How to Zoom in and out of a Video in VLC Player

June 15, 2024 | by Arround The Web | No comments

How to Zoom in and out of a Video in VLC Player

Did you know that VLC can zoom into parts of a video? Yes, zooming into parts of a video can be helpful if you want to look at something closely.

Let's take a look at some tricks for effectively zooming into any part of a video playing in the VLC media player.

Method 1: Use the interactive zoom feature

VLC media player has an interactive zooming feature. But you should use it only when needed.

First, start playing a video in VLC. Now, look for the “Show extended settings” button on the bottom control bar.

How to Zoom in and out of a Video in VLC Player — Show extended settings

You can also get to this setting by going to Tools ⇾ Effects and Filters, or by pressing CTRL + E.

In the new window, go to the Video Effects tab and then select the Geometry sub-tab. Here, you will find a checkbox to enable Interactive Zoom. Enable it and click the Close button.

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If you use the Save button, the changes will persist for all future sessions until you turn it off and save.

You will now see a rectangle and an adjacent slider on your video. Also, your video appears to be zoomed in a bit.

The zoom adjust slider is tiny, so you may need to look closely for it. To zoom around the video, just drag the rectangle inside the small area.

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Zoom around the video using the zoom rectangle

If you zoom more into an area, drag the slider up. The size of the rectangle is reduced, and you can fine-control the zoom area.

Method 2: Zoom in window mode

While you are watching videos in windowed mode in VLC, you can quickly switch the resolution to:

A quarter of the original
Half of the original
Original
Double the original

To do this, select Video from the top menu (or right-click on top of a video area). Then, hover over the Zoom option to get the resolutions.

You can also use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + Z or Shift + Z to switch between the modes. Yes, VLC has plenty of useful keyboard shortcuts.

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This does not have any effect if the video is in full screen. Moreover, it won't help if what you want to zoom into a part of the video.

Wrapping Up

There are some other workaround methods, where you will get a zoom-like effect. One of them is to use the VLC video cropping feature, where you can select a particular video cropping preset, and the rest area will be cropped.

Since the interactive zoom properly covers most of the needs of a user, there seems to be less need for a workaround.

Want more VLC tips? Here is a quick tutorial on increasing and decreasing the playback speed in the VLC player.

VLC not adjusting with the system dark mode? Take a look at these simple solutions!

Enjoy using VLC player as much as I do it 😄

Source: It's FOSS