Player that can go "full screen" while movie is in original size?

[kongle]

Heya,

I'm a Linux newbie, I've only tried Totem and VLC for playing movies. Both seem to lack one function which I would highly appreciate making use of. You see, I am not satisfied with my viewing options: When I display the movie in question in its original size, there are all the distracting colours of applications in the background. When I display the movie in full screen, it looks pretty ugly (makes sense if I am watching highly compressed clips in fullscreen on a 1920x1200 screen). Also, I am sitting up close to the screen, so the original size would be sufficient.

Basically, what I would really, really like, is the possibility to display any movie in its original size (or maybe double), while the player would cover the remaining areas of the screen in black (like during full screen, when the film has another aspect ratio than the screen).

Do you understand? When I think about it, I actually cannot ever remember having used such a function before (I was using Windows all my life), but then I only just recently started watching movies on my computer. I suppose it exists?

Thanks a lot for any help. :)

[Dirty Ole]

Heya,

I'm a Linux newbie, I've only tried Totem and VLC for playing movies. Both seem to lack one function which I would highly appreciate making use of. You see, I am not satisfied with my viewing options: When I display the movie in question in its original size, there are all the distracting colours of applications in the background. When I display the movie in full screen, it looks pretty ugly (makes sense if I am watching highly compressed clips in fullscreen on a 1920x1200 screen). Also, I am sitting up close to the screen, so the original size would be sufficient.

Basically, what I would really, really like, is the possibility to display any movie in its original size (or maybe double), while the player would cover the remaining areas of the screen in black (like during full screen, when the film has another aspect ratio than the screen).

Do you understand? When I think about it, I actually cannot ever remember having used such a function before (I was using Windows all my life), but then I only just recently started watching movies on my computer. I suppose it exists?

Thanks a lot for any help. :)

Install all the necessary codecs and then install totem-xine from synaptic.

You can zoom into /out of videos as they play.

[Rhubarb]

This also works with gxine aswell.

[n3tfury]

i'm not on a box with VLC at the moment, but i'm SURE there are display options for this...

[kongle]

Thanks guys. I figured out how to zoom in and out in Totem by trying various button combinations. Amazing. Still no progress in VLC though (OK, admittedly I haven't been trying too much).

While I don't know much about how image/video resizing of raster graphics works, I always supposed things would always get a little "weird" when you resized to, let's say, 115%, 90% or whatever. Is not this true? Like, if I want the "best" quality, it would be preferable to screen everything in 100%? In that case, doing some "zooming" in Totem is not the ideal solution. Is it possible to show my films in 100% exactly, in fullscreen mode?

(Maybe this does not matter after all. I don't know.)

Thanks again. :)