iPod touch 4:3 on the iTouch?

[Draythor]

I was wondering whether the double tap that zooms out theatrical widescreen movies works the same for 4:3? I mean does it show the full picture or does it show black borders either side?
Many thanks
~ Dray

 

[Gondry]

I was wondering whether the double tap that zooms out theatrical widescreen movies works the same for 4:3? I mean does it show the full picture or does it show black borders either side?
Many thanks
~ Dray

Yes, it is either full screen cropping the top and bottom of the picture, or it shows the full picture with black bars on both sides of the screen.

 

[The General]

does it show the full picture or does it show black borders either side?

You're confused. This is not an "or" statement.

It either:

1. Shows the full picture with black bars, or
2. Cuts the top and bottom off the video and fills the screen.

It is not possible to display a full 4:3 video on an iPod touch/iPhone without the black bars on the sides. It is also not possible to display a full 16:9 video on an iPod touch/iPhone without having black bars on the top and bottom.

 

[richardhunt]

The Ipod Touch's screen is not a 16:9 screen. If you in fact encode an anamorphic video, the ipod touch is unable to stretch the image horizontally to create the proper aspect ratio. So when encoding video to ipod touch, always use 4:3. When you do a stretch it will "zoom" the image and crop top and bottom. A real anamorphic fit, would not zoom but rater stretch the image, without cropping information from the top or bottom of the screen. I was rather disappointed at this as my Vidcam shoots anamorphic widescreen.

 

[madmaxmedia]

I think anamorphic has nothing to do with the aspect ratio, it simply refers to storing a widescreen picture into 4:3 format (but generally for 16:9 since most widescreen TV's are in that ratio.)

The problem with the iPod Touch is not that it's not 16:9, but that it doesn't know to treat anamorphic content differently (like most DVD players can.)

Since the iPod Touch can handle non-4:3 content, in general there's no real point to having it play anamorphic content anyway. Although I do understand in your case you are creating anamorphic widescreen content, and would like to play it on your Touch.

They could conceivably add this in a future update. I doubt they will though, in order to keep things simple.

The Ipod Touch's screen is not a 16:9 screen. If you in fact encode an anamorphic video, the ipod touch is unable to stretch the image horizontally to create the proper aspect ratio. So when encoding video to ipod touch, always use 4:3. When you do a stretch it will "zoom" the image and crop top and bottom. A real anamorphic fit, would not zoom but rater stretch the image, without cropping information from the top or bottom of the screen. I was rather disappointed at this as my Vidcam shoots anamorphic widescreen.

 

[triela]

Issues notwithstanding, it only makes sense that Apple chose a "simple-fractional" display for the iPod touch. In order for mobile optimization to be done with any semblance of standardization, almost every LCD screen on any mobile device is VGA (640x480), qVGA (320x240) or half-VGA (480x320) like the iPod touch. Do you really want a 480x270 screen that displays 16:9 perfectly but renders 4:3 unwatchable and makes mobile-optimized sites usless? Or maybe a 480x360 screen that renders 16:9 malformed and makes mobile-optimized sites still useless?

 

[Draythor]

Ok.
Scenario
I'm happily playing Scrubs on my iTouch
It's got black bars at the side because it's 4:3 ratio
I do the double tap on the screen thingy (5:48)
does it do this? or is it auto widescreen format.

 

[richardhunt]

In your case it would fill the bands on the sides, but then it will crop some information on the top and bottom of the screen during the zoom (which is basically what the double tap does, it zooms the image so that there's not empty space on the left and right at the cost of loosing information from the top and bottom of the screen.


As far as the sample you provided, I have not been able to duplicate that behavior. Though it may have something to do with the resolution used during the encoding process. Everything I've done in my Touch has been 4:3 formatted. I'm going to have to try encoding something that is already 16:9 (1600x900 pixels or something using the same ratio) to see if double-tapping gets ride of the top and bottom bar in it's entirety and then centers the video to fit.

 

[madmaxmedia]

Yeah, anything that is not exactly 1.5:1 ratio (480/320) will exhibit the same behavior when you double-tap the screen. It will zoom in to fill whatever black borders are on the sides or top/bottom of the screen, at the expense of losing some of your picture due to the zooming.

For 4:3 and 16:9 content, zooming works pretty well because you're not losing that much information and get the benefit of a bigger picture (i.e. the video aspect ratio is pretty close to the Touch screen ratio.)

For really widescreen movies (2.35:1, etc.) it doesn't work as well because you lose a lot of the picture on the sides due to the higher zoom level.

Apple could conceivably add multiple zoom levels for such types of content so it doesn't zoom in too far, but it's probably not worth making the interface more complex. The iPod Touch screen size is big enough where I'm happy with most all content on its screen.

 

[Draythor]

Many thanks. Just what I wanted to hear.
~Dray