began using the X ratio as opposed to the correct adjusted ratio, so music videos in iTunes, QX, the iPad, you name it, the videos created this way do not display correctly.
That basically is every video on my Mac created from the late 90's to recently.
Any ideas, solutions? How on earth can Apple do something so amateurish, and why is there no major uproar.

Answer 1

So what you're saying is, Apple are telling me "thank you for your loyalty in using our hardware since 1988, and building up a video collection based on our software, but we've decided to do a version of Quicktime that ignores the size tag you have being using for the last 14 years (I started video work on Quicktime in 1997), and screw any videos you did to this point, unless they had square pixels?"
Not exactly. I believe that what they are saying is that QT is growing old. The technology on which is is based was fine for the codecs and techniques of its time, but video technology is constantly changing and it is no longer practical or possible to keep making updates and patches that don't, in and of themselves, create new, more serious problems than they solve. QT X is based on technology designed to make this process of evolution easier and it is likely we will see many new changes over the coming decade. However, in the meantime, they have not done away with QT 7 or Front Row, both of which continue to display your files correctly even under Snow Leopard. I personally continue to use QT 7—mainly because I have it keyed for "Pro" use and prefer its functionality to the what I call "Not quite ready for prime time" version represented by QT X which likely appeals to first time Mac users.
New videos are fine, I just encode them to square pixels anyway and ignore any PAR nonsense at the encode stage, but then if the PAR value is what they are using now, why not allow an option in QX to set that, so at the very least I could resize the old videos to correct format.
Not sure if Apple would be willing to provide what amounts to developmental support for an application they are phasing out. Still, it wouldn't hurt to ask. If enough people should request such an enhancement, they might be willing to at least consider the possibility.
Re-encoding them is just not an option, incurring further loss, on videos that in some cases are already marginal.
While I stated that corrections are normally made during the encoding process, it isn't the only method of setting the PAR value. Unfortunately, it is the most accurate method.
My point with anamorphic is that it will simply change 4:3 to 16:9 if there were some option to hit a check button.
Actually, using modern encoders, you can utilize any custom PAR setting desired but I am usually more interested in other aspect ratios like 1.66:1, 1.85:1, 2.40:1, and 2.35:1 since most of my work is centered on the conversion of movies for use on my TV devices.
More flexibility is needed, especially from a platform that is supposed to be pro. Ever tried formatting videos for a vertically placed Plasma for exhibition work, on a video file that isn't square pixel?
Not as uncommon as you might think. I also layer over still or video backgrounds to frame the main video and fill the unused device display area.
I have videos for example that are 800 x 400 (due to an original source, or a crop from the source, but view at 4:3 with the size setting, as they should. Now they look ridiculous displaying at 2:1, and there is no way to change it.
I would normally employ masking here to avoid one level of re-compression.
The size option allowed it to be displayed as you wanted it to, after encode.
More importantly, the Size (Scale) option allowed you to avoid having to re-encode the file since it can be saved back to the original file container (assuming no other changes were made the forces a re-encoding of the file).
It worked, it was done as Apple wanted, due to the size option being the only way to do to non-square pixels, and now they say, nah, we're not doing that anymore?
You seem to be forgetting that when QuickTime was initially introduced almost 20 years ago, users did not have to worry about scalability options, low-compression, high data rate broadcast standards or anamorphic DVDs because there weren't any such work flows for the Apple/Mac platforms of that era nor could they handle them anyway.
So basically Quicktime now contains no ability to format non-square pixels, unless it is done at the encode?
True, but as hinted previously, Apple and QuickTime isn't the only game in town. Based on your question, I went back and played around with Subler. Had been told that this app would allow the user to embed PAR value but was never able to get it to work. Finally managed to get a 720x480 (636x480) encoded movie trailer to play back as an 852x480 display in both QT 7 and QT X on my Snow Leopard system. This proves that it can be done without re-encoding, but there do seem to be some limitations. For instance, since I normally encode using macro-block 16 dimensions increments and Subler seems to like increments of 12 pixels, some PAR and Size target values may vary by 4 pixels. In any case, you may want to Google the app and give it a try. You still have to process each file but not actually re-compress the data.
It is barely believable that they would do that.
Please excuse me, but I do have to chuckle here. It seems as if you feel that Apple has taken something away from you. I, on the other hand, tend to view it as not missing something I never really had. I do, however, agree that it would be nice if both applications were able to access/change both PAR values and display size values for better compatibility between old and new technologies.