Embedded (SM) video image is - messed

ChancyRat

Can I prevent this or fix this? The video preview image for this video looks great in the main image (SM style gallery).
Then I embedded it using a video block, and the text is terrible.
I tried different zooms, different video sizes, Chrome/IE/FF, and both images have the respective qualities.

This image may not do justice to what I see, but the top image is the standard image from the gallery, and the bottom is the embedded video.
http://www.joinrats.com/EarningTrust/Transportbox/i-vhXQ3nF

thenickdude

On a Mac Retina display, the text looks fine, but if I try IE8 or Chrome on Windows, the text shows aliasing issues like your screenshot (line widths changing and disappearing to make the text virtually unreadable):



I'm no Flash wiz, but I suspect the issue could be caused by SmugMug not enabling the "allow smoothing" option on the preview image, as suggested in this tutorial:

http://www.patrickwall.com/2009/10/20/anti-alias-when-scaling-images-and-video-in-flash/

With that option turned off, it sounds like Flash uses "nearest neighbour" scaling on the image which causes aliasing artifacts like these if the image needs to be scaled. You can tell that this is a scaling issue, not an image quality issue, by using CTRL + in your browser to scale up the page - once the video is nicely oversized, the preview image doesn't have to be scaled downwards any more, so you don't get the same aliasing problems:

ChancyRat

Thank you for your thorough inspection and comments, Nicholas.
After doing some more looking myself, I discovered this problem exists in lightbox mode as well. Not just on embedded videos. Had you assumed that would be the case?

What can be done?
- SM flicks a switch and all is fixed.
- File a bug report
- File a feature request
- Can I modify the image from the start, so as to minimize the effects, while awaiting a fix?

So the only mode where the image looks correct is in the main image in (what I'm using), the SM style gallery.

Examples in lightbox mode. The video original is 1920x1080, here are 3 examples of sizes I see.

320:



640:



1920 (better but definitely still wrong):

thenickdude

ChancyRat wrote: »

Thank you for your thorough inspection and comments, Nicholas.
After doing some more looking myself, I discovered this problem exists in lightbox mode as well. Not just on embedded videos. Had you assumed that would be the case?

It looks like it works correctly as the "main image" in the SmugMug gallery style because SM doesn't load the Flash video player until the image is clicked. Before then it uses your browser to display and scale down the image, and your browser does this with nice high quality.

What can be done?
- SM flicks a switch and all is fixed.
- File a bug report

I would suggest filing a bug report asking for smoothing to be turned on on the Flash video player's preview image to prevent aliasing. Send them your original JPEG so they have something to test against.

- Can I modify the image from the start, so as to minimize the effects, while awaiting a fix?

Yes, scale down your preview image before you upload it so that it is no larger than needed for the flash player. It looks like that is 640x360 pixels for the video content block on your page.

ChancyRat

I submitted the bug report in the bug forum, thanks.
While awaiting SM to fix this, you suggested, "Yes, scale down your preview image before you upload it so that it is no larger than needed for the flash player. It looks like that is 640x360 pixels for the video content block on your page."

If I understand you, I can't do this, as SM requires that the preview image be sized to match the uploaded video, which in this case was 1920 x 1080.

If I'm following you, I would have to re-process the video down, so that the preview image can be smaller to match the scale that I want to embed.

In addition, if I were to allow scaling for the video embed, viewers would possibly view in different sizes.

Given all this I think I just have to wait for the bug fix.
Thanks.

ChancyRat

Okay my post to the bug reporting forum won't go through even though the page says I can post messages. I may be missing where I should post it?

thenickdude

Ah right, I hadn't realised that it forces you to upload an image of the right size. This is the bug reporting forum:

http://dgrin.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

Do you get an error message trying to post?

ChancyRat

Lamah wrote: »

Ah right, I hadn't realised that it forces you to upload an image of the right size. This is the bug reporting forum:

http://dgrin.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

Do you get an error message trying to post?

Yes, that was the forum I tried to post to. When I clicked submit reply, the browser screen went basically blank and stayed that way. Refreshed and no message had posted. Tried twice. That's okay, I copied most of the thread and sent it to smugmug help. Got a reply back that this thread would be passed to the developers.