The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

VLC on my fire stick plays everything in full screen instead of the original format which can often make things look distorted. How can I play in the original format? Can't seem to find any mention of it in the preferences.

Hi, you mean the aspect ratio is wrong? I don't have a TV for testing it but you can try this button:

https://www.androidmediaplayers.com/201 ... droid.html

Hello,

I have the same problem. For 21: 9 videos the black bars are cut off at the top and bottom and the 21 area is compressed to 16. So the films are not viewable.




Can you help me?

thestulle

I have the exact same problem, it's quite frustrating. Strangely it seems not to affect any 4k videos I load up, but all others are affected by being stretched vertically as described by the other users.

The button suggested earlier does not help, the aspect ratio of the video does not change when cycling through the aspect ratio options, except when trying the 4:3 option, which creates black bars on the left and right, therefore stretching the video even more vertically, exacerbating the problem.

I am also using a firestick, the new 4k one just released. Any help here would be much appreciated.

I should note that this issue does not re-occur when using MX Player, so I suspect it's an issue with VLC rather than the firestick.

OK, I tested it again with the PC version of VLC. Obviously it's the crop setting that is 16: 9 and not default. Unfortunately, you can not adjust this setting, so the VLC player on the FireTV stick is unusable.

Never seen that, never heard of that issue. I opened a ticket about that.

Hi, can you upload your sample somewhere?

https://www34.zippyshare.com/v/3ItZ7bVd/file.html

Thanks.

https://www34.zippyshare.com/v/3ItZ7bVd/file.html

Thanks.

I am having this exact same issue, I am running VLC for Android v3.0.13 on a Fire TV Stick 4K. On my new LG B8 TV which is standard 4K, videos with 3840x2160 resolution play perfectly with a correctly displayed aspect ratio, but videos with 3840x1600 OR 3840x1608 resolution play distorted being stretched vertically to 2160, when they should have letter boxing in order to display with their correct aspect ratio that is lower than 2160 vertically.

The Aspect Ratio button in VLC for android toggles between these options: Best Fit> Fit Screen> Fill> 16:9> 4:3> Center - however none of them make the video display correctly with letter boxing and as an earlier poster indicated 4:3 just makes the video appear even more stretched. When playing the same file on VLC on windows 10 it plays correctly with letter boxing, the aspect ratio display issue only seems to be issue for vlc for android which is odd. And it only impacts videos that are vertically lower than 2160. All these videos files are H.265/HEVC .mkv files, most are with HDR10.

From looking at another thread I tested disabling hardware acceleration and when doing that the videos display as they should with letter boxing, but without hardware acceleration the H.265/HEVC videos are too much for the Fire Stick 4K to handle and it barely plays / just studders. So appears issue may be with the hardware acceleration implementation?

Hello,

this issue is now fixed in VLC, cf. https://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=commit;h=669505d1844188a54f2c63acaf94d58cafb9cbbf and https://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=commit;h=4e76bcfd5001db152167c6dec598d25b0e337f94

Wait for a new VLC for Android release that should come this week or next week.

Hi.

I have the same problem with the latest VLC version in a Ferguson Ariva 4K device. Can be fixed?

Regards.

Has this issue EVER been fixed??? It's now August of 2024 and it still refuses to play videos correctly even after re-encoding in many different varieties and formats. They are all 16x9 widescreen format VLC refuses to play them in anything but 4x3 which of course is squishing the video horizontally. Some originals are 1080P and some 720p. I have re-encoded them to 1280x720 1920x1080 and even 720x406! No format I tried displays properly on VLC 3.5.4!
Seriously does nobody watch videos from their home libraries with VLC on a firestick 4k???