TIP Force Aspect Ratio On Widescreen TV

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This article is part of the Tips & Tricks series.

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Contents 1 Introduction 2 Forcing Aspect Ratio 2.1 MPlayer 2.2 Totem (GNOME Movie Player) 2.3 VLC

[edit] Introduction

My widescreen TV is connected to my laptop with a VGA cable, so the TV is seen as a second monitor. The widescreen TV's screen resolution is 1024x768, so when I play a video it appears to be horizontaly stretched with black bars on top and bottom. This can be fixed by forcing the aspect ratio of video players.

[edit] Forcing Aspect Ratio

[edit] MPlayer

open ~/.mplayer/config

aspect=4:3

Another method for MPLayer would be to tell mplayer what the aspect ratio of the actual screen is:

open ~/.mplayer/config

 monitoraspect=16:9

Added bonus: if the video-file is in 4:3, it won't be stretched, but it will have black bars left/right.

[edit] Totem (GNOME Movie Player)

open gconf-editor, the GNOME configuration editor
go to /system/gstreamer/xx/default/
set videosink to

xvimagesink pixel-aspect-ratio=4/3

[edit] VLC

go to Settings > Preferences > Video
scroll down to "source aspect ratio" and type 4:3 in the box,