This is something I’ve been wanting for quite a while, display mode settings are available on the windows HTPC version of the plex application but overall it’s a much worse user experience than the standard desktop application for normal use.
It is a glaring oversight in the player’s feature set, in addition to or in place of choosing specific aspect ratios as you suggest I’d love to have a simple “Zoom/Fit/Stretch” set of options, where zoom will maintain aspect ratio and zoom until all borders meet the video, fit will maintain aspect ratio and enlarge until two or all of the video edges meet the borders, and stretch which ignores aspect ratio and resizes so that all edges of the video align with the borders.
I was trying to find this feature last night while playing a movie that was clearly shot in 2.35:1, but was encoded in 16:9. So I end up with this huge black void around the entire movie, wasting a significant portion of my ultra wide monitor.
Most movies are 2.35:1 ratio, Most TVs nowadays are 1.85:1 (16:9) ratio, so there are black bars on the top and bottom.
Where previously, when we played 4:3 media on 16:9 TVs, the black bars were on the side and there were options on the tv to “zoom” or “fit to screen”
The issue is that the Plex media app blocks the TV from using that feature. Some people has commented to me that they cant get rid of the black bars on the top/bottom and its noticable on a 75" Screen.
Would Plex be able to allow the TVs to use the function or add that option in the Plex media app for users to “fit to screen” or a manual zoom function so they can have less or none of the black bars?
Thanks
Yes me too! Having a 21:9 Monitor using the windows plex app.
Much much content is in 1,85:1 or 2,35:1 format but with black bars in 16:9 in the file.
Cropping those black bars to get it full screen on my widescreen monitor would be great, and is a key feature many players do support. On TV its fine as it is 16:9.
Such feature would be great! (Sorry, I don’t want to use a custom picture profile because my username is my real name.)
I have old DVDs of letterboxed 16:9 TV Shows which would benefit from some kind of smart cropping (doesn’t have to be perfect). In fact, the displayed picture becomes “windowboxed”, which is even worse. Before using Plex, I would use VLC’s cropping feature (on PC).
Being able to crop my unprocessed/remuxed backups (made with MakeMKV) would be great! I already appreciate the deinterlacing; auto-cropping (or manual) on Android, PS4, Windows, Chromecast, even DLNA would be awesome! Please!
I love Plex so far! I don’t regret buying a pass years ago.
What is this now 10 years old? If people are still waiting around for Plex, they should consider just running the problem show through Handbrake and make the crop there. Plus you can get a bonus of saving extra space storage space. I can generally get a 3:1 compression ratio with no visible artifacts if the film isn’t too grainy.
As of v7.1 ffmpeg does support MKV’s crop tag. As soon as Plex Transcoder is updated to use v7.1 it should work OOTB. Of course there’s currently no way to force a transcode on specific files but you’re free to disable Direct Play and Direct Stream globally.
As for client support, which would be preferred, knowing Plex, it’s not gonna happen. You gotta help yourself (keep your original files around and create cropped transcodes for Plex).
Before using Plex, I would use VLC’s cropping feature (on PC).
