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Photo Uploads look terrible as a thumbnail.
So I loaded a good quality image that should certainly look great as a tiny thumbnail or as the opening photo for a home tour vid. But it looks blurred and terrible. The thumbnails that WM gave me really weren't all that good so I thought this would be an easy fix. Well, if I can get a good photo up there, problem is solved. Any help?
I second this! The uploaded photos look terrible. Sometimes WM system get a good thumnail image but most cases we upload one of our own and the quality is extremely poor. I'd love to see this get an upgrade of some sort.
Guys,
Please send technical questions to support@wellcomemat.com. Otherwise we can't respond unless we stumble upon these subjects in the hood (this being a perfect example).
Sorry to not find this sooner!
-CS
Also the filmmaker thumbnails look very blurry when you click "Filmmakers" on the homepage.
Don't apologize: I just want to make sure you guys get the best possible service.
Hey Everyone,
I just wanted to chime in quick on the video thumbnail and preview images. First of all, the reason that preview images often seem of lesser quality than the actual video is due to videos being interlaced ( meaning each frame represents about half of the quality of an entire frame ). Video encoding software uses this technique to help decrease video size while maintaining smooth transitions from one frame to the next. We obviously cannot fix the underlying issues of video codecs, however, we are working to create a new tool for uploading your own video preview images. We're going to ensure that these images maintain their absolute best quality so that the still frame that viewers first see doesn't turn them away.
The ETA on this new tool is unknown as of right now - however you will all be notified when we roll it out so that you can take advantage of this tool ASAP.
Cheers,
David
David,
Taking the statement about interlacing at face value, how does it explain uploads that aren't interlaced still yielding poor quality previews?
I de-interlace on export every file that is bound for web distribution. My preview files still suffer. In fact it took a ton of experimenting to finally get my business logo to look acceptable on my profile page, and of course that wall a still image to start.
I would love to have better quality preveiws, but won't take the time to prepare and upload a separte still preview image for each video I post. It's not a practical solution to a problem that I beleive lies within the wellcomemat encoding/preview generating process.
With that being said, keep up the good work!
Hey Dan,
Thanks for bringing that to my attention - I had previously expected most (if not all) uploaded videos to be interlaced. If you could point me to a specific video that you know to be de-interlaced I'll use it in our testing processes.
Also - I'd like to take this opportunity to throw this question out there to the rest of the Video Pros: would you take the time to upload a separate preview image for your videos or would you simply not have the time or patience? The problem is this - while we can offer several different preview images based on varying time-points within the video, no one solution is perfect. We've had people ask for frame captures in the first 5/10/15 seconds, while others asking for the half way point or towards the end of a video. Given that context, I would like to know if (in general) you would prefer to manually upload every time (getting that perfect shot/frame inserted for each video) or would roll the dice and just pick one of the pre-selected preview images (provided that the quality vastly increases).
David,
Any of my vids on my profile would work as a beta for you. Use the last one - Ripcore-fx if you'd like.
Regarding preview image choices: I apprieciate having 5 to chose from and if for some reason I want something not already generated I will upload a still - RipcoreFX as a case in point. I clearly recognize you can't please all the people all the time.
Thanks
I don't have a problem with the video thumbnails, other than the choices I am given aren't always the ones I want. But in fact, those thumbnails typically look pretty good and in all but one case I was able to find one that I liked. In contrast for one property I uploaded a jpeg in it's place since there were not any good exterior shots of the property. What came back was a very choppy thumbnail, that as far as I can tell, only I can see when I look at my videos. I used what I thought was the very tool you mention above for uploading my own image, which uploaded successfully but the subsequent preview image was poor.
David,
We would prefer uploading an image per video as long as the quality is good.
Mark
If I HAD to choose one or the other, I'd prefer to upload an image per video. Otherwise haveing a few choices from WM and the option to upload a image is BEST for us.
Ok all...background images in all videos uploaded from this day forward will be beautiful - that is...if you upload good quality videos.
Our development team has also requested that I ask all of you what precise seconds (ie :01 or :03) that we should take frames from in order to generate background images. No guesses please: we are looking to dial this thing based on experience with this kind of thing.
If a consensus is reached regarding exact timing of where we pull our background image from, we will implement. Thanks for being patient with this!! I think you are going to like what you see from here on out.
Wow... that looks 10000% better....
Except... I've uploaded custom graphics for hundreds of videos... and chosen them as the main graphic... and now they're all 1)missing and 2) that's not the shown graphic any longer... its just a random frame. :(
Thanks Mark!
Cheryl...can you please send links to the videos that you are making reference to? Need have the team see those all at once and that can occur by you sending an email to support@wellcomemat.com.
We'll be on it...promise.
Crap! That was me above (not Cheryl). I was logged on as her account to see if the graphics were there that I uploaded (and they weren't)
[Fred]...can you please send links to the videos that you are making reference to? Need have the team see those all at once and that can occur by you sending an email to support@wellcomemat.com.
We'll be on it...promise : )
