More aspect-ratio options: Step Zoom, Pan and Scan

[Javier99]

it would be great if xmbc would suport different levels of zoom.

now, there is only a degree of zoom just for fiting the movie top-down.

it would be very usufeull to have progresive levels of zoom (10%, 25%, 33%, 50%, ...) in order to slightly zoom movies with very big ar, but not as much as fit top-down.

i think this option is very easy to implement, because zoom is implemented already, so it is only a question of changing the zoom constant.

thank's for developing the xbmc !!!

[Hullebulle]

what do you mean by differnt level? there are already 9 levels of zoom (ir: button 1-9, controler: multiple press of x and y). ???

[Javier99]

it means a stepped zoom.

sorry, but buttons 1..9 in the ir do not work.

[Javier99]

i am referring to a stepped zoom when playing movies.

the 0..9 remote keys only works for viewing pictures.

i think stepped zoom is a very interesting feature, present in most dvd players and it is needed in xbmc.

[Hullebulle]

oh you never said that you are talking about videoplayback. http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/forums/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

[Morien]

hello,

i have a feature request that i think would benefit many people with poorly encoded videos (such as myself).
aspect ratio switching
i understand a version of this feature is already implemented into xbmp, however, could this feature be made to react to the tv's aspect ratio and the calibrated screen dimensions?

how i mean, is say for instance i have my screen calibrated to 4:3 pal, however only 640x550 (of the possible 720x576) is calibrated to display the video image. i would then like an option to select to make the video image stretch to fill out that 640x550 (4:3 or 1.33:1) or on second press to stretch it to 640x346 (16:9 letterboxed or 1.85:1) or on third to strech it to 640x272 (2.35:1 letterboxed), etc. (2.76:1 and so on, changable both ways such as with changing a skin). this would allow me to easily display all my favourite poorly encoded titles in their proper aspect ratio.

zoom player (http://www.inmatrix.com/) does this when compensating for overscan on televisions and it works very well if you need to see how it works.


thankyou very much, i hope someone can do this.
morien

[Vortex]

videos currently have 3 modes, normal, stretch and zoom.

i think a 1/2 zoom option would be great.

reason:

when watching movies, ie divx which is really wide like 2.35:1, normal looks too small on a regular tv and zoomed looks like you are losing too much picture.

to get most picture and biggest size, i think halving the black bars by implementing a half zoom would be great.

even better, a user defined zoom, like in dvdx.

[Morien]

i was thinking the same thing a while back. ofcourse it wouldn't benefit those using a remote, however how bout making the right joystick zoom like dvd-x 2?

morien

[Morien]

just to add some more as i haven't really seen much interest in this, (i'm assuming it's because noone can be bothered thinking how to implement it, or it sounds too hard to do) but here's how it would work (if the same way is used as zoom player).

in the case of the box set to pal 4:3, the max res is 720x576. then in my case i have my screen calibrated to display 654x510. so whenever i change the res to something other than source res, it would stretch the image to fit 654 pixels wide...
then, if i select 4:3, it would stretch it verticly to 100% of the screen (510 pixels).
if i select 16:9, it would stretch it to 72.16% of the screen (368 pixels (rounded)).
if i select 2.35:1, it would stretch to 54.5% of the screen (278 pixels (rounded)).
and so on.

in the case of the box being set to 16:9, the same rules would apply, however it would stretch the image to the full configured image height to begin with and the percentages would apply to the image width.

i hope this gets implemented (accessible from the video tab in the new osd perhaps) and is not difficult to actually code.

thankyou
morien

[Morien]

hello,

would it be possible to implement a stepped zoom for videos?
i like how the current zoom implementation works, but as that zooms it to be 4:3, that implementation imo would be better called pan & scan (even tho it doesn't scan, perhaps the left joystick could be made to do that). and a stepped zoom implementation would be great for zoom. (1x (normal), 2x, 3x, etc)

just for some consideration
thanks
morien

[DayWalker]

hey,

i don't know if there are people that will understand what i'll mean... my english isn't that well. but i'll try anyway :d .

when your watching in xbmc an xvid, divx rip encoded in 2.35:1 (ex. 640*272, 576*240,...) on a 4:3 tv-set, you obviously want to increase the size of the frame. when you use "zoom" it fills the entire screen, but then on most of the rips the images is in a very (very) bad quality and isn't very enjoyable to watch...
so when i was using xbmp there was something called "clipping'. i always clipped away the sides 'til i came at the size of a 16:9 rip.

so my suggestion is to implement something like clipping or something else like many mediaplayers have: "pan and scan". many people (me the most http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/forums/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif ) would probably like this feature .

greetzzzz
daywalker

[jmarshall]

this can be done with a graduated zoom feature. instead of zooming to fill the height, we could zoom to fill say 3/4 of the height or something. this has been suggested many times.

not sure the advantage of being able to move the video image left and right, though. how much would this really be used?

