Play 21:9 movies in a 16:9 TV
#1
I guess this is a feature request because I didn't find it anywhere...

When I play 21:9 movies in my 16:9 TV kodi will show the black bars  up and bottom the video to fit in the 16:9 screen.

What I see: 21:9 video with black bars up and bottom the video

Image

what I want to see: auto zoomed to fit in the 16:9 screen (not stretch)
Image
note the cuts applied to the size so it goes 16:9

I know there is some settings already but none of them does that. The manual zoom option is totally unpractical. Can it be done automatically? An option like "Auto zoom to 16:9 TV"

Thanks
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#2
Use the 'zoom' option a couple of times until you get the correct aspect ratio for your monitor/TV.
Unless ALL your videos in your library as 21:9 videos, it's not recommended to set a particular zoom for all videos via the Video OSD.
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#3
Like I wrote: "The manual zoom option is totally unpractical "
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#4
But you're losing part of the picture.
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#5
(2018-05-02, 20:26)Hitcher Wrote: But you're losing part of the picture.
 This is not a big deal. I rather watch the movie in the full area.
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#6
(2018-05-02, 19:19)Azev920 Wrote: Can it be done automatically?
The short answer to this? No, sorry.

But in the zoom settings, the actual setting named 'Zoom' does fill your 16:9 screen by cutting off the left & right of your 21:9 videos.
Saving this setting for all videos in the Video OSD window should make things more bearable for you.
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#7
(2018-05-02, 20:30)Azev920 Wrote:
(2018-05-02, 20:26)Hitcher Wrote: But you're losing part of the picture.
 This is not a big deal. I rather watch the movie in the full area. 
This makes me sad. Film makers composed the film for that aspect and you're not getting the full experience. It's almost as bad as pan and scan.
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#8
@Hitcher my degree was in tv film and theatre, we spent a few weeks on aspect ratio, 16:9 was introduced to the home market for cinema to use their respective ratios to fit as well as 4:3 to fit too.

Using zoom is like cropping the Mona Lisa and missing out parts of the image, pan and scan was introduced as people complained for the same reason as the OP.

if you have 21:9 movies and don’t want black bars, I would buy a 21:9 monitor, however this then means you would have black bars on that with any other format other than that.

Basically a 16:9 monitor is a compromise. The black bars are doing the job, and you are in fact seeing the whole image.
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Kodi: 4 Raspberry Pi 3 running Libreelec -  on the main PC - running Linux Mint
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#9
You guys make me feel like my just-bought 16:9 TV is out of standards and I am all wrong.
AND implying the official standard is 21:9, everything else is all wrong.

In fact many movies that are aired on HDTV / cable TV does that zoom/cut to fit 21:9 into the 16:9 format.

FOX released old Simpsons episodes from 4:3 format doing the zoom/crop thing so old episodes would look like their are wide screen.
Thats is different! When you make 4:3 old movies fit on a 16:9 then you are losing a lot of the image. That's really bad.
4:3 where meant for 640x480 TVs, 16:9 where meant for HD TVs.

I have a large collection of movies in the most variable of aspect ratios.

So, if I want the see the screen fulfilled then I should buy one TV for each format or use the manual zoom for each format.

Solution here (Auto zoom to fill the screen) is a simple math calculation that involves movie and screen dimentions. Pretty easy for a developer to do.
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#10
21:9 monitors are not that uncommon, and there were even 1 or 2 such TVs (one by Philips), yet they are certainly not to everyone's taste. I do have a 21:9 monitor, and for such movies it's fine, but also have plenty of 16:9 videos which results in having the infamous black bars at either side.

Yes, 16:9 TVs are still -the- standard of today for normal viewing: TV, PC,etc. Netflix uses a 18:9 aspect ration a lot with TV shows. Yet getting a 16:9 monitor or TV will make you have to compromise on what you want with a 21:9 video: either the full video with black bars (plenty of room for legible subtitles!), or a zoomed in display and losing some of the video contents. Unfortunately there are no flexible displays available to auto-adjust to a movie's aspect ratio. How cool would that be.

There is one other possibility I can think of: I have seen 21:9 movie rips where the remuxers have added black bars intentionally just to fill up a 16:9 screen. IMO, that is total stupidity. If you happen to have such videos, then zooming properly will not work. You can thank those people for messing up your video.

(2018-05-03, 15:00)Azev920 Wrote: Solution here (Auto zoom to fill the screen) is a simple math calculation that involves movie and screen dimentions.
Perhaps you haven't read the solution I gave you.
But in the zoom settings, the actual setting named 'Zoom' does fill your 16:9 screen by cutting off the left & right of your 21:9 videos.
Saving this setting for all videos in the Video OSD window should make things more bearable for you.

It's as close to an automated solution as you will get. It just takes a couple of mouse clicks or button presses one time. If that doesn't work, I'd like to know what hardware you are using to run Kodi.

(2018-05-03, 15:00)Azev920 Wrote: Pretty easy for a developer to do.
Right... If only all the things that have been asked to be added to Kodi were that easy to do.
Three overall reasons why that is not the case: lack of good developers, lack of time (real life can be a b*tch), other priorities (in no particular order).
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#11
(2018-05-03, 15:47)Klojum Wrote: Three overall reasons why that is not the case: lack of good developers, lack of time (real life can be a b*tch), other priorities (in no particular order). 
 Case closed.
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#12
Also, since all BluRays still must be 1920x1080, thusly using black pixels in the letter boxing area, unless a movie was re-encoded and had the black space cropped, Kodi would still think any untouched BluRay rip was 16:9 unless it had a way to read detect the baked in pillar boxing.
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#13
(2018-05-02, 19:19)Azev920 Wrote: I guess this is a feature request because I didn't find it anywhere...

When I play 21:9 movies in my 16:9 TV kodi will show the black bars  up and bottom the video to fit in the 16:9 screen.

What I see: 21:9 video with black bars up and bottom the video

Image

what I want to see: auto zoomed to fit in the 16:9 screen (not stretch)
Image
note the cuts applied to the size so it goes 16:9

I know there is some settings already but none of them does that. The manual zoom option is totally unpractical. Can it be done automatically? An option like "Auto zoom to 16:9 TV"

Thanks

Not sure for whom this is still an issue.

I faced this problem now after moving from Kodi 18.9 to 19.
Many of the movies which had 21:9 format are now stretched which were not before, for reasons unclear to me.

As I has nothing else to do, I checked and changed the Database Streamdetails, which has no impact on playback, so no cheating around it.
I checked the calculations of the Ratio and for many Videos I'm slightly off by a few Pixels, so if someone from KODI might be able to elaborate on how it defines the playback ratio, I have an open ear =).

Anyhow, Solution ?
After reading and trying what was mentionned here I found another option which I guess was missed!

While playing the Video go to Video Settings and adapt the "Pixel Ratio".

Oddly enough on my Windows Kodi with 21/9 Display, the same Video are stretched to 16/9 too. A Pixel Ratio of 1.40 does the trick.

On my Raspberry Kodi with 16/9 Display I changed the Pixel Ratio to 1.75.

Hope it helps, cheers.
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