Projecting Keynote - setting the aspect ratio

Question

Level 1

70 points

Projecting Keynote - setting the aspect ratio

I've just got my new iPad (10th gen) and got it all set up. I took it into a classroom to make sure there won't be any surprises when school starts next month, and... well, there are some surprises.

Mainly, it's getting horizontally compressed into a square on the big screen. This is of NOT what the aspect ratio of the iPad appears to be just from eye-balling it (I would guess 4:3).

Regard:

You can see the projector even displays 4:3 in the upper right corner of the screen when I select that aspect ratio from its remote control.

Here's what it looks like on the iPad:

I'm sure you'll agree that's much better.

I noticed there is some light overspill of light on the left and right sides of the projector (red arrows in the image below):

Maybe if we look at that (instead of my slide content) then it's 4:3. But how to I get the slide content to fill up that extra horizontal space?

I never had this problem before because on my previous iPad I used a lightning to VGA adapter (just because that's what I had) inline with a VGA to HDMI adapter, and it filled the screen nicely with no compression. Could this be caused by the USB-C to HDMI adapter? I want to try a USB-C to VGA adapter but I don't have one.

I also tried the 19:9 and "auto" settings of the projector but it made no difference aside from making the whole image smaller. Here's 16:9, and "auto" looks the same:

Any ideas what I can do to get the Keynote slide content to take up the entire projection area?

iPad (10th generation)

Posted on Sep 25, 2024 11:46 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Camelot

Level 9

55,077 points

Sep 27, 2024 9:58 AM in response to augratin

I suspect the problem is that the iPad screen is neither 4:3 nor 16:9, therefore the projector is having to do some scaling (or letterboxing) in order to make the presentation fit.

Your solution is to edit the presentation such that the slides are either 4:3 or 16:9, depending on your preference.

You can do this on the iPad by tapping the presentation's name -> Presentation Options -> Presentation Setup

Then tap Slide Size and choose either 4:3 or 16:9

You'll need to check each of the slides to make sure that your content fits, since some clipping may occur depending on the chosen setting.

Reply

Answer 2

augratin Author

Level 1

70 points

Sep 28, 2024 3:23 AM in response to Camelot

Wow I would have never found that on my own! Thanks for pointing this out. I searched all through the settings (gear icon at upper right, where you'd think all the settings would be found), and gave up in exasperation when I couldn't find anything related to aspect ratio.

Camelot wrote:

You'll need to check each of the slides to make sure that your content fits, since some clipping may occur depending on the chosen setting.

I hope I don't need to do this for *each slide* since I have over 200 presentations and some of them have 80-90 slides each. I'll play around with this on Monday and report back. Also I've ordered a USB-C to VGA dongle to see what that does.

Finally, I did try playing a video and it fills the screen properly, even filling the white empty space on the sides. So that rules out the projector and the adapter, I think.

Reply

Answer 3

augratin Author

Level 1

70 points

Sep 30, 2024 11:37 PM in response to augratin

Update:

Changing the presentation aspect ratio affects the projection area (essentially giving me a bigger canvas to paint on) but has no effect on the existing content, so it just gives me lots of white space around each slide.

I got the USB-C to VGA adapter and it doesn't help. I still get those empty spaces on the sides. Today I noticed something new, perhaps because I'm using my own projector instead of the ceiling-mounted one from the other day. When I connect the cable, the projector reports the resolution of the signal its getting from the iPad. In this case, it's 1920×1080:

When I connect my old iPad (gen6), the projector reports 1024×768, along with what appears to be a true 4:3 aspect ratio:

I guess this means the new iPad is giving me true HD out while the old one gives me XVGA. I was hoping the USB-C to VGA adapter would down-scale it. I haven't tried Apple's own USB-C to VGA adapter mainly because it's 75 freakin' dollars. Seventy-five dollars. For a VGA dongle.

I looked up the specs of the projector and its native resolution is SVGA 800×600 and I guess it downscales everything higher. I tried connecting a VGA cable from the adapter to the projector and it reported 1600×1200 coming from the iPad:

So unless there is some way to tell the iPad to output the video at something in the neighborhood of XVGA, I'm going to have to accept the white bars on the side if I want to fill up the entire 4:3 screen.

Reply