JPEG Slideshow

jroyale · Post by **jroyale** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 2:20 pm

I'm having a heck of a time making my jpeg slideshows look any good on my HDTV let alone what I know they can look like.

I've tried about 5 programs all on top settings both by slideshow and movie slideshow onto DVD. Does anybody know of or have heard of a CF Card Reader which is designed for high definition televisions? It seems amazing to me that it hasn't been developed yet? I know the EPSON HDTV has one built in and the pictures look outstanding. My DVD's look okay but they certainly don't pop like I know they can.

I have a Sony 42" Rear Projection LCD and a Digital Rebel. I've tried plugging the camera into the tv via the RCA but again, it looks pretty weak. One quick note, these DVD's look fairly good on high def CRT's, is it possible it is a lcd thing?

kq6qv · Post by **kq6qv** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 4:43 pm

If you are connecting via a single RCA (phono) plug then you are using composite video, which is not high def. For your high-def cabling options see http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/STBs.html .

jroyale · Post by **jroyale** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:41 am

I think you're missing the point.

I'm asking what is the best way to do a jpeg slideshow on an HDTV? I understand the RCA is not high-def nor is DVD.

Any suggestions?

Richard · Post by **Richard** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 8:12 am

Donshan does this stuff all the time and visits regularly.

Must be busy or something...

MadeInAlaska · Post by **MadeInAlaska** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 2:59 pm

jroyale wrote:I think you're missing the point.

I'm asking what is the best way to do a jpeg slideshow on an HDTV? I understand the RCA is not high-def nor is DVD.

Any suggestions?

I'd like to know as well, and I'll follow the answers here. So far from what I've tried and heard, there's too much compression going on. I've been scanning old slides into TIFF format, and there's nothing out there to read those yet. JPEG's all have some compression...

Regards,

Ken

Richard · Post by **Richard** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:16 pm

I'm asking what is the best way to do a jpeg slideshow on an HDTV?

Off the top of my head...

If your display has a card reader that is the most effective way to get your image to the display, I think. Never studied it. I would hope that the product would convert the jpeg file to the native HD scan rate.

Going any other way is going to cause compression of the image in terms of resolution unless you feed the images via a PC using VGA or DVI to the HD inputs on your display.

Richard · Post by **Richard** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:23 pm

This link appears to agree.

viewtopic.php?t=4407

While Chuckken claims wonderful results his comments need to be taken with a grain of salt. That said there may be something to his comment about using that DVI HD enabled DVD player. It may be that it converts jpeg to HD scan rates bypassing the limitations of SD video that is part and parcel of any DVD player and causing the quality problems.

donshan · Post by **donshan** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:01 pm

Richard wrote:Donshan does this stuff all the time and visits regularly.

Must be busy or something...

Yes, been doing yard work and staining a cedar fence- put on 30 gallons!

I have used a lot of jpeg pictures in videos, but I am still working in standard def miniDV format that is 720x480 pixels. I have not done slide shows, but put the jpeg stills into the video and pan and zoom ( al la Ken Burns effect) to simulate motion. Maybe someday I can get a HDTV video camera, And I agree the quality of the jpeg stills goes down when you display at SD resolutions off of DVDs. But there are things to watch for.

So I can't address the question directly, but have a few ideas of the problems, and let me emphasize I am doing what I call a SWAG- " A Scientific Wild A**ed Guess":

Most digital cameras can take photos now that exceed the resolution of HDTV. This may be part of the problem- expectations are too high.

On the other hand this may be a scaling problem, or JPEG compression throwing away color info, or the quality of the original picture or a DVD MPEG compression problem. so a few comments on each.

1. Scaling: The ASTC digital standard formats for digital TV monitors are :
1080p= 1920x 1080 pixels
1080i = 1920 x 1080 pixels
720p = 1280 x 720 pixels
480i/p = 704 x 480 or 640x 480 pixels

If you were to feed these digital displays a jpeg digital image with a different pixel ratio than your native display something has to re-scale the picture. Richard has written at length about the problems or rescaling. So first I would be sure the photos are sized in pixels to the native size of the display. I would think this would be especially important for a LCD with a fixed number of pixels. If the LCD were 1280x720 and you feed it a jpeg that is 2048x1536 pixels on a digital connection (DVI/HDMI) something has to scale it down to 1280x 720 and may screw it up.

