Thumb Cache Lower Quality

This is an issue I’ve seen since I started tinkering with themes and I’m not sure if its been properly addressed or a reason has been given as of yet. Firstly I should mention I’m on the latest firmware but the issue
is not limited to 3.01.19.

The issue is when inserting a cover thats been downloaded via my pc (not via WDTV), the WDTV resizes and creates a cache of thumbs for whatever size thumbnails you have in your theme. I’ve observed
that these thumbs take a noticeable drop in quality and can quite easily be seen if you drag and drop one of these cached thumbs to your desktop and change the extention to jpg.    

Heres an example:

   

I should also mention I’m not using moviesheets, only thumbnails. If anyone can shead light on whats happening I would be most grateful

I would assume that as these thumbs are being saved on your disk the player is making them as small as possible. Your original is 168K and the thumb is 38K, which is a big saving if you have a lot of thumbs. I suspect its a compromise between quality and size.

This may help, after reading it please vote and maybe even comment. The more attention this issue gets, the more likely it will get fixed.

Thank you!

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-Issue-Reporting/PNG-s-do-not-display-correctly-for-files-folder-thumbnails/idi-p/268062

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This is a problem with how the HUB caches thumbs.  And as flhthemi mentioned, has already been brought to WD’s attention.

This issue started with FW version 2.08 and has been continued with more recent versions.

The only way to correct this is to rollback your FW version to at least 2.07 (by the way, which most of us theme developers are staying with until the thumb issue is fixed).

Once your have (or if you do) then it is best to use the .png to .jpg rename trick to display thumbs.  This gives you the best possible quality with thumbs and also allows you to display thumbs with transparency so you are able to use thumbs like this:

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Thanks for the replies guys. I have found a work around that just involves resizing all the covers to whatever is in the display xml. For example in list browse my thumb size is 400x578 and reads as follows: 

“<image image=”@@thumbnail_listpage" x=“790” y=“80” w=“400” h=“578” default_image=“@@default_thumbnail_listpage” scale=“90”  scale_type=“pan” attr_num=“11” attr_cur=“@@thumb_active” disable=“1” "

If I change the size of all my covers to 400x578 then I get no quality loss from artwork displayed with those dimentions. However nothing changes for other sized covers as the quality still remains cr+p.

Firmware 3.01.19 :

All movies within individual folders along with corresponing jpg image.

After extensive tests I can personally confirm that the thumbnails created by the WDTV live hub are of a lower quality due to the way the machine scales the thumbnails (this may have been proven before but I needed to find out for myself).

The only way around this is through a paint program like Photoshop and doing the scaling yourself, then saving and changing the extention with .thumb_00x00 (the zero’s should be replaced with corresponding xml thumb sizes).

Considering how many thumbs are created for each cover this would take a long time!.. If anyone has a automated script let me know!

I don’t understand, I have NEVER seen the thumbs before except for once on an mt2s file from a blu-ray rip, and probably one other DVD rip, but that’s when I had the original old firmware. I gave up since everyone is saying to create a folder using extensions like .jpg, and .png, or ISO instead of video ts files. Where and HOW do I create these folders and WHERE should they be? Does every movie file needs one in it or just one centralized folder under a specific name???