Playing videos that have a custom resolution

[dbjeter 1]

I have a client using Emby with several 16:9 TV monitors with zero issues. We have installed three video walls with custom aspect ratios, and although we can 'fill' using the option in the Emby player, it's not a global, persistent setting and they want to resize the videos to properly fill the player window. Are there any allowances for custom aspects?  Im only seeing (default) 16:9 resolutions as options.

Edited August 18, 2025 by dbjeter
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[visproduction 315]

DB, I believe Emby will playback first whatever each media aspect ratio is set to.  If you want to change it in the player, that's when the extra settings are allowed.  I don't think you can force the player to always change a video aspect ratio to match 16:9, no matter what the original is.

Media can be native pixel size for .mp4 or assigned aspect ratio for media with .mkv and come other containers.  That means that media in an .mkv container can be one native pixel ratio, but can be forced to playback in .mkv players to be some other aspect ratio.  This was a technique used by wide screen DVD's inside .vob files.  Ocassionally, media in the wild might have this forced aspect ratio parameter, but often it's just a mistake someone made during copy encoding. Many encoders, unfortunately have auto settings that do this, so a lot of people make this mistake.  I don't think this forced aspect ratio parameter in .mkv is very friendly for transcoding.  It may just be ignored.   I have not tested this, because I pretty much avoid any such artificial aspect ratio settings for any media.

If you want a particular aspect ratio to playback, then you can remux any video to any new aspect ratio you want, however you loose a video generation and the quality suffers greatly.  If you force a fill screen to match 16:9 when the original video was not shot that way, you either crop top and bottom, stretch or squash left and right and the result looks incorrec and amaturish.  Many movie or sports enthusiast would find such changes to be distasteful.  I personally would never watch any content like that.  I don't know what percent of people would notice, but you are going to lose someone if you chose to force fill the screens with non 16:9 media.

 

[Luke 42077]

Hi, what aspect would you want?

[dbjeter 1]

 I think we found the solution. The original aspect of the content is 9:14 (tall, skinny), and we had the editor stretch the content to 16:9, then when it hits the processor, it scales to fill the screen in the correct aspect.

 

To answer the question,  the resolutions of the two we were having issues with were...

1920x2700 & 1440x2160