Changing aspect ratio of iTunes purchases and iMovie output

So how can I change to aspect ratio of the movie? Can I do this in some submenu of iTunes or Apple TV? Can I run the file through a video encoder and stretch it? Can iMovie help?

AVCO Media (purchased programs) are protected and do not appear to allow access to "Visual Settings" nor allow you to copy/save/encode the file even if you could modify the aspect ratio. The normal approach is to use the aspect setting on the HDTV (if available) to modify the final display.

I've put some of my home digital movies through iMovie to convert them to the proper format for Apple TV. When the movies were initially recorded they had an aspect ratio of 4:3. After iMovie is finished with them, they have an aspect ratio of 16:9.

When you say "put through" are you talking about capturing the footage in iMovie or importing it. In the first case, the application should capture in the proper aspect ratio automatically. If it cannot, then I would suspect a hardware or setting problem. In the second case, it would appear you are importing the files into a 16:9 defined project.

Is there any way to set iMovie so that it preserves the 4:3 aspect ratio and puts in the columns?

As to correcting the problem pre-production, open a "New" project and select the "DV" option before importing files. For a post-production fix, if you have QT Pro, simply open the file in the QT player, access the "Visual Settings" tab for the video track in the "Properties" window, adjust the aspect with "Preserve Aspect Ratio" deselected, and save the changed file. As to the display of movies with pillars, normally your TV/HDTV takes care of this unless you are possibly using an older EDTV with straight analog progressive input which always deflects to full screen width and no scaling capability.

Are you showing purchased movies in 4:3 format or 16:9? If the latter, that's the cause of your problem. For iTunes purchased content, there should always be black bars (indicating 4:3 picture) on either side of the picture.

I tried that, i.e. I opened a new project in iMovieHD and "dragged and dropped" in the original 4:3 clips and then used Export>Expert Setting>Apple TV to create a new movie file. The file still had the 16:9 aspect ratio. So . . .

When creating a new project you are given (in the current version) the opportunity of creating many different project types -- e.g., DV, DV Widescreen, HDV 1080i, HDV 720p, etc.


Did you change the "DV Widescreen" option ...


To the regular DV option when you created the project before adding your file(s)?

The bottom screen capture was just what I did. Selected DV.

Will have to go back as see if I ran any 4:3 exports to TV preset. Seems strange it would assume an unconditional 16:9 aspect ratio. Thought I had run a few 4:3 (640 x 480) clips through QT Pro TV preset and they came out with correct aspect but with higher video data rate than 16:9 (640 x 360). However, don't believe I ever did the same from iMovie. You may have discovered a bug worth mentioning if others can duplicate and document the problem.

I'm not sure if it's a bug or an option since Apple TV is supposed to work "only" with wide screen HDTVs.

I would certainly call it a bug if the original aspect ratio is not preserved.

In any case, just ran some tests. QT Pro correctly converts the file and preserves the original aspect ratio. The same file exported from iMovie, is exported using the "rectangular" pixel dimensions (720 x 480) rather than the proper "square" pixel dimensions (640 x 480). Thus, you end up with a 1.50:1 aspect ratio since TV preserves the incorrect aspect ratio when it scales. Is this what you were asking about?

(NOTE: To avoid this problem you can always export the "Shared iDVD" project reference file using QT Pro. This ensures encoding dimensions are equal to the input source file dimensions and no re-scaling is required.)