The VideoLAN Forums

Hey. I've been reading through the forums and I cannot seem to find a solution for my problem.

Basically, I want to be able to run a video in VCL in full screen mode but do a custom scale of the image while in full-screen. The result I am looking for is a full-screen with black background with the video centered at whatever scale I specify it to. I can do this with Cellulo http://www.cellulo.info/ using the "geometry" function. But I would rather start using VCL because it is a much more robust player that is still being actively developed. I am doing this for a projection presentation where I have no control of the projector's zoom or throw distance and therefore need to scale the image through software.

I know that VCL is supposed to be able to do this, because everyone in the forum suggests the "o/alt-o/alt-shift-o" hotkey, which as far as I understand is supposed to toggle between "scaled to screen" and "original size" while in full screen as well as hop between a few preset zoom sizes. However, when I use this hotkey, nothing happens. The On Screen Display pops up and tells me that the key is being pressed and that I am toggling either original size or scaled, but nothing actually happens. No matter what, while in full-screen mode, the picture remains scaled to fill the screen.

I have check under Prefs>All>Video>Output Modules>macosx and the "Strech video to fill window" is unchecked. I've also tried adjusting general settings under Prefs>All>Video including various combinations of the "Video Auto Scaling" checkbox, "Video Scaling Factor", and "Zoom Video". Playing with those settings has no effect on anything for me.

So... I guess my problem is that I can't get scaling to work at all. Am I missing something? It's as if there is something overriding the scale function.

I am running OSX Snow Leopard on a new Core i7 17" Macbook Pro (though I had the same behaviour on my old '08 Macbook a few months ago prior to upgrading). I have the latest version of VCL (1.1.9 at the time of this posting, with the same behaviour in ver 1.1.7 on my old macbook and again in 1.1.8 ) and have tried resetting my prefs and deleting and reinstalling VCL (including the buried pref file).

I appreciate any ideas.

Thanks.

That would be very cool (sitting in front of a 30" display). I think DIVX Player handles things that way. But they use mousewheel to adjust zoom, which is STUPID!

While this is technically possible in current releases of VLC, it is very hard to configure. I'm in the process of adding consumer-useable controls for this to VLC. It will be part of the next major version 1.2 to be released later this year.

So... this just doesn't work in OSX yet? Is that the short answer? Is anyone able to achieve any sort of full-screen scaling in OSX?

Except for automatically scaling through the "o" key, that's correct, yes.

Ok, the custom scale not working makes sense, thanks for clarifying that for me. That is a function I will look forward to in the next build.

However, part of my problem is that "automatic scaling through the 'o' key" does not work. Pressing the "o" key will display an on-screen message saying either "original size" or "scaled to screen" but nothing actually happens.

Your response leads me to believe that in the current build for OSX, I cannot do a custom scale but CAN do an automatic scale with the "o" key. However, that is not the case for me. I cannot do scaling at all.

My concern was that there is another setting that I am unaware of that is "overriding" the ability to do any sort of scaling at all at full screen.

So... is the "o" key supposed to work in the current build of OSX? Or am I dealing with a unique situation?

Thanks again. I appreciate the insight.