Comments on: Anamorphic DVD playback revisited

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 16:55:22 +0000

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.

By: alberto

alberto — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 16:09:07 +0000

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

By: Jacob

Jacob — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 15:31:14 +0000

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.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:32:25 +0000

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.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:32:29 +0000

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.

By: Dave Birrell

Dave Birrell — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:12:25 +0000

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?

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:08:31 +0000

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 ;-)

By: Dave Birrell

Dave Birrell — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 17:58:52 +0000

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.