Output anamophic screen size inside .mov container

[qwerty123]

Hi, good work guys. Been an interesting read over the last week or two as I've been experimenting to rip for computer viewing at max quality.

To that end, the anamorphic option seems perfect, as there is as little unnecessary scaling as possible. (In fact, no scaling during encoding. Keeps the files as small as possible). As someone else suggested, open the mp4 in QuickTime and adjust the horizontal scale to the figure given for Anamorphic Output then save as .mov.

So, to the request - add an option to save directly as a .mov with the display setting already in there. That way I can keep everything in iTunes/FrontRow/AppleTV (hopefully).

Cheers now
Dave

[jbrjake]

As someone else suggested,

Yes, and as I replied to that suggestion, it has already been implemented in the svn and will be available in public beta 2, so there's no need to request it again =)

We aren't using .mov, either. maurj's hacked the muxer to add the relevant container atom to a regular .mp4.

[qwerty123]

Fair point. However, as I understood it, Quicktime currently ignores this. I guess it's become a suggestion to workaround a feature in Quicktime to allow us Apple lovers to have an easy life...

Or I could be missing the point entirely, in which case I apologise... :-\

[jbrjake]

Or I could be missing the point entirely

Yeah, you kind of are ;P

You've correctly grokked the situation as it stands with public beta 1. QuickTime ignores the way we're setting anamorphic. Currently.

What I'm saying is that anamorphic display will work in QuickTime when we release the next beta.

One of the developers, maurj, figured out how to add that display size information to .mp4.

When you open the mp4 in QuickTime and adjust the horizontal scale, you're creating an atom of information: "when you display it, scale it like this..."

What maurj figured out is how to make MediaFork insert that atom into an .mp4, so you don't have to open the movie in QuickTime, set it by hand, and repackage it as a .mov.

So any anamorphic encodes you do with beta 1, no, they will not display properly in QuickTime. When we release beta 2, anamorphic encodes done with it *will* display properly in QuickTime.

[qwerty123]

So any anamorphic encodes you do with beta 1, no, they will not display properly in QuickTime. When we release beta 2, anamorphic encodes done with it *will* display properly in QuickTime.

Sounds cool. Just running some queued encodes now. My one Chapter trials do look so clever. This whole lark is making me want to upgrade my old G5!

Thanks for taking the time to explain. Interesting times...

[maurj]

Hi qwerty123,

Just to add to jbrjake's accurate comments - the mp4 file format is actually a subset of the mov format. QuickTime's atom-based mov format was taken as the inspiration for the ISO-standardised mp4 format. QuickTime does several extra things on top of of the mp4 standard, and this is one of them - but since an mp4 is essentially a mov, QuickTime does support the anamorphic setting when the mp4 is opened by any QuickTime-savvy program, such as QuickTime Player, iTunes, or Front Row. The only thing that won't honor the setting is a video iPod - but if you're exporting to iPod, you'd probably want to resize the video rather than use anamorphic anyway. So, hopefully beta2 will do just what you need!