I previously blogged a solution to playing anamorphic DVD recordings under Mac OS X using VLC. VLC is not yet a Universal Binary and seems unstable on my Intel-based Mac, which is also capable of reading the DVD+RW disks that my Philips DVD Recorder uses. On my previous (DVD "minus" only) Mac, getting .VOB (MPEG-2) video of such disks was complicated and involved using a PC (shudder!). Thankfully there is a way to watch recorded anamorphic TV broadcasts on the Mac in the correct aspect ratio using none other than the DVD Player software included with Tiger.
BBC documentaries involving David Attenborough typically look stunning on our 32" widescreen telly. Worth recording to watch again. The DVD recorder records anamorphic video: in a 4:3 frame it looks horizontally squeezed, but in a 16:9 frame it expands to create a properly-proportioned widescreen picture. Except, alas, if viewed using Apple's DVD Player. The picture does not expand horizontally to playback in a widescreen aspect ratio; I really don't know why (commercial DVDs do) but presume my home-made disks are not delivering the correct aspect ratio data to DVD Player.
The option took some discovering, but it is possible to override the default behaviour in DVD player. The control we're interested in lives under Window > Video Zoom. In Normal mode aspect ratio is locked and square elements (such as the BBC logo boxes) appear squished:
Activating the Zoom control and unlocking aspect ratio preservation allows adjustment to taste. I used a digital screen ruler (XScope) to ensure the BBC logo was composed of perfect squares:
Note that I have also adjusted the picture vertically to fully remove the flickering (mostly) black edges that broadcast recordings include (the white line below and left of the logo in the top picture is evidence of this).
Satisfied with the result, I chose Save Preset... and named it Anamorphic, to avoid having to measure-up next time.
Tip: Command-Shift-(3 or 4) doesn't let you take screen captures when DVD Player is open. You can get around this by opening Terminal and typing (without quotes) "screencapture -ics" to copy to the clipboard. Alternatively, the Capture widget seems to work pretty well.
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I tried this resize using Zoom, but the trouble I see is that the edges of frame are lost. The frame of the 4:3 doesn't expand to 16:9, so widening the image loses information. Ideally the height adjustment would squeeze the image vertically to achieve the correct aspect ratio.
Yes that's true Dave: you do loose the left and right of the picture zooming in like this. The scaling also causes some blurring (which you can actually see in the screen captures). It's by no means a perfect solution - but still an improvement over a horizontally stretched image. I've sent feedback to Apple at least twice, asking if they would make it "easy" to playback anamorphic recordings. You would think a [4:3] and a [16:9] ratio button would be easy to implement. Maybe there's a technical reason why this isn't the case, or maybe Apple feel DVD Player doesn't help sell the OS, so they devote engineer time to software that does (iLife etc.). There's always VLC ;-)
Thanks Bruce. DVD Player won't do what I need and VLC just crashes. Do you (or anyone out there) know of an OSX DVD player that will give me 16:9 on the computer screen?
VLC = Very Likely (to) Crash!
I just checked out MPlayer for OS X. It's not yet Universal, but has a control for aspect ratio ("default", "4:3", or "16:9") and you can open a VIDEO_TS folder on a DVD.
The bad news? It seems just as buggy as VLC. Oh well, there's hope... if only a fools hope.
Nah, Brucey, VLC works great for bit torrent playback of MP4 files. What crashes a lot for me is using MPlayer and trying to advance said video play head. That kills MPlayer every time for me.
This is all on a Mot-based PowerMac G4.
The Mac Intel build of VLC is _fairly_ stable and has an aspect ratio submenu with a number of presets. It lacks a preset for cinemascope but if you select video in the preferences you can temporarily enter a custom ratio there (e.g. 2.35 for cinemascope). Additionally it seems that automatic cropping is to make an appearance soon, as there's an advanced 'Crop borders in fullscreen' preference (Interface/Main interfaces/macosx)—except it is casusing instantaneous crashing. You can also enter manual crop measurements in the prefs. All these could use the ability to edit the presets.
I have a reverse problem, I want to be able to see a 16:9 DVD burned in a MAC on a 4:3 TV:
I shot and edited a project in anamorphic widescreen.
I then exported a file with Final Cut Pro using quicktime movie in anamorphic 16:9. I, then, burned the file using Toast, iDVD and even DVD-SP (both the latest versions of the softwares)
The problem is, depending on the home-DVD players the disc is played, the image is "un-anamorphosed" on 4:3 TV.
In two home-DVD players setup has been changed (from Widescreen, to Pan & Scan, to Letterbox) and the image is still NOT played in 4:3 with black bars, but is "un-anamorphosed". In another DVD players, the same disc is correctly viewed (with black bars on 4:3 TV, and anamorphic widescreen on 16:9 tv...)
All the DVD-disc played correctly in 16:9 in all Mac computers
And, surprisingly, all the widescreen DVDs bought in retails work fine on ANY of those home-DVD players.
any solutions?
tx Alberto
Alberto, I've previously made a 16:9 format DVD on a Mac (by editing the MPEG header, as described here), but my results were inconsistent. There are too many variables: the MPEG header information attached to the video data, the TV picture format setting, the DVD Player TV shape setting... sorry I can't suggest anything.