Apple TV Image Resolution

[HouseOfCards 95]

I'm making this thread to demonstrate one of the huge issues with the Apple TV application, which is image resolution.  Here are two examples of what I see in the Apple TV interface, along with the actual file on the server for each.  As you can see, the image displayed on Apple TV is absolute garbage compared to the file I have on the server.

This has been a consistent problem for years at this point.  

[Luke 42077]

Hi, we'll take a look at it. Thanks.

[HouseOfCards 95]

Poking around a bit, it seems that the Apple TV is defaulting to caching whatever image is embedded in the media file.  A lot of my files have low resolution images embedded in the MP3 tags.  These embedded images are very low resolution, like 200x200 in most cases.  If I edit the images for the SONG ITSELF in Emby, then Apple TV uses the image I select on the Apple TV.  But it doesn't do that for manually specified album art.  

The correct behavior should be to default to using the album art selected on the Emby Server for the SONG, then if no specific song image is added on the server, to default to using the ALBUM art specified on the server.  If neither are specified, then use whatever is embedded in the MP3/FLAC, etc...  It's using the least manually specified image (embedded) as its first choice.

If that makes sense...?

[Luke 42077]

Quote

The correct behavior should be to default to using the album art selected on the Emby Server for the SONG,

Hi, this is what it does. How does the web app compare?

[HouseOfCards 95]

22 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, this is what it does. How does the web app compare?

By web app, you mean in a web browser?

I get the same behavior.  Just viewing the album page shows what is on the server, which is clear.

But if I click and enter the now playing window, it's very low resolution and unreadable.

But for a song where I specified an image on the server for a specific track, it's clear and using the specified art.  So it's not just the Apple TV using low resolution for now playing.  I never play music in the browser using "Now Playing", but there you have it...

On a large TV screen, this makes the "Now Playing" artwork atrocious.  
 

[HouseOfCards 95]

Added a related feature request to preserve the custom track artwork, since if we add custom track images, this problem goes away.  Maybe a background task that writes album artwork for each track if no custom track image already exists?
 

 

[Luke 42077]

The artwork is being preserved. It's just probably being scaled down too much.

[HouseOfCards 95]

20 hours ago, Luke said:

The artwork is being preserved. It's just probably being scaled down too much.

But it doesn't happen if I set a custom image for the track itself.  If I do that, the full resolution images show in "Now Playing".  Here is an example of the "Now Playing" when playing tracks I set cover art for at the track level.

When the track has a custom image set on the server, they aren't scaled down, and are clear...  It seems to happen if it uses the image from the album itself.  

 

[Luke 42077]

What's the resolution of the album image?

[HouseOfCards 95]

7 minutes ago, Luke said:

What's the resolution of the album image?

So in the Diana Ross example, the image stored on disk is 640 x 640, and the server "Edit Images" shows that as the correct resolution.  This is the actual file on disk at 640 x 640, and the screen showing that the server sees it as such...

But what actually shows in "Now Playing" is wildly distorted.

This particular MP3 has an embedded image of 200 x 200, which is what I believe was showing which explains the bad quality.

So after I add custom artwork for a specific track on that album, that artwork will show fine in "Now Playing".  Here is the custom art set at the TRACK level, which I have confirmed shows clearly when it's playing, I just don't have a screenshot of it playing at the moment.

 

Another observation/clue is that some newer albums I've added seem to not exhibit this issue.  They show good resolutions.  Perhaps an updated server/app version doesn't have the problem caching a higher resolution image, but ones added previously using older versions initially cached a low-resolution version and the app just never refreshes?  Not sure enough on that to want to nuke my setup to rebuild everything and see.  LOL

I've added a ton of custom art at the track level over the last week, and an issue I see is if the server does something to rebuild it's cache now, I wouldn't want it to overwrite the track artwork people may have set.  There would have to be some safety net built in to ensure it doesn't just take the album art and overwrite the track images people set up.

If you need any other information, reach out...