Webdirect does not seem to respect the aspect ratio of a video (at all). It resizes it to the dimensions of the container field both horizontally and vertically. Turning auto-resizing off is no solution either, because different movies have different aspect ratios - it's impossible to size the container field to match all movies stored in it.

Does anyone know a cure for this...?  See images attached.

 

PS: the obvious is a given - "maintain original proportions" is checked.

PPS: I just installed FMS 14 and FMP 14 to see if maybe they resolved this. Go figure... sometimes I really wonder. REALLY wonder.

Edited May 23, 201510 yr by artvault

By the way: going into full-screen mode from WebDirect, the movie is equally distorted.

While the movie has the correct dimensions in browse mode in OS X, it assumes the container dimensions when going into full-screen mode as well. This was first reported in 2012 and apparently never resolved:

http://forums.filemaker.com/posts/c54ea2e042

I could sell a FileMaker based video database solution to a large client, but with these issues, I'm not sure if I dare to.

The only work-around possibility I see, is to have two to three container fields with different aspect ratios, read-out the dimensions of the video stored on a given record, then show/hide the appropriate container with FM13's functionality. This would show a (more or less) undistorted video. I would probably need: 4:3, 16:9, and cinema scope dimensions.