Stretching (uniform,fill,exactfit,bestfit,none)
We are working on a project that requires us to publish screen casts that may be in a variety of resolutions (dimensions).While we have already built our own player, I am still contemplating to use a 3.party product which is well tested, supports an extension model and comes with source. This could make us save some time as our project is already loaded with a lot of heavy work in many other areas. I have spend some time looking around and found that JW player may just fit the bill - however there is one issue that nags me - please allow me to explain.
We have decided to always size the player to fill out the container (browser width=100% and Height=100%) to get a uniform look and feel. What we then want to achieve is that videos which have dimensions smaller than the player would simply be played in their original dimension (resolution) while videos which have a larger size than the size of the player would be resized to fit the player while maintaining aspect ratio.
For presentation of screens casts this is a very logical approach - if you can get what was originally recorded then great, but if the size is bigger than the player the you will get a resized version.
With respect to dynamic resizing of the video you have the following options:
stretching (uniform,fill,exactfit,none)
However for our use this does not cut it. If I set stretching(none) then the video gets cropped if the size is bigger than the player, which I guess is fair enough.
However, my request would be to offer a fifth option - say "optimal" or "bestfit" which would basically constitute an 'intelligent' resize behavior. Do nothing {stretching(none)} when the video is smaller than the player and {stretching (uniform)} when the player canvas is smaller than the size of the original video.
While this may be a small feature I believe that it would be a great asset. After all the primary function of the whole machine is what you see -;)
PS: It could be that this could be done in javascript , but from a quick look this is only possible during initialization. (Weather this observation is right or wrong I would however still think that you should consider adding this small tweak - it simply makes sense.
Best Regards,
Henrik Levring
