Why is it that some videos have a zoom in option and others dont?

[krashx7]

I have been putting videos on my iphone since the 3g days and have never understood this. Sometimes my videos will have the zoom option(double tap the video or the little button in the upper right hand corner) and others simply will not. What option am I looking for when encoding videos for my iphone? Or is this something only certain videos can do no matter what I do to change it? I would like the option there everytime so I can zoom in as needed to get rid of the black bars as much as possible.

Also, I thought with the iphone 5 being in wide screen format it would make this all easier? Im still getting black bars on wide screen videos. I can crop them out and stretch the image but the picture looks off...

Any advice?

 

[SilentPanda]

Also, I thought with the iphone 5 being in wide screen format it would make this all easier? Im still getting black bars on wide screen videos. I can crop them out and stretch the image but the picture looks off...

Any advice?

I can't help with regards to encoding, but there are multiple widescreen ratios. 16:9 and 16:10 are just two common ones. So it doesn't matter too much that the iPhone is in widescreen as it can't be in both ratios at the same time.

 

[Gav2k]

Op if a video has black bars be it at the sides or top and bottom you have the option to fill them by double tapping. If however the aspect ratio for the screen is correct you dont

 

[krashx7]

Well the movie "The dark Knight" for instance. I can rip it to the iphone 5's res and it will still come out with the black bars and no option to zoom in. I can however crop them off like I said before but the image is stretched vertically. I can use the pan and scan option but then Im cutting off some of the sides.. Ugh I understand thats just how some videos are made and you probably cant get around it. I just want to use all the screen real estate when watching movies on it. I dont mind the black bars on my big screen tv. I guess pan and scan option is the only way to get around this..

 

[Julien]

Also, I thought with the iphone 5 being in wide screen format it would make this all easier? Im still getting black bars on wide screen videos. I can crop them out and stretch the image but the picture looks off...

Any advice?

...but zooming up and cutting off both sides of the picture does?

The iPhone is 1.78. 1.78 is HDTV standard and very close to theater's 1.85. Theater also uses 2.35 and will have back bars (when watching the whole movie).