[MPlayer-users] A 1:1 rendition, please

[Jan Knutar]

> Hmmm. Recently I switched from 17" CRT 1024x768 to 19" 1280x1024
> monitor, hence my monitor aspect changed from 1.33 to 1.25.

Your monitor aspect remained the same, surely? Measure the physical 
dimensions of the viewable area on your monitor, the proportion between 
horizontal and vertical is still 4:3, right?

Old MPlayer assuming 4:3 monitor would've handled it fine, new mplayer 
assuming square pixels wouldn't...

> Mplayer 
> handled this change without any problems: when playing 4:3 movies I
> only get black stripes on the top and bottom of the screen, as it
> should be. Neither I see any distortions, nor I had to change
> anything in my mplayer configuration file.

I've never heard of a CRT monitor with 1.25 aspect, it's most likely 
4:3, so MPlayer is actually not doing the right thing for you. When 
playing a 4:3 movie on your 4:3 monitor, there should be no black bars. 
-monitoraspect 4:3 would likely fix this.

>
> Trying to answer to the original question, wouldn't -aspect option be
> sufficient here?
>
> mplayer -aspect 16:10 the_file.avi

Not exactly.

They're slightly different:

-aspect 16:10 "The movie should be presented in the aspect 16:10"

That is, if everything else is setup correctly, when you measure (with a 
tape measure or ruler or similar) the movie on your monitor, the movie 
window will have an aspect of 16:10. Specifying -aspect manually is 
only needed if the movie lacks or has incorrect aspect information.

-monitoraspect 16:10 "My monitor's aspect is 16:10"

That is, the viewable area on your monitor has the proportions 16:10. 
Most widescreen LCD are like this.

-monitorpixelaspect 1 "My monitor has square pixels"

If you'd have a strong magnifying glass and measured the size of a 
single pixel, its width would be equal to its height.