It is not clear what the actual problem is. Many camera images may have a high pixel
count, but not be effectively coded. What is normally displayed on the composer window
is directly traceable to the codec output. There are a few exceptions, and using a plugin
like autoscale is one of them. The preferences can affect the scaling equations. See:
Preferences->Playback A->Scaling Equation->Popup (Nearest...Lanczos)
Normally, the scaling is nearest neighbor, since it is fastest. But if you want the buffer
to be filtered on scaling, there are a whole bunch of plugins which claim to be good at
doing just that. When you zoom in, normally the composer canvas is smaller than the
media buffer dimensions. Once the magnification makes the pixel to pixel mapping
better than unity, you see square pixels. There is no such thing as the NCIS effect that
lets you magnify one pixel into and entire licence plate. If the data is not there, it cannot
be magnified or filtered.
I did try to test this, and the results looked predictable. I have attached the results.
This is a wallpaper picture downloaded from:
I loaded it, and set the format to 1920x1080, added "Auto Scale" plugin, and setup its
scaling parameters. This plugin uses the preference scaling equations.
The attachments are:
auto zoom, nearest neighbor, still crispy little branches
zoom x 8.9, nearest neighbor, pixels are too crispy
zoom x 8.9, bicubic,bicubic, better
zoom x 8.9, linear,linear, best I think, no halos
zoom x 8.9, lanczos, pretty good, but I like linear
I do not see any macropixel artifacts, or boundary problems. If you see a problem, or
can demonstrate a problem with some media you can provide, please let us know and
I will definitely give it a look.
Thanks for your attention,
gg