Skins & Disable Aspect Ratio

[AEN007]

16March2010

Greetings.

VLC has its priorities straight.
VLC plays ...
but
1) VLC skins do not do VLC justice»
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=65373
No hotkeys work when VLC is skinned ... Not even Ctrl-P ...

Skins for VLC as a video player are not important (to me) because I use Full Screen on my XP laptops.
It would make VLC even more awesome if VLC could be nicely skinned (like CoolPlayer) and
then also be an audio player. Some VLC skins will scroll the song title,
but that makes VLC CPU usage spike outrageously!

2) SMPlayer frontend for MPlayer has a "Disable Aspect Ratio" option.
I don't know of anything similar with VLC.
That is not important on my two 4:3 XP laptops,
but I know of no aspect ratio that will fill up my 1280x768 screen.

I wonder if/when VLC will become a CPU hog
instead of the lean, mean multimedia machine VLC is now ...
Best regards,
AEN
Æ

[VLC_help]

1280 / 768 = is 1.6666... which is is same as 15:9

[erwan10]

For point #1, two remarks
- hotkeys have been fully functional with skins.
Actually, you have to make sure focus is on any controls but the playlist control (by clicking on the video control for instance). The playlist control redefines hotkeys for its own purpose. (Maybe something to fix about that....).
- latest skins engine (vlc11 available via nightly builds) fixes lots of bugs. You should get a far better result with a recent build than with the current release.

For point #2, disabling aspect ratio sounds weird (You can apply a 1:1 aspect ratio if that is really what you want).
Actually, two parameters can be used :
--aspect-ratio x:y
-- crop x:y
The former forces a x:y aspect-ratio on the original video (meaning the video is distorted)
The latter crops video to fit a x:y screen format (This is most often what user needs)

Erwan10

[AEN007]

20March2010

Greetings.
Thanks for the reply.
I was aware that 1280/768 was 1.6666 but did not know
that I could force that aspect ratio on VLC - which I have now done.

1280 / 768 = is 1.6666... which is is same as 15:9

I prefer a "full" full screen - "distorted" or not ...

Another problem with skinned VLC is that skinned VLC loses all TitleBar info, which I use with AHK scripts.
Ctrl-P has never worked for me with skinned VLC nor have any other of my hotkeys (e.g., zxcvb ...).
I'm interested to try the nightly build bugfix.

Thank you.
Regards,
AEN
Æ

p.s.: I wish the VLC forum would allow uploading an avatar.
I searched the web for not a few minutes to find an suitable 128x128 jpg avatar link,
but I still do not see my selected 128x128 jpg avatar link in use ...

[AEN007]

3April2010

Greetings.

Could/Would someone reply/advise regarding VLC nightlies?
There are three main directories: branch/trunk/last.
There are five files in each directory.

I use VLC "portable" (install free).
I would like to know something about the above directories/files.
If I download a .7z file, how could update only the "skin related" files?

Any helpful replies/insights appreciated.
Thank you.
Regards,
AEN
Æ

p.s.: I wish the VLC forum would allow uploading an avatar.
I searched the web for not a few minutes to find an suitable 128x128 jpg avatar link,
but I still do not see my selected 128x128 jpg avatar link in use ...

[VLC_help]

Could/Would someone reply/advise regarding VLC nightlies?
There are three main directories: branch/trunk/last.
There are five files in each directory.

Trunk is ATM 1.1.0 and branch is 1.0.x, but soon trunk will be 1.2.0 and branch 1.1.0

There are different packages, debug contain debug symbols in case you want to use debugger. .7z and .zip are packed ones (so no uninstaller) and .exe is regular installer.

If I download a .7z file, how could update only the "skin related" files?

What you want to update? The skins interface engine or skin files?

[AEN007]

4April2010

I would like to "demo" the "latest skins engine" - as per below

- latest skins engine (vlc11 available via nightly builds) fixes lots of bugs.
You should get a far better result with a recent build than with the current release. Erwan10

[erwan10]

vlc1.1 from trunk ..... but, actually not the latest one anymore, since a new bug has it crash again at termination (should be corrected by a few days)

Choose one between March15 and March30, for the best result

Erwan10

[AEN007]

19April2010

Greetings.
Thanks for the reply.
I think I'll wait for an official "stable" release ...