Remember zoom mode per aspect ratio

Suggestions
1

I’d like to suggest a possible improvement for the zoom/crop behavior in Infuse.

Currently, zoom modes such as “crop to fill” are applied globally to all content. The issue is that different aspect ratios often benefit from different viewing modes.

For example, cropping works very well for widescreen content with black bars at the top and bottom, since it helps fill modern displays while usually losing very little image area.

However, 4:3 content is a very different case. A lot of 4:3 media comes from older DVD releases or legacy sources that already have lower resolution and lower overall image quality. When this type of content is cropped to fill a widescreen display, a significant portion of the image is lost, and the remaining image has to be enlarged even more, which can noticeably reduce perceived quality.

Because of this, many users may prefer to keep side bars for 4:3 content while still using crop/fill modes for widescreen formats.

One possible solution could be to remember the selected zoom mode per aspect ratio instead of using a single global setting for all videos.

For example:

  • 4:3 → Fit

  • 2.35:1 → Crop

  • 1.85:1 → Fit

This would allow each aspect ratio to keep its own preferred viewing mode automatically.

It could also be implemented as an optional setting in Preferences for users who prefer this behavior, while keeping the current global behavior as the default.

I think this would make fullscreen viewing much more practical and convenient, especially for users with mixed libraries containing both older 4:3 content and modern widescreen releases.

Thanks for the great app.

2

Yes that would be great. I know one limitation of this is when content has black bars to fill up a 16:9 video. In that case infuse would have to scan the video to determine the true aspect ratio. This is extra processing that ideally you would already have done before you start playback. And in the case of varying aspect ratios that could be a challenge. But it should be possible.

3

That’s how I had envisioned it for videos that no longer have black bars—just to change the behavior when you select a zoom type. But I think what you’re suggesting should be possible; there are programs using FFmpeg that can perform a very quick analysis of the video and determine which parts are black bars and what their actual aspect ratio is.