Since I don't always want to fire up my videos in an editing program when I do some quick viewings of the shots, here's how to use VLC for viewing footage in different aspect ratios. On VLC in Windows it is easy:
- go to Preferences -> All -> Video and you'll find a field where you can enter custom aspect ratios, separated by commas. Keep in mind that VLC only wants whole numbers without decimals, so to get 2.66:1 and 3.55:1 ratios, you would type in: 266:1,355:100 On VLC in Mac OS X:
- There isn't unfortunately not anywhere to input this in the application interface, and I just spent some time figuring this out and I'm sharing the howto for you guys, since I couldn't find this information anywhere else on the net!
1) Locate the VLC preferences file: ~/Library/Preferences/org.videolan.vlc/vlcrc
Note: ~ equals your home folder for your user, e.g. /Users/myusername. The preferences file is created the first time you run VLC, like Caleb mentions further down in this forum thread. You might want to make a copy of this file before you edit it, just in case...
2) Look for the line that says (lines marked with a # character in front are comments that are ignored by VLC): # Custom aspect ratios list (string)
#custom-aspect-ratios=
After that, just add a line that says: custom-aspect-ratios=266:100,300:100,355:100
Then you will get the custom aspect ratios 266:100, 300:100 and 355:100 (2.66:1, 3:1, 3.55:1) to choose from in the VLC interface (Video -> Aspect ratio in the menu). Again, keep in mind that VLC won't accept decimals like 2.35:1 for custom aspect ratios. They must be entered like 235:100.