Quicktime x displaying incorrect aspect ratio

Hi,
I have a strange display issue with QT X which is occurring on both my MacBook Pro and Mac Pro.
Quicktime X is displaying all movies in a squashed aspect ratio. For example a 640x360 movie is displayed (actual size setting) as 640x340. The same movie displays correctly in QT 7 Pro. The same movie also displays in the correct aspect ratio in iTunes.
What QT X appears to be doing is displaying the images squashed by 20 pixels. for instance a 1920x1080 actually displays as 1920x1060. The image is not trimmed just squashed into a frame that is 20 pixels too short. It happens with all movies including ones downloaded from Apple.
any ideas anyone?
Thanks

Are other people are encountering this distortion?
I'm not and I routinely convert and proof 4 to 12 files a day as part of my processing activities. In addition, neither test files download from the trailers area nor files sent me for examination seem to display this aberration.
I wonder if it is something to do with the transport commands moving from underneath the frame to within the picture area.
Not sure what you are referring to here. If referring to the controls which are visible when the cursor is hovering above the player window, they have nothing to do with changes in the display dimensions as detailed by the "Inspector" window on a properly functioning system.
I'm not sure this is the issue
Have explained the basic mechanism governing the normal display of files played in the local players. Basically, either the problem is in the file itself or the problem is in the manner in which good files might be playing in a corrupted or software conflicted player. Comparing playback under different user accounts or on different systems might reveal if the problem is local to your account and/or system. If you don't have a secondary system available locally, posting a test file for comparison by others might determine the problem source.

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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.
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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?"
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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?
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