Use the Zoom in and Screen Shot shortcuts to watch videos in full-screen mode

Some youtube-like flash players lose the full-screen function when they’re embedded into websites.

However, you can use the Zoom in and Screen Shot shortcuts to achieve this. Here’s what you do:

a) Zoom in until the video becomes as large as you want, but still small enough so that you can watch the whole screen. You can achieve this with the Zoom in shortcut, which comes predetermined as option+command+’+’. If that doesn’t work, you can enable it and redefine the shortcut in System Preferences –> Keyboard and Mouse –> Keyboard shortcuts.
b) Center it by moving the mouse around. You’ll have to put the pointer right at the center of the video screen.
c) Once you’ve done that, get rid of the pointer in the middle by using the Screen Shot function. You’re going to want to use the “Copy picture of SELECTED AREA…” instead of the “Take picture of screen”.
It’s usually command+shift+4, but you might want to check it first in System Preferences.
d) The pointer will change from the regular black arrow to a target-like symbol, which means it is waiting for you to select the area you want to take a picture of. Instead of doing that, you should just move the mouse to the side, away from the screen, and not click on anything.

The result is your video on large-screen mode (it is not strictly full-screen, but it’ll be as large as it gets), and no picture will be taken since you will not actually select any area.

Once you’re done with watching the video, just Zoom out (option+command+’-’) and press Esc to recover your regular pointer.

It’s important to mention that this method will not cancel your Screen Saver or your Energy Saving mode. Therefore, make sure you disable them before applying this. If you forgot to do it and get the Screen Saver in the middle of your video, you will not be able to disable it by simply moving the mouse, you will have to press Esc first.

Technorati Tags: Flash video, Safari, Shortcuts, Zoom in