The VideoLAN Forums

When I go fullscreen when playing DVDs I get the top and bottom black borders, and it seems to stretch the video from left to right. What setting am I missing to make it display on the whole screen? The aspect ratio should be the same? I've searched the forum and can't seem to find a solution. I'm running Windows 7 RC and a Geforce 7300 GS. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If you've got black borders in fullscreen mode, the likelihood is that the aspect-ratio of the source (sar) is different from the aspect ratio of your screen.

If for some reasons, vlc failed to detect the right sar, the aspect-ratio parameter (or 'a' hotkey) will allow you to force a new one.

Or, you can ask for cropping ('c' hotkey), that will adapt to your screen (but the picture is truncated)

Erwan10

Erwan, thanks for your response. I'm not sure what the aspect ratio of the sar is, but its a plan ol' DVD: 720 x 480. If my 4th grade math is right, isn't that 3:2? Anyway, I can hit 'a' and 'c' until I'm blue in the face and I can't get the black bars to go away after cycling through each mode. My screen resolution is 1920x1080, or 16:9, so I can see that there is a difference between the aspect ratios. Why doesn't VLC have a 3:2 aspect ratio? Was there ever a tv produced that could show a widescreen DVD without lines, natively? Is everybody on this earth watching DVD's with lines and just living with it? Maybe I'm missing the point?

P.S. Is there any way to stretch the picture a bit so as to fill up more of the black space?

Thanks!

720x480 is the resolution for standard TV in the US. But, your math is wrong, because those are not square pixels, and it is meant to be stretched to 4:3, so that the initial aspect ratio is preserved.

Usually, such a resolution will be seen full screen without black bars only on 4:3 screen. On 16:9, you are bound to have black bars.

If you want to remove them, you can crop the video. By setting the crop parameter to 16:9, vlc will truncate your video so that it fills up your 16:9 screen without black bars. ( 'c' hotkey set to 16:9)

The aspect ratio parameter ('a' hotkey) MUST not be used (value must be predefined), except if you want to make characters thinner or bigger for fun ! or if vlc happens to be mistaken in dealing with aspect ratio (which is not so often !).

Hope that helps

Erwan10

Let me guess, you got a Nvidia card with 2nd monitor output?

This topic should give the brute solution i found: feed the TV/second monitor with 16:9 vlc video output.
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=56578#p188777
Be shure you configure:
videocard correctly. (fullscreendevice: disabled)
VLC correctly. (Integrate video in interface: disabled & videocropping 16:9)