Aspect ratio - workaround for 4:3 TV's

Thanks for this simple solution. I find that it works quite well to display 16:9 content on my Sony 4:3 SDTV. I also had to play around with the frame width because, for some reason, 720 pixels doesn't quite fill my screen and I get pillarboxing. Long story short, I use 768x368 for 16:9 content and 768:480 for 4:3 content and it looks beautiful and undistorted.

One word of caution though - I used MPEG Streamclip and it took nearly 24 hours to re-encode 30 minutes of video from the original anamorphic 720x480 to 768x368. For the content that I have on DVD, I find it is much quicker to simply re-rip and re-encode using HandBrake or something similar.

Message was edited by: Aaron Handler

I had originally tried encoding at 640 pixel width but this resulted in even larger vertical bars on the left and right. At 720 pixels the bars are smaller but certainly noticeable, and at 768 it seems to fill the screen just right. Somewhere along the line I came across a thread that provided an explanation for this. Apparently analog SDTVs utilize non-square (rectangular) pixels and while the vertical pixel size is not affected, the horizontal pixel size is smaller. Thus 720 pixels are required to produce the same sized output as 640 on LCD/HDTV.

For some reason, my TV in particular works best with 768 horizontal pixels as opposed to 720. Not sure at all why this is, but I just assume every SDTV manufacturer might be a little different.

This is an older CRT TV. Still waiting for prices to drop a bit on LCD panels, which I assume will be the case as we draw closer to the mandatory HDTV switchover date in 2009. But as I said, I think it's normal for CRT displays to require 720 horizontal pixels to fill the screen. The slightly strange part is that mine needs ~768 to do the trick.

Yes, I have it set to 480i. I believe this is the only setting that will work with an analog 4:3 TV, correct? By the way, here is another thread I read which addresses a similar issue (and a similar solution):

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6192361&#6192361

Thanks

Aaron Handler wrote:
This is an older CRT TV. Still waiting for prices to drop a bit on LCD panels, which I assume will be the case as we draw closer to the mandatory HDTV switchover date in 2009. But as I said, I think it's normal for CRT displays to require 720 horizontal pixels to fill the screen. The slightly strange part is that mine needs ~768 to do the trick.

Just to eliminate confusion, the switchover is from analog to digital broadcasting, not to mandated HD broadcasts.

SDTVs are not being forced obsolete, it's the old-school rabbit ears that are going the way of the dodo bird (you'd need a convertor box to keep using your current TV). But, if you're like the vast majority of Americans who get their TV signal from cable or satellite, you don't have to worry. Except when your cable/satellite provider wants to push you to HD in order to charge you more. 🙂

Thanks for posting this. It's very useful. I frequently convert .avi files in iSquint; I find the process takes about 3x the file in question.

I suppose the new rental movies will have the same problem with 4:3 TVs. Without hacking the Apple TV, is it possible to manipulate files that you rent from the iTunes store? Do they exist solely on the Apple TV, and not on the synced computer?

There are actually some really good tutorials on iLounge about video formats and video conversion:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-ipod-vi deo-formats-and-display-resolutions/

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-ipod-vi deo-conversion-mac/

I've been using a variety of tools (both Mac & PC) including Handbrake, VisualHub, Turbo.264, and QuickTime Pro to get content looking right on a 4:3 analog Sony TV.

I have a somewhat silly question though: QuickTime Pro seems to output .mov files. What's the difference between .mov .m4v and .mp4 ?

+I have a somewhat silly question though: QuickTime Pro seems to output .mov files. What's the difference between .mov .m4v and .mp4 ?+

MOV is actually the proprietary basis for MP4. There's not really much of a technical difference between MP4 and MOV except how they are handled as MIME types by different apps. The real difference in the other direction is that MOV can wrap all kinds of codecs while MP4 always wraps MPEG-4 part 14 content. M4V is just the raw bitstream for MPEG-4 without the wrapper.