Guys, there's definitely something should be done about this. The posts about new articles are looking like some VHS crap from 80s. No, seriously, some quality standards should be set.
Not everyone sees it like that.
It also depends on the size of the image on the article itself and whatever fb does with the image for a screengrab. Are you getting this kind of quality for all articles?
Ugh. Yeah, it looks normal here too: https://screenshots.firefox.com/yuae6M6fyGRvipuF/www.facebook.com
Not sure if/how we can prevent them from randomly cropping & zooming our images.
Jan wrote:
Not everyone sees it like that.It also depends on the size of the image on the article itself and whatever fb does with the image for a screengrab. Are you getting this kind of quality for all articles?
Yeah, pretty much. Images from "A Million Little Things" looks ok though. I've tried both Chrome and Safari, everything looks the same.
I get a lot of stuff in my FB feed, from all kinds of news sites etc. Believe me, there's hardly something else looking that bad. I wouldn't be starting this thread, if I'd see everything like this :) But posts from TVmaze really standing out, and not in a good way...
Maybe some image resolution requirements should be set, at least for the main image of the article? As I've said, those two articles looks fine:
https://www.tvmaze.com/articles/346/ratings-roundup-week-of-september-23-2018
https://www.tvmaze.com/articles/344/a-million-little-things-pilot-review
Not sure what we can do about it as it seems to be something FB is doing to the images after the fact. The images look fine on my feed using Chrome ...
I did talk to Gislef to make sure the first image used in an article is light enough to actually see what the image is. :) That can be tough though as some of the shows he reviews could use a bit more light in general, but he is picking better lit images now.
LadyShelley wrote:
Not sure what we can do about it as it seems to be something FB is doing to the images after the fact. The images look fine on my feed using Chrome ...
So everyone except TVmaze is in possession of some magic remedy against FB shenanigans? :D Somehow the others are managing just fine...
The problem is not in FB or what they do. The problem is in shitty images. The good image could be processed several times and still look good. The shitty image...well...it's not getting any better :)
Yeah, I suppose for some people making a half-decent screengrab from episode is a rocket science, but there's literally a ton of places with high resolution promo images. Starting with the official sites. I bet something like this or this would look fine in any scenario.
I can't access either of those links.
I don't care much for Facebook randomly messing with our images, but - as written in our policy - in general the higher the resolution the better. Shelly, Gislef, would it be possible to simply generate higher resolution screencaps?
david wrote:
I can't access either of those links.I don't care much for Facebook randomly messing with our images, but - as written in our policy - in general the higher the resolution the better. Shelly, Gislef, would it be possible to simply generate higher resolution screencaps?
Odd, they doesn't seem to be region locked, I'm accessing them just fine https://imgur.com/a/Hp7IE2o
Anyway, they should be accessible from US. But that's not really the point, it's just an example of the easy way to get a decent image. Ideally, for the shows broadcasted in HD (basically any US/European show past 2004) the image shouldn't be less than 1280x720, there's no obvious reason to get below that. There's already a source for the ant-sized images (tvdb), why can't we be better than that?
But it's not only the resolution that matters. Apart from being low-res the images in articles are highly compressed, beyond any reasonable limits. They look more or less fine while being downscaled, but in full size they looking mediocre at best. Like the show was recorded on VHS and then grabbed using some ancient voodoo ))
david wrote:
I can't access either of those links.I don't care much for Facebook randomly messing with our images, but - as written in our policy - in general the higher the resolution the better. Shelly, Gislef, would it be possible to simply generate higher resolution screencaps?
Perhaps it has something to do with FB blocking non-member access to images?
They've done it for a while now.
Unless you have an FB-account, images are either completely inaccessible or changed to low quality versions.
david wrote:
I can't access either of those links.I don't care much for Facebook randomly messing with our images, but - as written in our policy - in general the higher the resolution the better. Shelly, Gislef, would it be possible to simply generate higher resolution screencaps?
I assume Gislef capped the episodes he reviews. I have no idea what source material or software he uses.
When you talk to him, please point him towards this thread. Perhaps it's a simple change to use higher resolution caps instead. :)
Apparently he's either not able to, or doesn't care much. I keep seeing shitty images in my FB feed.
I assume that no one else is really cares about that. The site is flooded with visual garbage, but everyone is happy with it. Obviously it's easier to accept it than do something about it.
I think there's no reason to pursue this any further, I doubt that things will change.
tnt wrote:
Apparently he's either not able to, or doesn't care much. I keep seeing shitty images in my FB feed.I assume that no one else is really cares about that. The site is flooded with visual garbage, but everyone is happy with it. Obviously it's easier to accept it than do something about it.
I think there's no reason to pursue this any further, I doubt that things will change.
It's not that we don't care. Speaking for myself, I have a backlog. David is the same & Shelley also has her todo's. It's not because this issue has been pointed out that in my case i'm dropping everything else that i'm doing or won't look into it later..
The issue has been reported, discussed and logged. It will be picked up for improvement.
Jan wrote:
It's not that we don't care. Speaking for myself, I have a backlog. David is the same & Shelley also has her todo's. It's not because this issue has been pointed out that in my case i'm dropping everything else that i'm doing or won't look into it later..The issue has been reported, discussed and logged. It will be picked up for improvement.
Jan,
Nobody asked you to drop everything in order to fix this. I personally don't think it is either an issue of Facebook itself.
I definitely think we should raise our standard as to what to promote and what not for the sake of TVmaze. No doubt Gislef is doing a wonderful job by reviewing series & episodes, but the screen caps he has been using are rather poor. Now I could agree with shows from early 2000, this would not be possible...., but shows from nowadays should definitely being screen capped in a decent sized photo in proper quality.
All that is necessary is to set up a limit as to what material can be used to promote your site via social media or any other portal and I don't think the article below would qualify for that... It would rather hurt the site more.
Thank you, Thomas, that's exactly what I was speaking about many times before. It's just ludicrous to offer such kind of quality for any contemporary show, which is being aired in Full HD or even 4K.
The image is the first thing that catches the eye. If the image looks like shite there's a fat chance that the eye would be moving to something else, skipping the post completely.
Thomas wrote:
Jan,Nobody asked you to drop everything in order to fix this. I personally don't think it is either an issue of Facebook itself.
I definitely think we should raise our standard as to what to promote and what not for the sake of TVmaze.
Nobody is disputing that. My point being that it will be looked into. @TNT thanks for pointing out the issue.
@Thomas, if you'd like you're welcome to assist with quality control and fixing issues in unpublished articles.
Jan wrote:
Nobody is disputing that. My point being that it will be looked into. @TNT thanks for pointing out the issue.@Thomas, if you'd like you're welcome to assist with quality control and fixing issues in unpublished articles.
I am willing to do so, but I can't guarantee articles being published by that within a day. Work is extremely busy for me the last past months.
I've emailed the writing staff about the images. Since they were pointed to this thread, maybe be a little less aggressive in your opinions of their work, please. They are volunteers after all.
I did suggest they try to google around for promo images.
LadyShelley wrote:
I've emailed the writing staff about the images. Since they were pointed to this thread, maybe be a little less aggressive in your opinions of their work, please. They are volunteers after all.I did suggest they try to google around for promo images.
They are doing a terrific job, no doubt about that. But using screen caps, which are below average quality is not doing any good to TVmaze when they're promoting them via social media.