[tamper]

a 4:3 tv-set, you obviously want to increase the size of the frame

not sure about the 'obvious' bit - i prefer to see the whole frame as intended.

however, i do agree that some more work on resizing would be handy. at the risk of another 'why can't xbmc be more like dvdx2?' post, the free zoom feature of dvdx2 is very good, and could be a useful model.

personally, i'd like to see an anamorphic correction mode (which there doesn't seem to be currently) so we can make anamorphic dvd rips which will display fine on 4:3 and 16:9 sets (the way dvds do natively). this could do a lot to enhance picture quality.

[DayWalker]

ok thx i hope something like this gets added soon... it's for me the only advantage that xbmp has over xbmc. (ttf subtitle support would be nice to http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/forums/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif )

greetzzzz

[jmarshall]

tamper:

anamorphic correction has been in xbmc since november of last year (or perhaps earlier!).

xbmc handles the aspect ratio flag of any media that support it. this includes mpeg1/2 and mpeg4 (xvid seems to be the only codec that actually supports the flag, though).

i suggest using either xvid with the flag set, or your codec of choice inside a .mkv container (which also has the aspect ratio flag).

we do not however "correct" videos which don't have the ar flag - this goes for all .avi's (unless they're xvid and have the flag). it is the job of the encoder, not the player.

note that you can always use the pixel ratio calibration option (settings->screen->calibration) to alter it anyway.

cheers,
jonathan

[tamper]

thanks for the tip jmarshall!

i'd blithely assumed that because it wasn't included among the 'back button' resize options (zoom, stretch, and the other one) then it wasn't there. it hadn't occured to me that an ar flag could be set in the codec itself.

[dave_gahan]

i'd love to see this feature:
you know the way when you press the start button, you can have the given ratio of the film, press it again, you can stretch it to full screen and press it once more and you can zoom so it's full screen.

i think the zoom feature is excellent, but i'm wondering if you could make this configurable? as in, instead of zooming in 100% so the edges of the horizontal borders are touching off your television screen. when a film is shown on television, it's always standard to leave about 3cm of black border before they zoom in. that way the image is fullscreen, but the sides haven't been cropped as much. i'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement this feature, but i'd love to see it added sometime soon.

cheers
- dave

p.s. i think it would be great to see more customisation of subtitles. i.e. being able to increase the shadow.

[Jarre]

would it be possible to add more steps to video zoom mode, like steps from 25%, like alot of dvd players also have, so some movies have a very bad picture quality when zoomed to full screen, and are to small for desent watching. another possibility is the same zoom future as dvdx is using, that would be more than perfect anywayz

[sho]

i think the ability to vertical stretch/shrink the image while in osd would be very useful for all those letterbox ntsc movies.
the up/down directional arrows could be mapped to do that while in the osd for instance.

[emp3r0r]

bump

i'd like to see it work just like media player classic where you use the num pad to stretch... it works like this:

5 - reset
9 - zoom in
1 - zoom out
6 - increase width
4 - decrease width
8 - increase height
2 - decrease height

the layout makes it very very easy to use

[ *1 *] * [ *2 *] * [ *3 *]
zoom- * height-

[ *4 *] * [ *5 *] * [ *6 *]
width- * reset * *width+

[ *7 *] * [ *8 *] * [ *9 *]
* * * * * height+ zoom+

[Xarann]

well topic says all, xbmp 2.4 had both those features (wich i think are extremly usefull)

im sure im not the only one that would like these in xbmc, but i have no clue if its even possible or if its too much work or if you guys just dont want to do it

theres already a "formal" feature request on sourceforge, but its quite old, and doesnt seem to be noticed, so thats why im posting here

[nfree]

for me who have a 16:9 tv that cant shrink/stretch the pictures if using the rgb input (which has the best quality by far) this is really crucial.

i have to watch my 4:3 material stretched. i reported this in the bug forum (before i saw this thread), since i consider it a bug when you cant watch 4:3 material on a 16:9 configured system without getting it stretched out

[yngvebn]

i'd really like to see a feature where i can save presets for screen calibration and overscan. i have a 28" widescreen tv, and when watching widescreen movies i have to pan&zoom the image on my tv to make the ratio correct. this results in the loss of anything that is in the bottom part of my screen (video osd in this situation). if there was some kind of option in the video-controls where i could just click and it stretched the picture, that would be just great. :thumbsup:

[jmarshall]

it's on my todo list.

don't hold your breath, though - the list is quite long :)