09-30-2014 12:31 PM
Put some new pictures on my NS-DPF7G frame for the first time in about eighteen months or so. The new pictures I put on the frame look pixellated.
The existing pictures I last put on the frame still look fine, so I can rule out a systemic issue like firmware or hardware.
All pictures I put on this frame (old and new) are formatted in GIMP for Windows to be exactly 800 x 480, or to have only one of the two dimensions be smaller, depending on the orientation of the picture - so they might be 640 x 480 (if I don't want to crop the original) or 360 x 480 (keeping the portrait orientation) or 800 x 240 (panorama-ish). Point being, the frame should not be stretching anything or having to upsize the pictures at all. One dimension is always maxed-out.
All pictures - old and new - have been taken with the same camera. They are all formatted as JPG, with 90+ quality when exported out of GIMP. The same laptop was used to prepare both the old and the new pictures. Original pictures were 3000 x 4000. In some cases I cropped out an 800 x 480 section I liked, in others I selected a portion of the photo with the selection holding to the 800 x 480 ratio, cropped to the selection and resized to 800 x 480. Regardless of the method I used, the output is the same. The pictures look pixellated.
When I view the same picture files I put on the frame (by making a fresh copy off the frame onto my laptop) on my laptop screen, the pictures look as expected - no pixelization, completely clear.
The only thing that's different in my process of creating the picture files is that I upgraded my version of GIMP - from 2.6 to 2.8.
The only differences I've noticed in the EXIF data between the old pictures and the new pictures are:
The questions I have are:
I can attach images (both kinds - older images with no problems and newer ones that don't display properly) if that will help, just ask.
Thanks!
-Chuck
Solved! Go to Solution.
10-04-2014 01:24 PM
Hello exnooyorka,
Welcome to Community@ Insignia™!
I think you win. What you describe is a rather complicated issue. One of the things I noticed that makes me wonder is in the original pictures, you said the Resolution Unit is "blank" on the original images. Does this mean that it had a 0 in that field, or is it actually empty, with no entry? I ask because I'm wondering if the DPF is reading a 0, differently than a blank field. Can you try editing the images with a different software set, to see if those files will display correctly?
Regards,
Jon
Insignia™ Support
10-06-2014 09:07 AM
Jon,
Thanks for your reply.
In the old pictures, the ResolutionUnit field is actually blank, as in no value - not a zero, not a one, blank. Or likely null.
I downloaded an older version of GIMP to test with; v2.6.12. That's not the exact version I was using before the upgrade, but it is the last "major" (e.g. 2.6.x) version I used.
The act of opening up and then just resaving the images that appeared pixellated on the frame seems to be fixing them - at least it fixed the four or five I just tested.
This gives me a path forward - and it's not difficult to use the older version of GIMP to edit the pictures that are going on the frame - however I am interested to know if there is a known root cause here. A lot of what we've seen is pointing towards the EXIF data.
Thanks,
-Chuck
10-06-2014 10:51 AM
Hello exnooyorka,
Thank you for responding!
It does sound as if the EXIF information is carrying information the picture frame is unable to read correctly. My guess is that the Resolution unit field is being read as <blank> being default, in which case your setting the size manually via one axis length is working. It should do the same with <0>, but apparently it sees that as different enough that it then tries to resize and gets all out of wack. At least that is my assumption, but we all know where that leads.
Regards,
Jon
Insignia™ Support