Notices

I just uploaded a new version 0.0.6-2 (also to extras-testing) that has the following changes compared to the 0.0.6-1:

• Setting to stretch video
• Cleaned up settings/folder dialog
• Search for *.m4v files

Unfortunately marquee scrolling of selected list rows and storing of resume positions is not in. I also had a look on the column size for files >999MB and actually columns gets resized to fit the content - the width is not hardcoded, so normally it should be working, but apparently in some cases it doesn't.

Please vote for the package if you think it's ready for extras - Thanks!

Could you add an option "Fit to width" to zoom a video so there's no vertical black bars? I happen to have some of the movies in 720x576, that is 5:4 aspect ratio. Otherwise the movies have black bars at 4 sides. The existing zoom option isn't practical for this as I have to tick it on/off manually at almost every movie.

Also will you implement delete and rename options for video files and sorting by folders?

A keyboard shortcut would be nice to switch the zoom/strech while the video is playing. Unfortunately this is not supported by mplayer.

I haven't planned anything like this.

But how about zooming the video until the vertical (left & right) bars are gone? The width will be 800px and it will crop the upper and lower parts. Then if I play a movie in the "normal" widescreen ratio, it plays automatically in 800px width because the video doesn't have enough height to shrink itself. Hard to explain, anyway, that's "fit to width" and I don't see why it wouldn't work. What you think

@plastik

1. kmplayer frontend app has some form of overlay gui on top of mplayer and it has a touch screen button to enable zoom/ratio changes while watching a video. Is this something that can be implemented? (and for the "touch button" to be enabled/disabled? as I sometimes do like not having any form of touch controls when playing via mplayer.)

2. Also, are you willing to change the color of the gradient background?
(or remove it altogether so it follows the main theme's bg/font color)

Well, right now SiB does pretty much everything I want it to do already.
It's now just the little things that could make SiB just a little better. =)

@megaexer, I think the problem with your movie is that it has hardcoded horizontal bars. Either SiB or mplayer would have to detect that to be able to zoom correctly.

The way the zoom in SiB works is that it starts mplayer in silent mode to retrieve the video resolution from its console output and based on the resolution it will determine the zoom/crop parameter it will then start mplayer with in regular mode.

@jakiman, I haven't used kmplayer for a while, I need to check how that works later. Probably it runs mplayer in slave mode, whereas SiB only forwards key events.

And about the background... I like it as it is now

OK... the amount of zoom is calculated by aspect ratio, not by detecting the black bars. TVs have similar things.
so, it needs a formula. Something like this?

The automatic zoom on TVs analyzes the video frames and detects the black bars. SiB on the other hand assumes that the video frames don't have black bars - usually digital movie files shouldn't have them.

Umm. so even TVs can't fit & crop 5:4 or 4:3 video without (option as well) black bars and not doing it to widescreen video. Is there another simple way, enable the existing zoom option if the aspect ratio requires it? I know the videos shouldn't have black bars but SiB would be more compatible with scaling different aspect ratios, maybe it's useful for other people as well. If there's no easy way i got to convert the movies again for N900...

Actually.. Dont know if this has been asked. I really like the SiB app, but the problem I have is that the text/fonts of the file names is coming up as very dark or black and unreadable. Going down the list gets better until it is at the bottom with it being bright.

This is an absolute annoyance as you can imagine. Is there any way to change this setting? If we have have the text to be all suitably bright (rather than the gradient at the moment, that looks kinda bad), then it would make things perfect.

Thanks..