FAQ

Here we've collected the common questions to Chroma. If you do not see your question answered here, feel free to contact us.

Features

• What is IntelliAspect™?

  It's an intelligent aspect ratio adjuster with zoom feature, designed to remove the black bars associated with fullscreen play. If the movie is only slightly wider than your screen, Chroma will automatically resize it to the full screen, and crop it slightly as necessary. If you turn off IntelliAspect Chroma will present the movie with exact aspect ratio, with black bars around.

• IntelliAspect™ doesn't seem to do anything in windowed mode?

  IntelliAspect™ is only meaningful in a fullscreen presentation, and will not do anything to a windowed presentation.

• What is AdaptiveQuality™

  Chroma contains an advanced feature called AdaptiveQuality™. When AdaptiveQuality is selected, Chroma can lower the display quality to yield better framerates, especially to big movies sized small (e.g. in overlay mode). Turning on AdaptiveQuality when playing a movie in overlay mode will give you a more responsive computer to work with.

• When I make the movie really small, the movie appears smeared?

  When I play big movies on my slow computer, the movie appears smeared?

  Chroma contains an advanced feature called AdaptiveQuality™. If Adaptive Quality is turned on on movies who use a large keyframe interval, the picture can appear smeared or discolored. Turn off AdaptiveQuality to prevent lower quality rendering (with unfortunate loss of frame rate and/or more CPU requirements instead).

Codecs

• What video codecs does Chroma support?

  The built-in codecs support the MPEG4 derived codecs: DivX, XviD and 3ivx, as well as generic MPEG4. Chroma can also use QuickTime's codecs.

  Chroma also has built-in support for a few legacy codecs like older Indeo, Truemotion and Ultimotion. Chroma can also use most QuickTime plug-in codecs.

  For more information about where to find codecs, see our Codecs page.

• What audio codecs does Chroma support?

  Chroma has no built-in audio codecs, and relies on QuickTime for audio decompression. QuickTime supports several common audio codecs, including mp3 which is the most common audio codec in movie files.

• How do I install more codecs?

  You need to find a Mac OS X QuickTime codec for the format you wish to play. This codec is a file that generally has the extension ".component" or ".qtx". This file needs to be placed in /Library/QuickTime, and it will be available to all applications that can use QuickTime plug-ins.

• The file still doesn't play!

  Make sure the movie file is not damaged, and that you have installed the correct codecs for the movie.

  For more information about where to find codecs, see our Codecs page.

• The movie plays, but there is no sound?

  The movie probably use a compressed audio format for which you have not installed a codec. For mp3 audio QuickTime has a built-in codec. For most other formats, you need to find and install a QuickTime plug-in codec for the format.

• Chroma refuses to open an audio-only movie file?

  Chroma will cowardly refuse to open any movie file without video.

• Chroma keeps crashing!

  Chroma is in itself a very stable application. If you experience crashes, try clearing out your QuickTime codecs (remove unused ones, upgrade to latest etc), as poorly written codecs are frequently the cause of application crashes. Some codecs also clash with others; install only what you need.

User interface

• The movie appears squashed. How do I adjust the aspect ratio?

  Press and hold the Shift key while resizing.

• How do I adjust the aspect ratio of a fullscreen movie?

  Resize the movie by pressing the Shift key while resizing in a window before going to fullscreen.

• How do I select which screen the fullscreen is on?

  Move the window to the screen you want to go fullscreen on, then select Fullscreen from the menu (or press F).

• How do I change the size of the overlay window?

  The overlay window can be resized by dragging its lower right corner.

• I try to drag a movie from Finder to the overlay, but it doesn't work.

  The overlay window floats above everything on the screen, and you cannot drop any files ontop of it. Either double-click the file in Finder (if you have Chroma set up to be the default player), or exit overlay mode before dropping files on Chroma.

• I installed Chroma, but double-clicking movies still opens them in another player?

  You can set which kinds of movies Finder will open with Chroma in Chroma's preferences. Those file types will then always open in Chroma unless you override this on an individual file using the Finder's Get Info.

  When you uncheck a file-type, Chroma reverts it back to the previous application.

Subtitles

• How do I get subtitles on an AVI or QuickTime movie?

  Place the subtitle file next to the movie file and make sure the subtitle file has the same name as the movie (except for the file extension).

• How do I get subtitles on a DVD?

  Use the DVD menu to enable subtitles, or select the subtitle track from the Movie menu.

• The subtitle menu is disabled?

  Chroma has either failed to find the subtitle file, or failed to load it. Make sure the name is the same as the movie filename, except for the file extension.

  You can also load a specific subtitle file by selecting Add Subtitle from File from the Subtitle Track submenu.

• Text appears garbled?

  The text-encoding is set incorrectly. Unfortunately, most subtitle formats contain no information on which text encoding it was created with. Chroma contains an automatic text encoding detection function, but if it fails you will need to set the text encoding manually. Try selecting a text-encoding from the Subtitle Text Encoding submenu that corresponds to the text-encoding (language) in the subtitle file. You might need to try several before you find the correct one that produces correct text.

• I cannot select subtitle styles!

  The shadow and outline subtitle styles are not available to Mac OS X 10.2 users.

DVD playback

• Does Chroma support DVD region-free playing?

  No. Chroma uses the standard Mac OS X DVD framework for DVD playing. This means Chroma is limited by the capabilities of the DVD framework, i.e. you are restricted to playing movies from your DVD region only. However, if your DVD drive has been made region-free, Chroma will play any region DVDs.

• I have a DVD drive in my computer but I cannot select "Open DVD from Disc"?

  If you are running Mac OS X 10.2, you will not be able to play DVD since Mac OS X 10.2 does not contain the necessary framework for DVD playing. On Mac OS X 10.2 only the Apple DVD Player can play DVDs.

• I have 10.3 but Chroma doesn't recognize my DVD player?

  Since Chroma uses the Mac OS X DVD-playing framework, the capabilities for playing DVDs are the same as for the Apple DVD Player application. If you have e.g an external DVD drive which Apple DVD Player fails to recognize, Chroma will too.

• How do I return to the movie from the DVD menu?

  Select Return to Movie from the menu, or press ` (grave accent, usually below Esc). Don't select Play Movie from the DVD menu as this will restart the movie from the beginning.