CUSTOM PLAYBACK RESOLUTION w/o SKEWING ASPECT RATIO

[WTWASP]

Hey y'all,

What I wanna know is how to force ALL videos, regardless of their aspect ratio (1280x720, 1280x533, 1920x1080, 1920x800, 640x480, etc), to playback within the parameters of a 1920x800 or 1920x810 resolution, WITHOUT skewing/stretching/distorting the aspect ratio of the videos.

Playing a video now, VLC will fill to its largest dimension (height versus width) 1080p height video fills the screen and it's a little "overwhelming" for me. I've taken to converting videos higher than 800p in height, to be scaled down to that (yes, that means black bars on the sides - I'm fine with that). But the conversion processes take forever, longer than it takes to just watch the movie. So I figure a playback resizing "on the fly" within the player would be the simplest solution - but I cannot find anything for that.

I considered unchecking "Fit To Window" but then 1280x720 will appear smaller than I'd like (by 80p in height), and videos smaller than that will be smaller still.

I'm looking for a universal "set it and forget it" setting, rather than toggling things on and off according to the video.

VLC has a million settings under the Tools>Preferences section, but so few of them make any sense to a layman like me. I could be looking right at the option I want but don't recognize it due to some technical terminology or a convoluted description of what it does.

I also do not want to upgrade or do anything overly invasive or disruptive to the custom setting I have now that I painstakingly had to figure out (due to the complicated layout of the settings). I just want a "hack" or a simple setting that will play all videos at a height of no larger than 800p.

Thanks in advance.

[gcoxusa]

It seems I have the same or related question as WTWASP.
I am using VLC media player 3.0.20 on Windows 11. I want my videos to playback with HD (1920 x 1080) resolution. Every time I launch a video I have to change the setting zoom Half 1:2.
How can I make that default? And yes, I think I've already tried everything.