4:3 centred in 16:9 window

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
1

Hi OSMC people.

I am using my Vero 4K+ (actually several Vero 4K+ devices) in a small museum to display 16:9 videos on a mixture of 16:9 and 4:3 TVs. The Vero outputs as 16:9 and an external device trims the sides off the HDMI signal to create a 4:3 image.

This all works great for videos but isn’t so good when I need to use the menu from a 4:3 display as it’s pushed off the side. So… I was wondering if there was any way to convert the standard 16:9 OSMC skin so that the text / background appears as 4:3 in the centre of the 16:9 window.

I’ve downloaded and installed the “skin.osmc.4to3.zip” addon from GitHub but that assumes I’m outputting to a 4:3 display only.

I’ve tried editing the “addon.xml” file and changing the “res width=1440 […] aspect=4:3” to “res width=1920 […] aspect=4:3”, which would be perfect, and gives me a 4:3 menu in a 16:9 window - but the menu text and image are over to the left hand side so still not visible on a 4:3 screen.

Not a huge problem in the grand scheme of things, I know, but if there was something simple I could do then that would be great.

Many thanks OSMC people - and thanks for a great product. :slightly_smiling_face:

Kind regards.

From Mike.

2

Hm.

I wonder if you could abuse overscan to achieve this somewhat.
As overscan is set per refresh rate and resolution, it should be possible to configure it in a way that the video playback is not affected.

Other than that, I don’t have any grand ideas. Maybe @Chillbo has a quick and dirty suggestion.

3

Unfortunately, there’s no simple solution for this problem that I can think of :face_with_monocle: It would require putting the 4:3 skin inside a 16:9 window moving all the controls to the middle, 240 pixels from the left or right side of the window. It would be an undertaking similar to creating the scope skin, basically resulting in a 5th skin version.

Not really a path to go down considering the extremely limited use case…

4

May I suggest to use VNC to control the Vero then it doesn’t matter what display it is connected to

5

Thanks Fzinken. I use the “Yatse” remote-control app for the actual videos - it’s just when I need to make changes to the settings that the problem occurs.

6

Thank you for the reply Chillbo. That’s okay - It’s only a minor inconvenience at worst so I’ll just make sure I make any changes on a 16:9 screen and then change back to 4:3 if required. :slight_smile:

7

Thanks Sam. It’s an interesting suggestion and I might look into that to see if it’s do-able. In the meantime it’s no great hardship having to use a 16:9 display to change settings so I’ll have a fiddle in the background and see what I can come up with.

8

Yes and that is where VNC comes to your help so you can change the settings from your PC or Phone