AppleTV crops my photos... badly

I do not have any problems displaying my photos that have various crop settings on the Apple TV. Most photos that I want displayed on the AppleTV have been cropped at 16x9. However some photos have to be cropped at other settings to maintain their best view. I have some that are 3x2, 2x3 and 1x1. With these the picture fills the screen top to bottom with black on the sides. I have a couple that are panoramic, and they look great on the AppleTV. They are 10x4, so they fill the screen from left to right with black bands above and below.

My photos are in Aperture and I put the photos I want displayed on the AppleTV in a specific Album. On iTunes I share photos from Aperture, choose select Albums, Events, Faces. Then only select the Album I created for AppleTV. I guess iPhoto works similarily.

On the AppleTV I set screensaver to use the my iPhoto library, and use the classic setting to display pictures. They display cropped as they should be, NO cropping of any kind by the AppleTV or the TV. My TV is set for 16x9 with no "auto wide" setting.

Richard2478 wrote:

I was wondering if there is not some reason, such as the pixel count or perhaps an inability to dynamically create its frames and borders to fit, etc, that causes it to crop photos.

Only Apple would know the answer to this as such specs are not posted.

Send some feedback:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html

AC

I don't agree here. No different to watching a wider than 16:9 movie or a 4:3 TV Show/movie and having black padding space.

AppleTV should simply scale any aspect ratio photo properly and retain the aspect ratio in the process.

I would suggest the OP checks he hasn't inadvertently set some zoom setting on the TV itself rather than 16:9 mode, and also for the screensaver it might be worth seeing what happens with Ken Burns effect off.

AC

The Apple TV does retain the aspect ratio for many photos providing they aren't excessively outside of 16:9. For example, 4:3 aren't cropped and when they are displayed full screen, black bands are added to the sides as you suggest they should be.

I don't particularly think the question of whether panoramic views should be zoomed or cropped is all that relevant, a 4" strip across the centre of the screen is just as pointless as it being zoomed to me. I feel that panoramic views cannot be adequately handled by a 16:9 screen and any expectation that they can be or should be is a little unreasonable.

Winston Churchill wrote:

I feel that panoramic views cannot be adequately handled by a 16:9 screen and any expectation that they can be or should be is a little unreasonable.

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

I am not suggesting panning/zoom functions simply that it would be trivial to display a panorama on a 16:9 screen, even if some people didn't see the point, it is simply an image with a given aspect ratio. AppleTV specs do not specify they only handle specific aspect ratios.

AC

bobwild wrote:

On the AppleTV I set screensaver to use the my iPhoto library, and use the classic setting to display pictures. They display cropped as they should be, NO cropping of any kind by the AppleTV or the TV. My TV is set for 16x9 with no "auto wide" setting.

I've not made any panos for years, but TV Settings and AppleTV screensaver options are my likely suspects for this too.

AC

Another thing I would consider is whether your TV may be overscanning and slightly cropping the images for you - if it has a 1:1 pixel mode/overscan off try that.

If you cannot fix it you could potentially use a cheat and create a black background layer with a 16:9 (or 3:2) aspect ratio, the same width as your panos, then paste your panos onto a foreground layer centered vertically if that makes sense - the image would then include black space padding and should display more as you intend due to the aspect ratio of the black background.

AC

If you are working with a 16:9 screen you should be aiming to create photos that are 16:9. You wouldn't expect to fit your panoramic photo into a 6:4 photo frame without cropping it would you.