Anamorphic Setting in HB, Cropped picture on AppleTv

Yeah...you are probably missing something

JonHimself said:

So I've been using Handbrake with the Anamorphic setting on and on my computer everything plays back fine in Quicktime, iTunes and Front Row, but when I stream the same file to AppleTV it results in a zoomed in picture, both the top and the sides are cut off. I thought, based on what I was reading, that AppleTV also would be able to properly play the anamorphic-encoded video. Is that true? Am I missing something?

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I don't know which version of Handbrake you use. But I would recommend you toggle open the preset drawer. There you should find a HB-AppleTV preset. I use that everytime I encode a DVD and they play perfectly on my XBOX 360. I don't own an Apple TV, so I can't cross-check.

i personally find anamorphic to work perfectly sometimes and sometimes kinda funk with the movie.... i look at the preview in handbrake and make sure everything looks good, if not- keep aspect ratio. just keep your eye open and check your settings for each movie.... most 4:3 movies(which i avoid) suck with anamorphic, but basically- handbrake is a great app that lets u make sure your setting yourself up properly.. so use that great feature.

JonHimself said:

That's sort of the problem. Everything looks fine in Handbrake and also looks fine on my computer (in iTunes, Quicktime, etc etc). It's just on AppleTV that the picture is zoomed in.

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I'm a little worried about this myself. I am in the process of ripping, encoding, and burning my 250+ DVD collection while waiting for an apparent update to the TV and don't want to have to do the whole thing over because TV won't display anything properly, even though I'm using the Handbrake TV preset.

I know Perian is the de-facto workaround for Quicktime, but how do people fix this for the TV?

JonHimself said:

So I've been using Handbrake with the Anamorphic setting on and on my computer everything plays back fine in Quicktime, iTunes and Front Row, but when I stream the same file to AppleTV it results in a zoomed in picture, both the top and the sides are cut off. I thought, based on what I was reading, that AppleTV also would be able to properly play the anamorphic-encoded video. Is that true? Am I missing something?

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It could be the HDTV you're using.

Perhaps when you view it on your Mac, there is zero-overscan on the monitor. But when you view the same media on the aTV (connected to an HDTV), you get overscan from the TV. Some TVs have as much as 5% overscan.

My TV (Sharp 46D62U) has a feature to turn off overscan. With dot-by-dot enabled, I would get every pixel shown. turning off dot-by-dot results in an estimated 2% overscan.

ft

Then it's definitely your TV's overscan.

For some stupid reason, HDTV makers like to keep this "limitation" from the days of CRT's around. Some TV's allow it to be turned off as was mentioned, but some will not let you have your missing pixels. You have to live with it. Blame the TV maker. And look on their site to see if there's an option hidden to turn it off.

JonHimself said:

It's going to be replaced soon. Believe it or not, it is a widescreen CRT. It's a Toshiba that I bought while still in university because I wanted something with HDMI and component for some HD but could not justify buying LCD or plasma (which at the time was considerably more expensive). It's like 5 years old though and is just cumbersome (being a CRT).

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Are you using component or HDMI to hook up your Apple TV? I believe I was seeing a little bit of overscan when I briefly used component to hook it to my LCD, but with HDMI it's able to read the exact pixel dimensions of the screen (it shows up in the settings) and size appropriately.

So can someone clear this whole anamorphic thing up for me? What exactly does the anamorphic setting do? Should I use the appleTV preset in HB every time with the anamorphic setting on or just on my DVDs that are full screen? I guess my question is this.... Is the anamorphic setting supposed to be on when ripping a full screen DVD and not a widescreen? If so, does HB recognize that the DVD is a full screen or wide screen and automatically select anamorphic for full screen and turn it off for widescreen dvds?

oursfan said:

So can someone clear this whole anamorphic thing up for me? What exactly does the anamorphic setting do? Should I use the appleTV preset in HB every time with the anamorphic setting on or just on my DVDs that are full screen? I guess my question is this.... Is the anamorphic setting supposed to be on when ripping a full screen DVD and not a widescreen? If so, does HB recognize that the DVD is a full screen or wide screen and automatically select anamorphic for full screen and turn it off for widescreen dvds?

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Not sure how HB works, but it's easy enough to test it out. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I don't have any Full-screen DVDs, so you're on your own.

Just use HB to rip a short chapter of a Full-Screen DVD with anamorphic on and compare it with a rip with anamorphic off.

With widescreen DVDs, I would just leave anamorphic on all the time, except for the instances where the DVD is widescreen, but not anamorphic. Only the really old ones are like this. I have an old "Good Fellas" DVD that is widescreen, but not anamorphic.

ft

oursfan said:

I guess my question is this.... Is the anamorphic setting supposed to be on when ripping a full screen DVD and not a widescreen?

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Actually just the opposite. Anamorphic is most effective for widescreen DVDs. Read the Handbrake FAQ - it is a tough slog but the subject matter is also a bit complicated to explain easily.