The VideoLAN Forums

When I set a video to wallpaper mode via the GUI (right-click->Set as Wallpaper), I always automatically get the same video appearance as in non-wallpapered mode... The video is automatically resized to fill as much of the desktop area as possible and if the aspect ratio is different from that of the desktop area, then the video is centered on the desktop with black bars added on both sides of the video.

Now, when I start the same video in wallpaper mode via the command-line interface using this command:
...VLC doesn't resize the video to fill the entire desktop area but it simply puts it at the upper left corner of the desktop in its original video size, leaving the rest of the original desktop area visible and usable. OTOH, if the original video size happens to be greater than the desktop area, then VLC does seem to resize the video to make it fit - but again positioning the resulting video size on the upper left corner of the desktop area and leaving some desktop area visible and usable to the right by not centering the video nor adding black bars to compensate for the difference in aspect ratio.

So, how can I make the command-line wallpaper mode behave like the GUI wallpaper mode? I've tried adding additional arguments to the above command-line call such as "--width=1366 --height=768" or "--width 1366 --height 768" but the resulting video on the desktop area is unaffected and always remains the same.

My desktop area with no video wallpaper:


My desktop area with video wallpaper set via the GUI (as I want it to look):


My desktop area with video wallpaper set via the command-line (as I do not want it to look):

It's a known bug, I think. Not sure anyone filed it on the bugtracker, though.

Just thought I'd mention that autostarting VLC wallpapers now works great with VLC version 2.2.1.
To avoid having to constantly deal with configuring every single video (and potential issues or problems that go along with that), I've added a VLC shortcut with the above target line in the Windows Startup folder which will automatically launch whatever videos I put in my "Wallpapers" folder (in the above case, in loop mode but repeat mode works fine as well). To change video, all one has to do is to focus (i.e. click) on the VLC control bar and then use the 'n' and 'p' keys to jump to the next/previous video in the folder.

The only remaining issue or "bug" occurs if you happen to double click on the video itself, this will crop the wallpaper dimensions and one will have to exit the wallpaper mode in order to fix it. But this is a really minor bug (if you can call it that), the main thing is that wallpaper mode now works as it should (at least, as long as you don't fiddle with the settings too much).