For example, watching constellation right now and the recap plays in this huge widescreen when made full in the environments but then the show comes on and the screen shrinks down horizontally and has black bars top and bottom.
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Why do shows in apple tv plus play letterboxed?
- Thread starter Rychiar
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That's because the show was created in an aspect ratio different from your screen. The choices then are 1) play it letterboxed, so you can see all of the content, or 2) crop it to fill your fill the screen, which loses content beyond the cropped edges.
Film in 1.85:1 aspect ratio (The Terminator, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey) will fill a 16x9 frame. Films in 2.35:1 aspect ratio (Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure) have black matting at the top and bottom of the screen for a wider view. I'd never considered that matted video would look funny in AR, but here we are.
Both 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 are wider than 16:9 which is 1.78:1.
The wider formats are standard in movie productions and theaters. They are also used in some TV productions to give them a more cinematic look.
You can be pedantic about the math, but it comes back to the fact that movies shot in 1.85:1 aren't letterboxed on 16x9 displays.
vision Pro is not a fixed screen. This is apples screw up. The show should look just like the recap. Other shows do
But they letterboxed are unless they've been cropped. Here's a screen grab from Terminator on my 16:9 display, there's clearly some slight letterboxing. Cropping to 16:9 or 4:3 isn't uncommon for home video formats and TV.
I stand corrected! My apologies. Funny the things we think we know.
I never even thought about it, but I agree with you. It's a virtual screen so the letterboxing seems unnecessary. Oh well...perhaps this will change in a future software update.
It doesn’t have anything to do with the software, it’s just how that show and some others are encoded. Even though the aspect ratio of Constellation is 2.39, it’s encoded in 16:9 so the AVP is correctly playing the 16:9 signal it’s receiving with the black bars. The files for Constellation need to be corrected to only be in a 2.39 container, then the AVP will play it without the black bars.
That's what I was saying above. AVP is playing back the video as best it knows how because those black bars are baked into the encode. Unless there was an intelligent way to remove them, but then you open a can of worms with artistic integrity and movies "as they're meant to be seen". The only remedy is to have studios release anamorphic versions of film like they did back in the days of DVD.
Could they just alter the source content without any licensing ramifications? Remember how 4K was available for iTunes purchases automatically when released…because Apple negotiated that with the companies to do so?
I’m wondering if there are contract stipulations with the studios that would need to be worked out prior to Apple altering that company’s IP?
I know it sounds ridiculous, but IP holders are litigious as hell so I’d imagine there’s things that a company who has licensed IP can’t just do without clearing it first.
As for the recap having a different aspect ratio from the main show, it's just a way to visually differentiate between the two and is an artistic choice. I suspect that the encoded letterboxing is intentional too. Plenty of films and shows in Apple TV+ and the iTunes Store have wider aspect ratios without burned in letterboxing.
Your letterboxes, give them to me.
With variable screen sizes shouldn’t letterboxing not exist? I mean it’s a virtual display, can’t it just change height to eliminate the black bars? I feel like I’m missing something?
Yes. But in the case of Constellation (see original post) the letterboxes are part of the video file. Often that's not the case and the letterboxes are created during playback on a display with a different aspect ratio than the source. In the latter case there should presumably be no letterboxes on a Vision Pro.
The black bars are baked into the video encode, and so it then becomes a copyright and licensing issue if Apple wants to alter the distributors products as provided. They would have to get permission to do so at a premium fee, or get the studio distribution to provide them without them, also at a premium fee. I'm not a lawyer, that's just my interpretation of the issue.
Couldn’t Apple just use machine learning to detect static black bars on top and bottom of video playback and resize the viewing window to exclude them? Apple wouldn’t have to alter the video, just not display any baked-in back bars? Just spitballing here, since video cropping for different display ratios already exist?
Maybe? I'm sure they could, just not sure it's that simple. There are some films that change aspect ratios at certain points, or carry other details in the matting. I do think there would have to be some oversight over and above machine learning to ensure each movie is presented properly.
Just shrink the window but don’t crop the video. The black bars could still be available, they’d just be outside of the display view (above and below the view, but still being processed by the player app).
Those are exceptions. Blacklist them, if it cannot be done in real time.
But better would be to have something scan all the videos and map out the transition points, and you could then provide smooth transitions in real time. It would just be some metadata the media player would handle. If the metadata isn't there, then just play it 'as is'. AVP isn't the only virtual display so make this a standard so all of these headset displays can do this trick.
But we should also discuss Captions. Since forever, they never (or rarely) seem to display in letterboxed area even when there's adequate space for them. And non-letterboxed content just gets them overlaying the content (including during credits, etc.), to everyone's annoyance.
AVP media player could separate the caption stream and put it somewhere other than on top of the content.
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Exceptions or not, there's an artistic choice that needs to be made and I don't think Apple is prepared to make that choice without studio involvement. Just my perception of the issue at hand.
I really do not think letterboxing is 'an artistic choice'. It's an accommodation made necessary because of fixed physical screen sizes.
Movie gets shot in some aspect ratio, designed to be viewed in theater where letterboxing does not exist. Even things that are going to be on Netflix or AppleTV+ that have a theatrical release are likely to be shot in an aspect ratio that does not match 16:9 and require letterboxing (and sometimes screen will be 4:3, 16:10 or something else). Studios have been know to change aspect ratio for digital platform like BluRay specifically to eliminate letterbox by truncating or pan and scan, thankfully that practice seems to be gone now. They don't care about it.
If there is reason to believe that it matters for a given video, there could be some option to turn it on and off.
Movie gets shot in some aspect ratio, designed to be viewed in theater where letterboxing does not exist. Even things that are going to be on Netflix or AppleTV+ that have a theatrical release are likely to be shot in an aspect ratio that does not match 16:9 and require letterboxing (and sometimes screen will be 4:3, 16:10 or something else). Studios have been know to change aspect ratio for digital platform like BluRay specifically to eliminate letterbox by truncating or pan and scan, thankfully that practice seems to be gone now. They don't care about it.
If there is reason to believe that it matters for a given video, there could be some option to turn it on and off.
Not letterboxing per se, but aspect ratio choices are certainly based on desired aesthetics. Film directors will shoot in different aspect ratios for different movies to get a specific look. Even occasional 1.33:1 (aka 4:3) and 1.37:1 films are still being made in Hollywood for theatric viewing. These don’t use the full screen of a modern cinema and are effectively pillarboxed. And conversely, many TV shows use aspect ratios wider than 16:9 just for the cinematic look with no intention for theater viewing.
Yes, it is an artistic choice to select aspect ratio of the content. And yes many TV shows use wide aspect ratios for 'cinematic look', and know it will probably be letterboxed. But that is a side effect; people are very used to it as well.
But the 'cinematic look' would remain the same with letterboxing gone, and letterboxing detracts from the viewing experience on AVP IMO. I don't want to get used to it when there is an straightforward way to remove it.
But the 'cinematic look' would remain the same with letterboxing gone, and letterboxing detracts from the viewing experience on AVP IMO. I don't want to get used to it when there is an straightforward way to remove it.