Quicktime aspect ratio

I don’t know whether a discovery I’ve made has been made by somebody who’s already reported it in a likely forum such as Apple Support Communities, but in what I trust is plain English here it is from my experience:

For a few years in my PowerPC Macintosh G4 with OS 10.5.8 I’ve been using the nifty pre-Intel (and therefore pre-Snow-Leopard) paid version of QuickTime 7 called QuickTime 7 Pro, version 7.7. As well as allowing me to perform several kinds of editing trick and to add many kinds of metadata it has allowed me to correct a video’s aspect ratio by keeping the Shift key pressed while I use the mouse’s left button and the mouse’s single-headed pointer to drag the video’s bottom right-hand corner to the place that seems to my eyes to create the correct aspect ratio.

The other day when I acquired an Intel Mac running OS 10.8.3 and invoked my old QT Pro registration key to unlock QT Pro 7’s Snow Leopard version (ie version 7.7.1, still apparently unchanged since Snow Leopard) I was annoyed to find that I could no longer use precisely my old Shift + drag-corner trick to adjust a video’s aspect ratio, and even those videos whose aspect ratios I adjusted and saved in my PowerPC would open with the old incorrect aspect ratio in my Intel Mac.

I’m now pleased to report that I’ve discovered how to do it on my Intel Mac, and compared with my PowerPC’s way it’s only a tiny bit trickier:

Without yet pressing Shift, I put the mouse-pointer on the video’s bottom right-hand corner and drag what has now become a diagonally oriented double-headed sizing-arrow to a place that my eyes judge will create the correct aspect ratio. Then, while keeping my finger on the mouse’s left button, I press the Shift key. The video’s bottom right-hand corner will magically jump to the place where the sizing-arrow is. Then I release the mouse’s left button, and after that I release the Shift key. Then I press Command-S to save my precious aspect-ratio adjustment.

Beware: As with QT Pro 7.7’s method, QT Pro 7.7.1’s method is not at the most fundamental level. For instance if I press Command-3 (or go to QT’s “View” menu and choose “Fit to Screen”) my adjusted video will dart back to its original incorrect aspect ratio instead of remembering and honoring the aspect ratio that I chose. But I’m thankful that if I close the adjusted and saved video and then reopen it it’ll still show my chosen aspect ratio.

The main thing that beats me in this saga is why the elves in Cupertino bothered to meddle with QT 7.7 Pro’s slightly easier aspect-ratio trick and then apparently (?) to keep quiet about their meddling while expecting the customers to rely on trial and error to discover the new and unimproved trick.

Another thing that beats me is the justification the said elves had for creating the Mickey Mouse thing called QuickTime X instead of simply improving QuickTime 7 and its paid Pro version.

Quicktime X - I can't BELIEVE I can no longer change the aspect ratio like I could in 6 and 7. What were Apple thinking??? It's already bad enough what they did to Final Cut. Why on earth do they think DUMBING DOWN is a good idea??

You will have to be more specific here regarding your problem. Basically you are dealing with two different methods of displaying video with a specific aspect ratio. Old media players like QT 7 and GarageBand disply files employing specified scaling dimensions which can be easily modified by a user. On the other hand, apps like QT X and iMovie '08/'09/'11 use the encoded height dimension of the file and a Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) value or flag to set the display width based on that height. For a file to play correctly in both QT 7 and QT X, both methods displaying the file must be honored. E.g., a video formatted as 720x480 (853x480) with an embedded "Current Size" setting of 853x480 would play correctly in both QT X and QT 7 players with an aspect ratio of 16:9 (1.78:1).

The common problem that many users run into today is the employment of workflows that tend to "lose" anamorphic PAR values or anamorphic flags during processing, When this happens, files either display at their encode matrix dimensions or default to a 4:3 (1.33:1) aspect ratio. And, while fixing a QT 7 display problem is as simple as rescaling the display, anamorphic corrections are more difficult to deal with. In most cases, you would have to re-compress the file to "reset" the display flag or PAR value. Luckily, Apple's choice of H.264 video content as its default display standard is one of the few video formats that can be corrected "on the fly." If you have a habitual problem with anamorphic encodings, then I normally recommend users switch to non-anamorphic workflows.

QuickTime 7 Pro

Command-J (also Windows menu to Show Movie Properties)

Click on the video element of your file (for example, H.264)

Uncheck Preserve Aspect Ratio

In Scaled Size: enter into the boxes the exact aspect ratio you desire

Hit ENTER

Close Properties box

[click on image to enlarge]

Dear Michael,

Thanks. I learned a lot from your post of “Mar 31, 2013 4:42 PM”, which was in reply to mine of “Mar 30, 2013 4:09 PM”.

I worked out that your words “ the exact aspect ratio you desire” refer to the measurements that automatically appear in the “Display Size” cells after I tweak the ratio visually using the drag-and-Shift-key method that I described in my earlier post.

Of course, after invoking your instructions and climbing out of QT’s “Visual Settings” window I also need to use Command-3 (the QT menu’s “Fit to Screen”) to resize the video to suit the screen while preserving my chosen aspect ratio.

And for the sake of readers who are as luddite as I am I can say I’ve worked out that after my tweaking there’s no need for me to retick the “Preserve Aspect Ratio” box: the software reinstates the tick automatically.

Your help means that in conjunction with my drag-and-Shift-key trick I can now make a permanent adjustment to a QT video’s aspect ratio, so that the adjustment will be honored by any computer that I use to play the file and so that my chosen ratio will stay unaltered even when I choose QT’s Command-3 setting at any time in the future.

I worked out that your words “ the exact aspect ratio you desire” refer to the measurements that automatically appear in the “Display Size” cells after I tweak the ratio visually using the drag-and-Shift-key method that I described in my earlier post.

Michael actually means is you can set the "exact aspect ratio" in terms of an exact number of disply pixel dimensions.

For example, lets say you have an anamorphic video someone encoded using a 720x480 (1.50:1 aspect ratio) but the Pixel Aspect Ratio for playback was not correctly set and the file plays at its encode dimensions. In theory, this recording could be either an 853x480 (16:9 Aspect Ratio) or 640x480 (4:3 Aspect Ratio) or some other common aspect ratio (1.66:1, 1.85:1, 2.35:1, 2.40:1, etc.) letterboxed within the 16:9 or 4:3 display area which is currently being displayed in the 720x480 display area. Obviously, in this case, it is easy to tell in which direction the width needs to be scaled using either your drag or Michael's box entry strategy. Both will work for playback in "Classic" QT apps but only correct half of the problem.

Of course, after invoking your instructions and climbing out of QT’s “Visual Settings” window I also need to use Command-3 (the QT menu’s “Fit to Screen”) to resize the video to suit the screen while preserving my chosen aspect ratio.

Scaling the file only sets the default dimensions for which your video automatically opens in a "Classic" QT player app. This is a "fixed" size which is independent of the display screen size. The "Command-3" invokes a "relative" display size whose scale is dependent on the size of the display monitor and the current monitor settings you are using. If the file will only be displayed in a classic QT player app and only on your current display using the current display settings, then by all means, if you so choose, you can scale the file to the "current" full scale dimensions and then save the "expanded" display version of the video so it will automatically reopen at the fully expanded dimensions in classic QT player apps.

However, as I stated in my first response in this discussion, this method of scaling QT videos for playback only addresses aspect ratio or scaling issuse for classic QT player apps and has no affect on QT X based apps which display using a Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) value that displays the video's relative width based on either its encoded or currently scaled height. For a file to play at the correct aspect ratio (or scaled dimensions) in both classic QT and QT X apps, both the current scale dimensions and the PAR value MUST be corrected.