Need help with aspect ratio for preview videos in default theme

[OzStick]

I'm doing a reasonably simple HS setup with just a single MAME wheel.

I have a good mixture of games, many without their own HS themes, in both vertical and horizontal. For those without their own theme I am using the following theme as the default:

Sorry for not crediting its creator but I've downloaded so much recently that i can't remember where I got everything!

Anyway, what I've found is that horizontal games display with the correct aspect, but vertical games are stretched and they don't look that great. Further compunding this is that I am running it on a widescreen monitor.

I have researched this but can't work out how to "force" it to show vertical (3:4) videos in their correct aspect ratio. Here is a copy of the THEME.XML file:

<Theme>
   <video w="462"
          h="342"
          x="334"
          y="437"
          r="0"
          below="no"
          forceaspect="both"
          time="1"
          delay="0"
          bsize="0"
          bsize2="0"
          bsize3="0"
          bcolor="0"
          bcolor2="0"
          bcolor3="0"
          bshape="round"
          type="ease"
          start="left"/>
   <artwork2 x="954" y="699" time="1" delay ="5" type="ease" start="bottom" rest="hover"/>
</Theme>

Can someone suggest what I need to add/alter so that 4:3 and 3:4 videos maintain their correct aspect using this theme?

[Awakened]

I wonder if there is a way without resizing the videos themselves. I record my own preview videos; for MAME I used its aviwrite functionality instead of an external recording program like I do for other systems. Then I made an avisynth script for MAME vertical games specifically that lanczos resizes them to 180x240. The normal one for horizontal games resizes them to 320x240. That way both types display at the correct aspect with the video width and height set to 320x240 and forceaspect set to none in my theme.

[OzStick]

I wonder if there is a way without resizing the videos themselves. I record my own preview videos; for MAME I used its aviwrite functionality instead of an external recording program like I do for other systems. Then I made an avisynth script for MAME vertical games specifically that lanczos resizes them to 180x240. The normal one for horizontal games resizes them to 320x240. That way both types display at the correct aspect with the video width and height set to 320x240 and forceaspect set to none in my theme.

I may not have explained it as well as I should have. The file \Media\MAME\Themes\default.zip that comes with HS shows both horizontal and vertical videos in their correct aspect ratio. I have replaced that with a nice looking theme (shown in my first post) that does not, so I'd like to know how to make it behave the same as the standard one.

If need be I can post some screenshots depicting exactly what's happening.

[OzStick]

I figured it out - I had extracted the theme.xml file to edit and then when I put it back into the ZIP file it was compressed, so HS was not reading the file properly. As soon as I replaced the file using no compression it came good and now shows vertical vids in their native aspect.

[TheManuel]

On 6/17/2014 at 4:54 AM, OzStick said:

 

<Theme>
   <video 
   		  forceaspect="both"
</Theme>

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

I've been wasting time changing parameters left and right to force the video from a particular theme into its frame and got nowhere until I saw this.

The whole theme syntax is poorly documented, or maybe I overlooked, but trying to modify themes has proven very cumbersome.