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Forums: Index > Wiki discussion > What defines a high-quality image

I'm bringing this up as a result of User:Reversalmushroom's recent image uploads, specifically this one. It has been said before that the show is produced natively at 1280x720, so anything larger is blown up and therefore lower quality (I don't know how true this is). Additionally, in the image I linked, I think Rainbow Dash's color looks much better in the older version. There's also the fact that Reversal's images is four times as large in file size while only being slightly larger in dimensions, which seems suspicious. You can also compare his version of this image to mine (I use the 720p HD iTunes versions, I believe) - again, I don't think the colors look right, and his version is over twice the file size. I'm not sure what "color-corrected" images look like, so I'm not sure which type of image can be said to be higher quality. And regardless of this particular instance, it would be great if we could say definitively something like "the ideal image is 1280x720 with colors like [example image]," if that's possible. It would certainly give me less of a headache wondering if, for one thing, all of my images are not at the "best quality" possible, and for another wondering what is "high quality." Thanks for any clarification we can get in this situation. ~Bobogoobo (talk) 40?cb=20120702121758 07:09, August 22, 2012 (UTC)


This discussion somewhat concerns what you're asking. As far as we know, because Hasbro only released 720p videos (as far as I can tell) on iTunes, that was assumed to be the native resolution. For reference, Hasbro defined HD on iTunes as being both 720p and 1080p, but directly under that it says "(downloading 720p)", so that definitely makes it a little confusing. Anyway, color-corrected videos have been believed to be very over-saturated with the colors. Some say that they are the "true colors", but if they're the true colors, why didn't DHX make them that color in the first place? It's really up to personal preference, but a lot of them are usually very over-saturated and look sort of ridiculous. The reason Reversalmushroom's file size is larger is because of that color-correction, actually. The more colors used in a file, especially vivid colors, the larger the file size. On the defining what high quality images are, we can't really say that color-corrected versions aren't high quality, because they are. The only difference is that the colors are a little screwed with by someone else. With the dimensions, while certain dimensions would be ideal, not everyone can achieve those dimensions. Some only have access to the Youtube videos because of hard drive size contraints. Why turn away contributors when the images are almost just as good as the ideal image? Not everything has to be perfect, and this is probably the longest reply I've ever written.  Food 25px-Surprise.png  09:47, August 22, 2012 (UTC)
For me, "high quality" means that the image looks better than the one that came before it. For the record, I got the majority of my episodes from here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/xy2aw/official_mlpfim_episode_guide_online_streaming/
But all of them are 720p iTunes rips. However, Teyandee told me that there are no CC'd episodes past season 2, episode 2, which means that any of those episodes that are claiming to be "color corrected", were done so by regular people and not by Hasbro. I also feel that I should point out that Windows Media Player (what I use to take my screenshots) seems to saturate the colors, which would explain why they differ from the iTunes rips; personally, I feel the episodes look better this way; after looking at them through Windows Media Player and then looking at them with VLC media player, the VLC media player versions look faded and white in comparison. Windows Media Player also seems to blur edges a bit.
So yeah, you have episodes 2x03-2x26 which have been saturated, and then Windows Media Player saturating them even more.
Also worth noting, all of the 720p iTunes versions have been cropped (don't know if the 1080p ones are).
--Who would win in a fight between you and yo mama? (talk) 09:51, August 22, 2012 (UTC)
My files are large because I use Ctrl+PrtSc.
--Who would win in a fight between you and yo mama? (talk) 09:59, August 22, 2012 (UTC)
All color-correcting is done by people other than Hasbro as far as I know. All episodes that I have are not color-corrected and are iTunes rips. There's actually a download on the page that you linked to all episodes without color-correction.  Food 25px-Surprise.png  10:04, August 22, 2012 (UTC)
Another example. –Throwawaytv 07:53, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, but that's a torrent, and I don't do torrents because they take forever to download and sometimes have viruses. But thanks for the heads up about color correction; I always saw the phrases "color corrected" and "iTunes rips" used together, which is why I thought that color correcting had been done by Hasbro. So yeah, you have episodes which have been saturated, and then Windows Media Player saturating them even more.

