displaying DLNA images - resolution cap?

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displaying DLNA images - resolution cap?

(8 posts)

scoie

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Hi, was wondering if any one else had found this problem.

When i try and view images from my NAS using DLNA some photos refuse to display, although I can see thumbnails. Selecting them just results in a never ending loading icon. It's not a crash as i can navigate back just fine.

Took me ages to figure out, but it must be due to the resolution of the photo. Mine are usually around 5.6k x 3.7k (4-6MB). If i take a photo that fails then resize it smaller then it works fine on the Humax over DLNA.

So my questions are - is this a bug? Something that can be fixed, or something more fundamental with DLNA specs? Other clients can see photos fine. Second question would be is anyone aware of a DLNA server setting that will downsample images? Plex does this for videos, but i can't see any mention of images. I am sure as hell not going through my library and chucking away detail to get it to show on the telly!

thanks

John

| Sun 21 Feb 2016 19:32:49 #1 |
grahamlthompson

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What sort of detail do you think you are throwing away if you show an image with a larger resolution than 1920 x 1080 on a HD TV ? The TV will have to rescale the image to match the display (on the fly).

If you want the best possible quality you need to use a decent photo editor to crop the image to 16:9 and rescale to 1920 x 1080 and save the image as a new one. The more advanced ones have a macro capability to do this, also try software that does similar to allow high res images to be sent by e-mail.

The best way is to use software designed to do this and produce a HD video from the results from many images.

Try the free trial of Proshow Gold from here (or set your camera if it has the capability to generate additional images suitable for TV display).

http://www.photodex.com/proshow

| Sun 21 Feb 2016 20:30:41 #2 |
scoie

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I wasn't clear. Obviously there's no point showing more that 1920x1080 on the TV, but I don't want to downscale my original photos just for TV display. I would have two copies of every photo, not to mention the ballache of doing this for 15k+ images... All i want is for the Humax box to stream the big photo and then rescale for the TV. Seems it can't do this if the original image is arbitrarily "too big". Another bug like the fact it messes up anamorphic video files that aren't 16:9 (i had to re-MKV a whole bunch of DVDs for that one!)

DLNA is a terrible mess in general i suppose.

| Sun 21 Feb 2016 21:07:58 #3 |
grahamlthompson

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scoie - 1 minute ago »
I wasn't clear. Obviously there's no point showing more that 1920x1080 on the TV, but I don't want to downscale my original photos just for TV display. I would have two copies of every photo, not to mention the ballache of doing this for 15k+ images... All i want is for the Humax box to stream the big photo and then rescale for the TV. Seems it can't do this if the original image is arbitrarily "too big". Another bug like the fact it messes up anamorphic video files that aren't 16:9 (i had to re-MKV a whole bunch of DVDs for that one!)
DLNA is a terrible mess in general i suppose.

You have to consider the limited processing available in a device designed to show at best 1920 x 1080 images in a 16:9 format, Compared to the storage required for your high res images, a 1920 x 1080 jpeg will be trivial and look just as good (and probably much better).

Load the photos into video editing software and add a auto lap dissolve and output as a full HD file, they will look great. No reason why you can't stream the new file using DLNA.

No extra effort required other than the time required for the software to produce a output suitable for the destination device capability.

This approach does not require the image to be downscaled in real time, the difference in file size and image quality is large.

If you have a 4K TV the images will look incredible.

Try the trial software I posted, you are likely to be blown away with what you can do.

Like all things you have to learn new technology.

You just need to learn, you may find a new and very rewarding way to use your still images.

| Sun 21 Feb 2016 21:19:24 #4 |
scoie

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I appreciate the time you have taken to respond and i do not wish to sound ungrateful, but you are suggesting that a 1920x1080 image is just as good as a native image at the resolution of my Canon 5dmk2 and therefore the solution to the Humax's problem (which I haven't seen in any other DLNA client) is to downscale all my photos to 1/4 of the pixel count.

There is a deterioration in quality, I just compared two versions of the same photo on my (4k) PC monitor. I'm not going to do that! I think a no name £30 android streaming box is the way to go for a client that works.

thanks anyway for your time and suggestion.

| Sun 21 Feb 2016 21:27:59 #5 |
grahamlthompson

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scoie - 12 hours ago »
I appreciate the time you have taken to respond and i do not wish to sound ungrateful, but you are suggesting that a 1920x1080 image is just as good as a native image at the resolution of my Canon 5dmk2 and therefore the solution to the Humax's problem (which I haven't seen in any other DLNA client) is to downscale all my photos to 1/4 of the pixel count.
There is a deterioration in quality, I just compared two versions of the same photo on my (4k) PC monitor. I'm not going to do that! I think a no name £30 android streaming box is the way to go for a client that works.
thanks anyway for your time and suggestion.

Whatever way you show your photographs on a Full-HD display the number of pixels will have to be reduced to 1920 x 1080 for a 16:9 image. Other aspect ratios will have less pixels. A computer which doesn't have to do this in real time will almost certainly do a superior job.

I have a 24 megabit Nikon DSLR, using the full resolution RAW image to put on a TV is a waste of time. The advantage of this sort of resolution requires a high resolution display or large prints.

| Mon 22 Feb 2016 9:43:30 #6 |
REPASSAC

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My guess is that the problem is the unit has insufficient ram to handle large images.

| Mon 22 Feb 2016 9:58:57 #7 |
scoie

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OK, Fixed!

More digging found this post on the Synology forums (I have synology NAS)

https://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?t=52183

Turns out that as DLNA is a mess, some clients need special treatment with hi res images. There is a setting in the synology config that does that and i now see all my images on the humax without having to create duplicates. Relevant text is below, refers to a Samsung device, but solution is the same:

"I got word back from HQ. Apparently some DMA devices are sensitive to pictures exceeding 4096px. These devices often need extra information for displaying original size images. We added this capability to "XBMC" and "WD TV Live" profiles so you can try those profiles by doing the following.

Go to Main Menu -> Media Server -> DMA Compatibility -> Device List. Select your Samsung devices and under the profile cells select the profile and a dropdown will appear. Select XBMC or WD TV Live and see if that helps."

It works! Ironically, the Samsung TV profile does not work with my 2011 Samsung TV and Blu-ray player. The XBMC and WD TV profiles do work though.

| Wed 24 Feb 2016 19:49:38 #8 |