1. Pressing "I" during full screen playback will do absolutely nothing. However, pressing "i" during full screen playback will bring up a control interface.
Yes, that works. I have a habit of using capital letters in examples, even if the hotkey is lowercase. I used to use the exact key required, but I found that confused people. I'd tell them to press 'a' and they'd look at the keyboard, see 'A' on the keycap and get confused. Sounds stupid I know, but it happens.
Using 'i', the interface does pop up. However #4 still applies...
2. Using the embedded or non embedded interface does not effect the control interface. I just responded when you said you couldn't shut it off.
I was only trying because erbsen said it would make the interface window smaller. However unchecking that option causes VLC to be even more unreliable than it already is. No wonder the default configuration won't let you uncheck it.
3. If you have check the box marked "interface showing control interface" and saved your preferences. When you move the cursor to the top of the screen the controls will pop up. Clicking anywhere on the screen will make it disappear. You may need to shutdown and restart VLC, but this has worked for about 3 or 4 people in the last few weeks.
I did shut down and restart VLC, but the interface never appeared for me. I just tried it again after resetting the prefs and now it works. But...
4. As for your large screen that pops up. It should be transparent and not gray, black, pink or purple and I have never had any one say it crashed using some (unknown) file type. So I would suggest you reset your preferences and try again.
Nope, it's a big, grey, opaque window.
I suspect that this is because I'm using Windows 98 which doesn't natively support transparent windows. In any case, when VLC is already in fullscreen mode, there's no reason for the control interface to be that large. It looks as if it is opening a copy of VLC sized to contain the original video. The larger the video resolution, the larger the control interface window.
As for it crashing with some files; That was mostly with the embed option unchecked. However, VLC pretty much crashes at the drop of a hat. Check the wrong option in the prefs and it crashes. Select the wrong options while playing a file and it crashes. Select the wrong prefs settings before playing a file and it crashes.
It's still an extremely unstable and unreliable program, at least under Windows.