If I have 720x480p resolution whitelisted and play a 720x480p video, what difference, if any, is their between selecting “Normal” and “Original Size” video modes? Is the purpose of the “Normal” mode to upscale lower resolution files to a higher resolution display when the display does not support (either natively or choice) the lower resolution?
Thanks for any feedback!
Just try it, but IIRC if you have Adjust refresh rate off and you play 720x480 when your GUI is 1080p, the image doesn’t fill the screen.
Hi Graham. Yes, I’ve tried them both. I’m trying to understand what they are supposed to do so I know if what I’m seeing on the screen is working as intended.
The unexpected behavior I am getting when playing a 720x480p 16x9AR file (w/ adjust refresh rate on start/stop and 720x480p whitelisted) is a zoomed in (cropped on all sides) image when selecting “original size”. Selecting “normal” corrects the picture, but to me, that would imply it is scaling the image to make it fit.
I am strongly of the opinion that none of the Kodi developers has ever actually sat down and thought about what the different Video Mode options should do if the video is 720x480 or 720x576. What they do doesn’t make sense unless the video has square pixels.
To get the aspect ratio working properly in SD, watch the video with the Video mode in the pop-up OSD set to Normal, and, in the central Settings menu, set Settings->Player->Videos->“Display 4:3 videos as” to “Use HDMI AVI signalling”.
If Kodi was a stand alone DVD player the settings options could be fairly simple. The fact is that Kodi has had a long history of running on many different types of devices connected to many different types of displays. As such some of the settings are not really going to have a valid use case with certain setups.
That ‘view mode’ setting in question is for when you are running a fixed output display and need to adjust to remove black bars or similar. Most people might do this with their TV zoom/aspect/display setting but that is not an option for people using a computer monitor.
The difference between “normal” and “original size” is overscan. If you are playing a 480p file it is highly likely that it was intended to be viewed with overscan turned on. If the picture is zooming in too much you might have overscan turned on in your TV so “normal” is zooming for overscan and your TV is also zooming for overscan. If this is the case you can set “original size” in Kodi and then go to the bottom of that settings page an “set as default”.
If Adjust refresh rate is off, and your GUI is 1080p, ‘original size’ will display a picture 640x480 in the middle of the screen.
As long as your TV doesn’t have other ideas.