The VideoLAN Forums

Good lord, this request has been made for YEARS now.
A screen dimmer would be really nice. HULU does it, YOUTUBE was doing it (not sure why they stopped..), DIVX player has it (or had it), Picasa photo viewer does it, etc....

Is it so hard to implement?

Most of us are using monitors that are at least 17"+, if not very likely 21"+ nowadays.

Most movie files and DVDs are running at a resolution of lower than 480p. Fullscreened, while sitting at a computer desk (close up to the screen), is way too blurry and fuzzy. Windowed at a smaller/original size looks bad/cluttered/distracting, with all the icons all over the place in the background.

How about a nice simple function that does a fullscreen dim (a controllable degree of tint/opacity would be nice, but just plain black would be fine) of everything outside of the video itself (regardless of video size). It really seems like that kind of program would be ultra simple to put into the next VLC release...

PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!

If you press o, VLC will show video on 1:1 pixel mapping and space left over is kept as black .

Nice, but 1:1 is almost always too small. So that's really not addressing the need (and the potential for coolness).

How about throwing in a 1:1.25 and a 1:1.5 and a 1:2 option! That'd work.

(Thanks, though - good to know.)

There are different default zoom factors you can use (z key) and you can also set custom one.

The z key doesn't change the zoom when it's in the ('o' - key) 'screen dimmer' mode.

How do I set a custom zoom for the 'screen dimmer' mode? Or is it 1:1 pixels no matter what...

alt+o and alt+shift+o

F*** YEAH!!!

Thank you!

That is a fantastic feature - why isn't there some indication that IT EXISTS, somewhere in the menus??? I've been wanting that for a long time, and play with alot of the VLC settings, and yet never stumbled upon it. Seems too 'hidden'!

Well, well well, I don't know