The file size has been a concern for me as well; lately, I've been contemplating switching over to VLC media player.

--Who would win in a fight between you and yo mama? (talk) 10:23, August 22, 2012 (UTC)


@Reversalmushroom, actually, it was Tulipclaymore who said on my talk page that 'There are no colour-corrected videos of episodes post 2x02'.
Bigger size does not always mean higher quality. This apple looks too wide to be natural. Compare it to the one from the 1280*720 px screencap: http://imgur.com/MnW7m - I would choose this one instead. Teyandee (Talk) 18:13, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

I know that bigger≠better, but I feel like the images I've uploaded are still higher quality than the ones that came before them. I've tried resizing them to 1280, but that sometimes distorts the picture.

There's actually an animation error in those 2 images; the rope is clipping through the apple a bit. I wonder if that's been documented. Also, the apple is just as wide in the first image as it is in the 2nd.

I wonder why all the iTunes rips are cropped.

--Who would win in a fight between you and yo mama? (talk) 21:30, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

Image quality has many criteria. Some of them are:

  • Resolution. My Little Pony is natively available in 640x480 4:3 progressive, 1280x720 16:9 HD, and 1920x1080 16:9 Full HD. Any other format is inherently less true to the source material.
  • Color. This is the most problematic with FiM because the iTunes videos have the best color balance except for their color levels. The "color corrected" iTunes versions are often blurred, and have bad color balance, bad white point, and wrong aspect ratio or resolution.
  • Source artifacts. The Hub logo, overlaid commercials, the cropping present in the iTunes videos, and other changes made to the source material, or artifacts present in the source material itself.
  • Compression artifacts. If you look at our spectacular 100kB background image you will see plenty of those. Noise around high-contrast areas, blocking in low-contrast areas, loss of color resolution. With videos you may get frame blending, stutter, smearing, and more. The iTunes videos have the least compression artifacts, followed by the HDTV videos.

What this all means is that for FiM, the highest quality images are available from the iTunes videos, barring their color levels issues and their crop issue. Please don't use the color-corrected videos because they often overcompensate with saturation and apply a "smart blur" filter to prevent banding, which creates "splotches" of color where there weren't originally. Both the iTunes videos and the HDTV videos should be acceptable, as long as the Hub logo isn't particularly intrusive. Renders directly from Studio B would be nice, too. –Throwawaytv 16:05, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

I don`t support HDTV rips because of logo. What are the criteria of 'intrusive'? Regarding the "Renders directly from Studio B" - how do we know whether the given image is one of them? Teyandee (Talk) 16:54, August 23, 2012 (UTC)
The Studio B stuff was supposed to be funny... I don't think we need criteria for "intrusive", but if you want some criteria, then I guess the wiki should use caps from the iTunes videos (original or manually color-adjusted) when illustrating the center of the frame, and from the HDTV rips when illustrating the borders of the frame. Eventually there will be a blu-ray box set though, and we'll have glorious 1920x1080 2GB H264 videos of pony. –Throwawaytv 21:55, August 23, 2012 (UTC)
One question, Throwawaytv - doesn't manually adjusting the colors make those images fanmade, since they're not directly taken from any official version of the videos? Also, can we make an official policy that those two formats you mentioned (1280x720 iTunes, 1920x1080 HD) are the preferred ones for any show images, and any other should be replaced by those? That would make my head hurt a lot less. ~Bobogoobo (talk) 40?cb=20120702121758 01:39, August 24, 2012 (UTC)
I re-wrote Help:Screenshots#Image editing; it should reflect the consensus on the wiki. We can rework Help:Screenshots into a policy, help pages are pretty much policy around here. –Throwawaytv 07:06, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

Is it true that Hasbro has started selling the episodes in 1080p on iTunes? Are they cropped?

--Who would win in a fight between you and yo mama? (talk) 02:03, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

I said in a previous reply that it's listed on iTunes as being both in 720p and 1080p, but I can't find any download for the 1080p versions anywhere. All of the downloads that I find are 720p, apparently.  Food 25px-Surprise.png  02:57, August 24, 2012 (UTC)
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