Photo display issues on Apple-tv (newbie)

[teep]

Although overall this ATV version 2.0 is a neat widget, I am a tad disappointed with the photo slide-show display on the ATV. This and access to my i-tunes music are the two big reasons why I purchased it. [Movies? I am a bit tired of having helicopters crashing and bursting into flames behind my sofa ... its full back there.] The box is set to 720p as thats all my flat screen TV will do (woo - its a late jurassic model at 4 years old!)

Ill put in a seperate post on the minor problems I hit during set up - but after about a day of synching, the ATV Box (160 Gig) now has my entire music and recent photo collection on it and still only half full. Thats good. Its certainly easy to make it do things.

Photo issues:

Problem 1: the only photo folder names you can choose from the screen menu are the highest level folder names; photos from sub-folders do appear to be there, but you cant search for them, or find any label other than top in the folder hierarchy. I could rearrange all my photos to top level folders I suppose ...

Problem 2: where photos have been cropped (when would they not be?), ATV seems to 'stretch' the image to fit a conventional format - the effect can be weird for faces, (although wife likes it as it mostly makes her look slimmer).

Problem 3: there seems to be some sort of extreme contrast and sharpening algorithm applied to the images. It would be VERY nice to be able to turn this off.

All my photos have been fully cropped and adjusted and were taken with a pro 12 Mpixel Nikon using horribly expensive lenses: I really do NOT want them adjusted further in ANY way please!

I havent seen anyone else mention any of these photo issues, so it could be just the dumb way I set it up. If any expert user has any solutions, this ATV newbie would be really grateful ... thanks!

 

[zedsdead]

Although overall this ATV version 2.0 is a neat widget, I am a tad disappointed with the photo slide-show display on the ATV. This and access to my i-tunes music are the two big reasons why I purchased it. [Movies? I am a bit tired of having helicopters crashing and bursting into flames behind my sofa ... its full back there.] The box is set to 720p as thats all my flat screen TV will do (woo - its a late jurassic model at 4 years old!)

Ill put in a seperate post on the minor problems I hit during set up - but after about a day of synching, the ATV Box (160 Gig) now has my entire music and recent photo collection on it and still only half full. Thats good. Its certainly easy to make it do things.

Photo issues:

Problem 1: the only photo folder names you can choose from the screen menu are the highest level folder names; photos from sub-folders do appear to be there, but you cant search for them, or find any label other than top in the folder hierarchy. I could rearrange all my photos to top level folders I suppose ...

Problem 2: where photos have been cropped (when would they not be?), ATV seems to 'stretch' the image to fit a conventional format - the effect can be weird for faces, (although wife likes it as it mostly makes her look slimmer).

Problem 3: there seems to be some sort of extreme contrast and sharpening algorithm applied to the images. It would be VERY nice to be able to turn this off.

All my photos have been fully cropped and adjusted and were taken with a pro 12 Mpixel Nikon using horribly expensive lenses: I really do NOT want them adjusted further in ANY way please!

I havent seen anyone else mention any of these photo issues, so it could be just the dumb way I set it up. If any expert user has any solutions, this ATV newbie would be really grateful ... thanks!

(1) There is no way to display info about sub folders. One of the requests since day one, just like there is no search or way to browse photos either. This section of the Apple TV needs the biggest upgrade, and maybe we will get it now that Apple has implemented the iTunes Store which is clearly what they spent all their time doing with 2.0.

(2) Check to see if Ken Burns Effect is on...if it is, turn it off. With it off, the photos should stay in their native aspect ratio.

(3) As far as contrast I really don't have an answer...there is a setting in the regular settings menu about HDMI brightness, so that could be your problem.

 

[MikieMikie]

Whether the Ken Burns effect is on or off, Apple TV's photo display crops the top and the bottom of all images displayed through the slide show.

My best calculation was 32 pixels from top and 32 from the bottom. As a result of some extensive testing, I resized important images by adding 32 pixels of black to top & bottom of images. Trivial when batch processing using photoshop. I just made a duplicate set of those important images.

When those images are now displayed, no content is missing.

 

[zedsdead]

Whether the Ken Burns effect is on or off, Apple TV's photo display crops the top and the bottom of all images displayed through the slide show.

My best calculation was 32 pixels from top and 32 from the bottom. As a result of some extensive testing, I resized important images by adding 32 pixels of black to top & bottom of images. Trivial when batch processing using photoshop. I just made a duplicate set of those important images.

When those images are now displayed, no content is missing.

I didn't realize that...is that really a significant amount? Why would it anyway, is it because of over-scanning or something?

 

[MikieMikie]

I didn't realize that...is that really a significant amount? Why would it anyway, is it because of over-scanning or something?

Why it would do something so incredibly stupid is beyond me, and somewhere locked deep in the brain of the idiot who coded it. People have offered lame excuses having to do with overscan, and some have accused my Sammy 57" HDTV of having overscan, but, hey, it doesn't. Not to this 10% amount!

It's a signicant-enough amount when you figure it in scaling/percentages. For a 1MB image, it amounts to a vertical crop of about 6.4%.

To see how bad it is with your photos, take a photo to use as an example. It should be a closeup, portrait shot of someone. Hopefully, his/her head will be near the top or at the top of the photo in iPhoto.

Then look at it in Apple TV's Slideshow.

You'll see just how significant the pixel loss really is. Some/most people are not bothered by it. Me? I am.

 

[teep]

Thanks very much for the advice everyone! Much appreciated.

Yep: switching the Ken Burns effect off and fiddling with the HDMI setting (now set to "RGB high") does improve matters.

Nevertheless, there is STILL a degree of unwanted sharpening and contrast applied to the images, but we can live with it for now.

Its a pity that Apples' 'Ken Burns" implementation is flawed: I have a Google screen saver that does it fine without stretching the images.

As for those missing 64 rows of pixels at top and bottom - words fail me!