I really do like Parole. It is a very promising application!

However, what I miss is a zoom function similar to what xine-ui or gxine do when you press z/Shift+z/Ctrl+z.

Why is it useful? It is very useful if the screen does not quite match the video format. Say, a 16:9 video on a 16:10 screen. Zooming looks much better than distorting the picture. Very old film material often has a border by default, for example when they are filmed in 1:1, and encoded in 4:3. Most major films are shot in a wide-screen format. On a 4:3 computer screen the picture consists of more black than actual film using letterbox. Stretching the film looks terribly ugly! Zooming into the film and doing without the very left and right part of the picture usually gives a much better result. Finally, many films are encoded using the wrong format. Especially recordings from analogue sources save the black borders of a 16:9 video as part of the film, but also DVDs do not know wide-screen, so they have to be encoded 16:9 and the rest of the picture is black -- this cannot be compensated by stretching a video at all.

I hope you agree that this would be a wonderful functionality to enhance usability of Parole a great deal. Thank you in advance for considering my suggestion.

Best wishes

Jon