Movies playing with wrong aspect ratio

[mp0510]

Has anyone run into this?

I have a variety of movies in iTunes that are 720X480,720X360, and various vertical resolutions in between. iTunes and most computer video players read the SAR (standard Aspect Ratio) setting within the movie and stretch it to the correct ratio. So an extremely widescreen movie is stretched to the correct width during playing (most Digital Copies you buy are like this. It's where I learned the trick.)

On the 4G, the videos are playing at 720X480 or 720X360 with no stretching. So everyone has very skinny heads.

Movies recorded with black above and below with no software stretch play fine.

Is this a software player issue or an EVO hardware problem??

 

[MikeBinOK]

I haven't tried this with a widescreen movie, but I've had some issues with "dimensions" on other movies. If you tap the screen while a video is playing to bring up the controls, near the bottom, to the left of center you'll see a little square with four carets in each of the corner. Tapping that changes the dimensions onscreen of some of the videos I've played, and may help your situation (I'm not savvy enough about video to use the technically correct terms in the above).

Sorry if this is obvious, but I wanted to make sure you weren't missing it.

 

[mp0510]

Sorry it took so long for me to respond. Been on the road and haven't had a chance to get back on checking videos.

The technique Hooded Claw refers to is maximize feature. If the video does not fill the screen, this pops the video larger so that there are no "black bars" while cropping the other dimension.

This doesn't correct the aspect ratio. Here's a detailed version of the question, so maybe someone has an answer:

iTunes and Windows media player use a number stored in the video to determine the aspect ratio. This allows the players to stretch the videos to be the correct width. As an example: The Dark knight is physically 640 by 360. But the aspect ratio is 2.35, so the players stretch the video so it LOOKS 853 x 360. What currently happens on every player I've tries if the video is played at 640x360 instead of stretching, so everything is VERY squished horizontally.

The only solution I've found is dropping the movie into a converter (handbrake, xvid4psp, etc.) and converting it to a true, non-stretched 853x360, but this increases the file size, unless I want to lose quality. So I'm hoping someone will set up a player that reads the aspect ratio and stretches the video accordingly.