Screen Resolution, Orientation and Layout Sizing
Match easyCMS designs to your screens, landscape, portrait and custom sizes for LED walls, rotating the player output, and why content looks stretched, cropped or has black bars.
Stretched, cropped, letterboxed or sideways content is nearly always a mismatch between the design’s shape, the player’s output and the way the screen hangs.
In Studio: set the shape of the design
- Check the screen’s size: in My screens, open Details on the screen and read Screen size under Right now.
- Open the design in Designs.
- In the Screen choice above the preview, pick Landscape, Portrait or Custom size….
- For Custom size…, type the Width and Height in pixels (64 to 8192) and tap Use this size. Use this for LED walls.
- Save.
Most templates rearrange themselves for portrait. For two to four screens side by side or stacked, use New multi-screen design.
In the advanced editor
A layout’s resolution is fixed when you create it: 1920 × 1080 for landscape (right for most screens), 1080 × 1920 for portrait, 3840 × 2160 for 4K (read the 4K note first). A wrong shape gives black bars or cropping: rebuild the layout, do not stretch it.
Portrait screens: three things must agree
- The screen is turned on its mount.
- The player output is rotated: on Windows in the graphics driver, on commercial panels often in the TV menu. On Android it is an account setting, so ask us to change it.
- The design is portrait.
Watch out Rotating only the design squeezes it into a thin strip. Rotating both player and screen leaves you upside down.
Where possible, rotate at the screen. Some devices lose video acceleration when the output is rotated, so video stutters in portrait.
4K on Android
On Android, text, images and web content are drawn at 1080p and upscaled; only video plays at true 4K. easyCMS reports the screen as 1920 × 1080, which is correct.
Tip For a 4K panel, use a 1920 × 1080 design with 4K video files, and save storage on oversized images.
Video size
Encode each video at the shape of the space it fills: 1920 × 1080 for full screen on a landscape design, portrait for a portrait space. Rescaling on the fly causes stutter: see Videos Will Not Play or Stutter.
Overscan: edges cut off
If the edges are cut off, the TV is zooming in. In its picture settings, turn on Just Scan, Screen Fit, 1:1, Full Pixel or PC mode (some screens need the input labelled as a PC). Do not shrink your design instead.
Screens of different sizes
Screens with the same shape can share a design: a 1920 × 1080 design scales cleanly to a 4K screen. Screens with different shapes need their own design. Put each shape in its own group (Groups in My screens) and play the matching design on each group. In the advanced editor, see Scheduling Content.
Size text for the hardest case: a 32” screen read from 6 metres needs far bigger text than a 55” screen at 2 metres.
Related articles: Creating Layouts, Videos Will Not Play or Stutter, Connecting Your First Display