Apple TV

[Jason Wilson]

why is it that you can not make any changes when exporting out of FCP.... it seems a little odd to me that you can only output AppleTV and not have options to tweak the settings....

also my HD 1280x720 video I export out of Final Cut via AppleTV setting shows up fine in the quicktime player...but when I play it in itunes it squishes to 4:3 and adds black bars to the side... of course looking pretty terrible and leary about getting AppleTV... how would I make the videos play normal in itunes...

its obviously not an output setting problem... since you can't change the settings!~

 

[Jason Wilson]

seriously anyone with info on this .... is this an apple conspiracy or is there logical reason that you can't adjust the settings

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

Probably to ensure playback on their device.

I can imagine people tweaking with the output settings and then inundating apple with calls when their film miraculously DOESN'T play back on the apple tv.

 

[OSV]

i don't know about apple tv, but the last time that i looked, the ipod screen was 4:3... you'll probably want to output 4:3 to match it... if it's any consolation, statistics tell us that most computer screens on the internet are still 1024x768, which is basically a 4:3 format.

 

[Demistate]

Short Answer: Apple TV Handles PAR differently than Quicktime Player does.

Long answer:

http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?t=3578

Up until 7.3, QuickTime had what I consider a bug: it ignored extra information in video tracks. Like, if a video track gave a pixel aspect ratio to use, QuickTime would ignore it.

To work around this, maurj coded in another way to tell QuickTime how to display anamorphic video -- a transformation matrix in the MP4.

Starting with 7.3, QuickTime does listen to pixel aspect ratios in the video track.

But it also still listens to transformation matrices, so it applies both, distorting the image.

Obviously, future releases of HandBrake will not set a transformation matrix any more. For videos encoded with the current release (or even current dev code), you will have to remove the matrix with Dumpster in order for it to look right in QuickTime 7.3. But as a result, it will look wrong in QuickTime 7.2 and earlier.

​

There are utilties to make sure that the Transformation matrix and PAR is set correctly in your MP4/MOV files. Check out the Handbrake forums for more information.