2. JPEG compression- Each of the pixels gets bits of brightniess data, and color data. As you increase JPEG compression it throws away color info. At the Higest settings in the software I doubt this is the problem and you have plenty of color bits left. High setting JPEG is very good.

3. Image quality-Here the art and science of digital photography come in and volumes have been written. I have found that using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements software on a digital image and adjusting the image can do WONDERS for the image quality even at 720x480.

Most digital pictures as your average person takes them, do not have the gray scale range set to the optimum. In Photoshop this is called "levels". You want to set the range of the digital photo so it the black point and the white points of the photo match what is in the scene. In practice the software plots a graph of the actual brightness scale- black on the left and white on the right and displays the actual brightness as a "hump" . Sliders let you set the white and black points to match the image and set the mid gray level. Think of it as "calibration of the image" for your "calibrated monitor". I just got an Epson RX500 "all in one" scanner/photo printer and when scanning a paper print to digitize it the software in the "professional" mode has the exact same levels settings to apply to a preview scan. It makes the digital scan of a paper photo print much better.

Next the color may be wrong due to lighting and or over/under exposure. This can be corrected along with contrast. Sometimes a boost of color saturation helps.

Finally a bit of edge sharpening sometimes improves the illusion of a sharper image- but can be overdone just as in a monitor display.

I do these steps on EVERY digital photo and with practice it can be done in five minutes and then save the JPEG file again with a new name at HIghest JPEG settings. By taking the photos at 2048x 1536 pixels it also lets me crop the picture for better composition as I have pixels to throw away. It also lets me use the computer software to pan a 720x480 box over a larger pixel image to create the illusion of motion on a still. You see this all the time on TV documentaries.

Finally the image MUST be in sharp focus when you take it- Lots of automatic cameras produce blurry images. We have a Olympus 3.2 mega-pixel and I find the sports setting to give high shutter speed priority is best for most shots, as it assures subject motion or moving the camera yourself does not blur the image. It does require good lighting. I also found that this Olympus did not have a good enough glass lens to take pictures better than 2048x1530 at a JPEG level that produced about 803Kb per picture. It would take more pixels and a better JPEG compression, but the lens did not have the relsolution. Test the camera at all its quality settings and see if you can see a difference on a good computer monitor to see what the camera lens can do.

4. The standard DVD is limited to the 704x 480 pixel resolution of SDTV. So the idea of using an upscaling DVD player seems a good one while matching the JPEG pixel ratio to the display pixel ratio. Also in burning a DVD the MPEG compression can do ANOTHER hatchet job on quality. DVD making software that lets you set the bit rate up to max should be done. My toshiba has bit rate settings on DVD quality from 2.2 up to 9.2. they don't give units ,but any DVD that gets more than 60 minutes on a standard 4.7Gb blank is not at top MPEG quality.

Hopes this helps

Richard · Post by **Richard** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 7:43 am

Hey.... what about WM9 DVDs and a WM9 DVD player like Bravo has? That would get you HD scan rates...

donshan · Post by **donshan** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 10:16 am

Richard wrote:Hey.... what about WM9 DVDs and a WM9 DVD player like Bravo has? That would get you HD scan rates...

Yes, when these new formats and the new HD-DVD burners get here it will be easy to burn high quality JPEG slide shows for HDTV monitors. However we are still waiting.

In addition to WM9 codec, MPEG-4 H.264 is coming soon and my bet is on MPEG-4 to win over WM9. As I understand it both of these do a better job of encoding for burning a DVD, and both HD video or a high resolution JPEG should be better.

Apple has been developing MPEG-4 and is to include support for MPEG-4 H264 in the upcoming release of Mac OSX 10.4 "Tiger" in Quicktime 7. Quicktime supports many formats including JPEG and video and sound and Apple makes a Windows version too. I use both Windows XP and Mac OS X. For video, digital pictures and sound Mac OS X with its UNIX core wins, with much better security too!.

Even if you are not into using a Mac the info at this link shows what the industry is doing with the H.264 standard for HD -DVDs. DirecTV has announced they will be using this same MPEG-4 AVC ( H.264) for all their 1650 new HDTV channels.

Quote from link"

"In fact, H.264 was ratified by both the DVD Forum and the Blu-ray Disc Association for inclusion in their next-generation high-definition DVD specifications. Adopted worldwide as the next-generation standard HD H.264 video plays back on today