The VideoLAN Forums

Hello. I'm having an extremely weird issue with VLC. I got this issue a couple months ago and I was able to fix it by reinstalling VLC, but now that isn't working.

This is going to sound confusing, but hear me out. If I start a video in VLC that is resolution A (eg 1920 x 1080) and I open another video that is resolution B (eg 1280 x 720), then I fullscreen the first video and VLC moves onto the second video without coming out of fullscreen, when I come out of fullscreen, the interface will be the size of the resolution of the first video I fullscreened. So if I fullscreen video A (1080p) and then play video B (720p) either in the playlist or I double-click on it as I have two monitors, then un-fullscreen video B, video B will be in a 1080p VLC window. This also works in the reverse. If I fullscreen video B and then move to video A, then I un-fullscreen, video A will be in a 720p VLC window. If I right click and set video aspect ratio to 1:1 it will resize itself, but VLC is supposed to do this automatically, and has been doing that automatically for years.

If you are still confused, I captured my screen showing the problem in the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdrhDrMogr4

What I have done so far:
Check and un-check various options in VLC's simple and advanced menus.
Uninstall and reinstall VLC.
Uninstall VLC and delete cache and preferences and reinstall VLC, also deleting cache and preferences.
Uninstall VLC, deleting cache and preferences --> disk cleanup on OS disk, deleting all temp files --> manually searching "This PC" for "VLC" and deleting any non-installation files --> restarting PC --> reinstalling VLC

I'm absolutely stumped. As far as I can tell, VLC should be working. It was working yesterday, and it's not working today. The same thing is what happened the last time; it just was not working one day. Can I get some help with this please? It's more annoying than you'd think, as I have various video files that differ in resolution.

I'm using Windows 8.1 x64, and it's a non-bloatware installation. If you need any more system information I'll gladly provide.

I can reproduce this issue pretty much on-demand, with the added bonus that (once you are back into the windowed interface and out of full screen) you will no longer be able to zoom using either the z hotkey or the alt-1 through alt-4 hotkeys with the default option of Video -> Always Fit Window enabled (e.g. 400p changes to 720p while fullscreen, after switching back to windowed the 720p video plays in the 400p-sized interface, the "z" hotkey will only show overlay text as it cycles through the zoom levels but do nothing else, while the default alt-1 through alt-4 hotkeys will do absolutely nothing at all). In all versions before 2.2.1 any of these commands would resize the window accordingly.

I did not have an opportunity to try any versions between 2.1.5 and current, so I can't speak to those or give any specific insight as to when this glitch began occurring. I do not use any special interfaces aside from audioscrobbler and lua http, both built-in, and I have this happening in two separate OSes (Vista Basic 32-bit and Windows 7 Professional 32-bit, both fully-patched).

While this might seem like a minor annoyance, I have rapidly learned just how much I rely on the zoom command to fix size quirks between videos (or remove the borders when switching into or out of minimal interface, or simply reduce the size of the vlc window when I am multitasking...). I scoured the vlc bug tracker and forums as well as anything else Google could turn up with no luck, but clearly I'm not the only one experiencing glitching resizing (or none at all).

Any ideas?

-snip-

The only "fix" I've found without closing/re-opening VLC is to force "zoom" to anything other than 1:1 (using the clickable dropdown menu is the only way I tested it) then back to 1:1 and it'll work again... but the second you fullscreen one video and move to another, it's back to the bug. I had to reinstall my OS (because ironically shortly after this bug happened, winlogon.exe nuked itself and I would BSOD before loading into windows) and I don't think the issue happens anymore, but as I pointed out before it could easily show up again one day without warning, so a fix is obviously needed. If it happens again I might simply go back to an older version of VLC that I know doesn't have the issue. I was somewhere around the 2.1.x number and I had skipped a large number of updates before deciding to update one day because I was getting annoyed of VLC asking me, so just like you I don't know which version number is exactly responsible.

-snip-

The only "fix" I've found without closing/re-opening VLC is to force "zoom" to anything other than 1:1 (using the clickable dropdown menu is the only way I tested it) then back to 1:1 and it'll work again... but the second you fullscreen one video and move to another, it's back to the bug.

I can't even get it to do that as a workaround. Once the second video kicks in, in any session, selected from playlist/media library/explorer.exe/UNC path/etc., the alt-# functionality is gone and the z key only shows the futile overlay text. The zoom function does work when you disable the "fit to window" option, so it obviously isn't completely broken, but the key functionality for me was the window resize as I used it on nearly every video I would play through VLC. It's maddening because nobody seems to have quite the same problem or circumstances but a lot of folks report similar and potentially-related issues.

I am currently using VLC for Windows 8.1 (or whatever the software is named at this point) on my only 8.x box, mostly because it's a touchscreen convertible and I make more use of the tablet mode than laptop mode -- the "desktop" or plain VLC is definitely not ready for touchscreen "prime time" but the "modern" VLC is pretty half-baked itself. I have racked my brains to find a reason I should stick with 2.2.1 but, sadly, in the end I will probably end up going back to 2.1.5 around the horn.

all the preferences never open all videos to a fixed sized window neither they do do what their name let's us suppose they do; the info say the meaning of option like 0 or -1 but they don't say what if you enter another number;
whatever you do in the preferences doesn't work as you espect;
every player has features easy to be settled, to choose and to fix the window size and the video size, while VLC team Always says «it's in the preferences» but never and never and really never they spent 1 word to explain and to show in detail how, for example, to have constant height of 800 pixel for every video playing.....
obviously this is the preferences....- Sauro