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[metac]

Hi everyone, first post (be nice ) but I've been a user since early MC17, I've just upgraded to MC19.

I'm lucky enough to have a cinemascope/widescreen projector (powered zoom) and screen setup. That allows me to remove the dreaded black bars from scope films.

I've created a custom field that I populate with the movies aspect ratio info (e.g. cinemascope/widescreen/academy). I then run the film briefly to shift up subtitles (where applicable) into the video picture so they are readable when the black bars are zoomed out of the screen. I've also created a theaterview skin that is scope-safe so if i return from a movie whilst in scope mode i can still navigate properly.

The one thing missing is the video seekbar cannot be shifted upwards. Either a global or per video setting would be fine by me.

Cheers

P.s. Plus 1 from me regarding the changes from 17 to 19 regarding unifying/restoring the title/video/audio info to the seekbar as I'm remote control only.

[Matt]

Welcome.

This topic comes up every once and a while.  It's tricky.

As an example, you've had to make a special Theater View skin to support what you're doing.

I always wish there were a way to do it at the graphics driver level so that the resolution presented to the program would always be the entire program.  This way, the program doesn't need to understand that there are special "dead areas" on the screen.

If we were to try to support these dead areas with Display View and Theater View, how would we specify them?  I mean, when does the program switch to them other than with some manual user switch?  And if we went that route, how would you configure the dead areas?

[metac]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the reply. Although i agree with your thoughts regarding the smoothest method i don't think many users in my situation would be at all bothered by a manual switch for a number of reasons.

1. Projectors use native 16:9 panels, for zoom to 21:9 they have to press a button on the projector's remote to switch. Can be even more challenging for users of anamorphic lens.
2. Most users have to physically get up (i know!) and remove the widescreen aspect panels from their screens. Powered aspect ratio screens are uber-expensive.
3. BRs/DVDs will always be native 16:9 resolution, no 'dead' areas which leads to
    3.1. Subtitles are authored all over the place, sometimes in the picture, sometimes in the dead area, so this will always be a manually intervention. Either at tagging stage or during the film.

So my request for shifting the seekbar, although not extremely elegant, is much better than it being projected onto black velvet

Also, if a global setting is easier to implement I for one can live with the seekbar being higher up the screen for normal 16:9 viewing.

Hopefully, this is something that is a quick win. Maybe review if you are thinking of changes for TheaterView as creating a scope-friendly skin was a challenge and I'm a UI developer by trade. I've attached sample screenshot of my skin to get you inspired 

Cheers

[Matt]

I wonder how a new zone-specific option like:
Options > Tree & View > Full Screen > Visible area

It would contain:
Entire screen (default)
2.33 (middle)
2.33 (top)
2.33 (bottom)
etc.
Custom... (where you could enter a rectangle like 0.0, 0.1, 1.0, 0.9)

Display View and Theater View would fill the entire screen with black, but place the actual user interface inside the 'Visible area' rectangle.

Would that accomplish the goal?  Any advice for improvement?

[JeTie]

+1 for the zone-specific "Visible area", that would be really nice.

I have also a projector with motor (memory) zoom and usally use a remote for control. This option would really be a most elegant way when switching between 16:9 & 21:9.
It should not have any impact on the fullscreen view when actually playing movies.

To gain a degree of freedom, aspect ratio (2.33, 2.4, ...) and position (middle, top, bottom) should maybe be placed as separate selectable predefined options. In consequence the custom option could also be for the aspect value only.
Thinking of user friendlyness: why not just 2 sliders for aspect ratio [1.33 ... 2.4 ... ?] and positioning [top...middle....bottom]

[metac]

That's a very interesting idea. Apologies if anything below is teaching you to suck eggs...

"etc" in your comment, would include 2.35/2.37/2.40 i assume, 2.37 is a very common projector screen ratio as a compromise to cope with the varying film ratios.

A bit more background for clarity. My screen has fixed masking as demonstrated by the lady from the screen company here http://www.seymourav.com/masking.asp. This means 95% of the time i have the panels in place and I'm just a regular widescreen viewer. When i remove the panels, my screen is 2.37 native.

I understand that ZoneSwitch (never used) could look at the aspect ratio field of a movie to auto switch (e.g. 16:9, 2.37 (manually determined for my case)). I believe there is no automatic revert and I would always need to manually restore to widescreen. That's OK i guess in the case where i was planning to watch the LOTR extended trilogy back-to-back .

Could or would the user interface scale inside the visible area? e.g. text/images/seekbar etc would shrink inside visible area, zooming would then "restore" the physical size on screen. If so, it would need to dynamically adjust the "list" items, "file info" etc to avoid overspill. Ambitious?

Video playback OSD elements (e.g. subtitles, seekbar, etc) would need to be automatically shifted to be within the user interface. No more (or rarely) having to manually shift the subtitles!

Could video playback remain fullscreen but automatically crop to visible area? Reason, there are some films like "The Dark Knight" that have variable aspect ratios (daft idea), I'd like to see the IMAX fullscreen parts get cropped instead of spilling over. Nice to have.

Would it be possible to get the MadVR top left info panel inside the user interface? One for Madshi I'm guessing and very much a nice to have.

Cheers,
Mark

[mojave]

There have been lots of requests for the OSD to be within the image area and I needed it again this weekend. I wonder if it could be a similar setting to "Crop Black Bars" where we specify the aspect ratio of the movie. It would be even easier if it used the Aspect Ratio tag of the movie and that tag had the actual aspect ratio of the video area.

I've tried to think how to do it with zones. You can't use multiple zones for this situation, though, since you can only have one 1080p resolution setup on the graphics card (as far as I can tell). You really need two 1080p resolutions with one being 1920x1080 and the other 1920x800 (for 2.40:1 movies) but sent to the projector as a 1080p resolution.