[cu_shane]

How does this setting work? Does it pay attention to the aspect ratio or does it blindly zoom on all videos? Does it apply a stretch just to try and eliminator the bars or does it zoom uniformly?

[Gracus]

Just try on my computer playing a 4:3 file with this setting enabled on 20%

It just stretch in width without keeping the aspect ratio

[cu_shane]

So I guess there is some intelligence involved where it identifies when and where (i.e. horizontal or vertical) there are black bars so it knows when and which way to stretch. I'm also guessing that the value the user sets (e.g. 20%) is a max -- meaning, it will only stretch as much as it needs to up to the set point so that the picture doesn't extend off the screen.

If that is actually the way this works, it's really a pretty cool feature. It would be nice if there were some documentation or confirmation. I couldn't find anything in the forums or wiki.

I'll see if I can find some good videos to test with and try a few scenarios...

[PatK]

This setting has a clouded history for a lot of users, but in essence it works pretty much as you have discovered. In the past when a video had a slightly different aspect and you had a very minor black bar top & bottom, this function would ease them out (not sure if this still works in this way). I could never get the nonlinear stretch to work, and some users had issues with the stretch when using hardware routines. Note you have to have this function enabled with some percentage of stretch (usual 10% is sufficient to give a slightly bigger screen without too much distortion).