Yesterday evening, instead of going to bed at a normal time, I took two hours to improve the picture upload of imcdb (and so this morning I am tired )

Here is what's new:
- maximum width increased to 960 pixels
- maximum height decreased to 498 pixels

Why decrease the maximum height? Heights above 500 pixels were used only for 4:3 images, and these are most of the time with a lower quality due to age of movies or source of movie (tv). So reducing these to 662x498 does not lose details. Originally the images were limited like that, I am not sure of why we increased that at a point.

And about the increased width, please note that this is only for HD pictures, so movies coming from HD trailers, blu-ray, mkv/h264, etc.
Please do not upload DVD pictures higher than 720 pixels wide, as that is the original picture size on the disc. I know that some programs make the captures in higher sizes, but they just enlarge the original picture actually.



Another change: the maximum picture size. It is not limited to 80 KB anymore. It is calculated according to picture width and height.
There is no reason why a tiny 320x200 picture would be allowed to weight 60 KB where a HD picture should be so much limited.
Now the maximum size is computed as such: width x height x 0.25 = size in bytes. If you compress pictures to 80% quality it should stay much below these limits. I checked with few of G-MANN's pictures (as he said he compressed a little less his pictures), they seem to still stay under the limit, so I guess it won't be a problem for anyone.

And the most useful feature: automatic recompress/resize.
This is of course optional. It will be especially useful for processing contributions (next step is letting users uploading contributions themselves, to be validated by admins later).
On the upload page there is a "resize/recompress" checkbox. If you enable it, the picture will be resaved to JPEG at 80% quality. This allows to easily process PNG pictures as well as the too-big pictures.
In addition of that, there are also three fields allowing to change pictures dimensions. It can be used to resize them if they are too big, or to fix ratio.

Resize/compression options are remembered in the session. this means that if you upload multiple pictures for a movie, it will keep the options, but these options will vanish when you close all browser windows or if you do not visit a page of the site for few minutes (same as the login if you did not enable the "auto login" option).

As it is possible to paste a picture URL instead of browsing for a file, this can also be used to easily fix ratio of pictures already be uploaded. Note that this has to be used only when "we" do not have the original picture: since it implies a recompression of the picture, there is always a small quality loss.

Could you consider increasing the height a bit from 498 to 540?

"4:3 images are most of the time with a lower quality due to age of movies"

I don't agree with this at all. If the celluloid was stored properly and the transfer to digital was done by a company like Criterion the image can be crystal clear. (In fact celluloid is far superior to digital in detail)

Capture from a 1923 film:



So 1916 Mack:

http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_205876-Mack-AC-1916.html

Age of the movie has nothing with it, it's the source material, often a copy of a copy of a copy... Also DVDs from 4:3 tv shows can be excellent quality. The pics I added from Seinfeld yesterday were 704 x 528. I had to shrink these to fit 498. Also the truck in Duel. Would have been perfect for 720.

Good 4:3 pictures are rather uncommon.
Indeed it penalizes some movies, but there are so many which do not really deserve that full size... I saw lots of 4:3 DVD with poor picture quality, even in some recent productions.

VLC or Media Player Classic are able to read a Blu ray disc or I need another player?

I think that only "paid" software can read these currently. I had to use the one provided with my PC for that, but it can't capture images. So when I'll have to make bluray captures, I'll have to find another program (current captures that I made were just MKV/h264 files)

Replying to G-MANN's comment on the site:


I must put a limit somewhere, and with HD picture the old fixed size system was worse than it already was.
I do not want to allow 100KB size for any picture.
I should either raise the global limit of few %, or do a check on pictures: if the site cannot compress them better, then accept them as they are (which is the case of the pics that were recently above limit: each time due to lots of detail it cannot be compressed more, it is normal that it is too big)

Thing is it isn't my fault some pictures are so big, changing the picture setting to something less vivid would only save a couple of kilobytes. As you know, it all depends on what's in the picture, pictures with trees and grass always take up more space due to the high level of detail. I'd hate to compress that picture down to 70KB, it would look horribly pixellated (the higher the resolution the better, I think).

I never said it was your fault, I had this problem once or two. Atom & Stronghold had it too.
It happens when there are too much detail.
It was possible to have it in old system too: take a good quality DVD of 1.85 ratio movie, a scene with lots of details (trees, etc.) and you were sometimes above the 80 KB even if properly compressed.

I should do a test on the site, as I said: if when the site compresses it itself the size does not really decrease, then accept it anyway.

If I just raise the limit, it would allow to add bigger pictures for the 99.99% of cases where it is not needed

It's only recently I have started to ask you to upload my pictures, here is one I had to compress 65%: http://imcdb.org/vehicle_220375-Fiat-127-1978.html

As you see it doesn't look very good.

Yes, it is better to ask me than compress so much, even if it is maybe annoying for you and me
I really should add the option that I said above, a test in case the image is already properly compressed.

I made the few changes announced:
if you use the site resize, it does not check file size (as it is already properly compressed)
else, it checks what size would be the picture if recompressed by the site (80% quality, interlaced) and accepts your picture as long as it is not more than 20% bigger than what it would have been if compressed by the site (and 20% is already much) no matter what was the size limit computed with width & height.

I am going to submit a new set of pictures and the size is 480 x 230. Is that too small? confused

Also, is it okay, to make captures from Youtube?

It is ok, there is no minimal size. How come they are so small? Because they are from Youtube?
It is always better than nothing, at least for cars with a role. For background cars it may make some not really worth listing.

yes, captures are from you tube.But I will try to improve the image quality

Here is an example:

Antp, I have downloaded Ep 5.01 of "Lost" in HD. the file is a .mkv and when I do a capture with vlc the size of the image is 1280x720. Is this a real HD image or just a DVD one enlarged?

usually mkv files are HD, and series in HD are very common as broadcasted in HD in USA (the divx versions are usually recompressed from the HD version)
So it is most likely a real HD image.
You can see that by the sharpness of the image.

I have already change a picture... seems a real HD one.

http://imcdb.org/vehicle_224610-Dodge-Polara-1964.html

indeed

VLC is the only DVD player able to read mkv files? Because I have tried with PowerDVD 7 BSplayer and Media Player Classic... but none of these is able to play the video (only the sound on MPC)

I use Media Player Classic for these, but maybe you need an additional codec for the video (which is most likely AVC/h264 or something like that).
Anyway, easiest solution is to use MPC-HC (Media Player Classic Home Cinema), a version derived from MPC (which actually replaces it) and which works like VLC : no need of installed codecs to play various formats.