"screen shrinking" software

[c.cam108]

Just rigged a screen and projector for a show in the church on Friday, and the image is too large for the screen, even with the projector zoomed at its smallest.

 

We cannot move the projector, as it is mounted on a truss.

We cannot move the screen, as it is mounted on the wall.

We cannot get a different projector or screen as this is all we have.

 

The screen is 2m by 1.5m and the image is on the wall by around 10cm each side.

 

Is there any software for PC to shrink the VGA output by adding a black border all around?

 

The source material is a single video clip, so I could do it in Adobe Premier, but would rather do it this way, just in case we need to show anything else.

 

Thanks

 

Colin C

[David Duffy]

Can you use Screen Monkey to play it? I haven't checked recently, but maybe there's an option to set the playback window size and still have a border-less window?

[tomrbland]

Screen monkey? http://www.screenmonkey.co.uk

 

Ahh David Duffy beat me to it!

[LXbydesign]

Im not a vidiot ( no offence to the vid guys!!) so I have no idea on the software needed other than things like FC Pro etc but I suppose if time was of the essence and I was non the wiser, id use powerpoint and stick the clip on a black background slide.

 

Having done it before, it was the most quickest and simple soulution.

[c.cam108]

Thanks for the suggestions. Screen Monkey certainly looks interesting! We currently use VLC for all our media.

 

I did think of powerpoint, but the video is video is paused on still images for long periods and VLC allows easy space-bar control. My powerpoint video experiences have not been as easy!

[sleepytom]

some projectors have "digital zoom" which allows you to zoom out from the fullscreen image.

 

if your projector doesn't have this feature then it may have other image controls for resizing the image. have a good look at the menus and even read the manual and it might tell you how to do it.

 

you should at least be able to adjust the "blanking" controls which will let you mask off the area which is overshooting your screen, obviously anything which is in the edge of the image will be lost, though the 5% overshoot you have should be able to be lost without affecting anything important in the image, providing the footage has been properly prepared within safe areas.

[c.cam108]

We've had this projector for around 8 years so I know the menu system well! There's definitely no digital zoom or masking unfortunately.

[Matt Riley]

Perhaps use the crop functionality in VLC? I think there's a way to implement a custom crop if none of the supplied ones work, though probably you'll have to use the command line interface to put it in place. It appears the command is something like

"--custom-crop-ratios=1024:600"

[timsabre]

If your video card is NVidia, they provide a utility called NVKeystone which can be used to resize and warp the video output of the PC. It normally downloads with the card drivers in recent versions but you may have to ask for it to be installed.

[sleepytom]

We've had this projector for around 8 years so I know the menu system well! There's definitely no digital zoom or masking unfortunately.

out of interest, what model of projector is it?

[c.cam108]

VLC crop does the opposite.

 

I sorted it by turning off scaling - this showed the video in about 75% of the screen. I then zoomed the projector to suit.

 

The projector is an Optima. I'll get the model number at church tonight.