Higher resolution for posters

[Nopealope]

The iTunes standard for "high resolution" posters is currently 1400x2100, so as result that's now becoming the standard on TMDB as well. I've even seen posters at 2000x3000 on there. Because of this it's starting to become normal for TMDB to have much higher quality posters than fanart.tv. I feel like that shouldn't be quite so common given the niche that this website is trying to fill.

Whatcha think?

Oh, and while you're at it, perhaps consider changing the poster aspect ratio to the "industry standard" of 1:1.5. That's what is used by every media center that currently exists. It's kind of annoying to have text cut off the sides of many of the posters here on fanart!

[ArieS]

I actually like the 1000x1426 size now, even though it seemed weird to me at first. But I think it's a good format, especially when working with French Posters (as an example) which are more like 1000x1333 for some reason. So when I need to add some background to it, I'm happy to just have to add a smaller difference

TMDB having much higher quality posters than us is debatable

[Nopealope]

I actually like the 1000x1426 size now, even though it seemed weird to me at first. But I think it's a good format, especially when working with French Posters (as an example) which are more like 1000x1333 for some reason. So when I need to add some background to it, I'm happy to just have to add a smaller difference

TMDB having much higher quality posters than us is debatable

For older movies it's debatable, but for most stuff released from 2014 and onwards TMDB will have a higher quality poster the vast majority of the time. Which isn't really surprising when you consider that 1400x2100 literally has more than double the number of pixels as 1000x1426. Most of the posters are properly compressed and well under 1MB too.

Some might say that having double the pixels doesn't make much difference. Those people probably browse their media center on a small screen. On my 106" projector screen it makes a massive, massive difference. I'm now using fanart.tv as a backup if a 1400x2100 image isn't available on iTunes or TMDB.

Regardless, screens are only getting larger. Most 4K sets I see in electronics stores are over 70" in size. People are gonna need the extra pixels. Besides, even if you don't do it now, you're gonna have to increase the resolution eventually. That's obvious enough to anyone. Why not just do it now and get a head start on the higher quality images? The current resolution could still be allowed and supported, it'd just be nice to have the option to submit high-resolution images and get a head start on the future.

Oh, and as far as the aspect ratio is concerned, I only care about how the finished posters appear in my media center. 1000x1426 works if people would use a "gutter" area on the left and right (as with HD ClearLogos). I just hate having the left and right sides of a poster's logo cropped off when browsing my library. It looks amateurish.

[Nopealope]

Just wanted to bump this again since I saw a 4k TV set on sale for $349 (42") at a local retailer.

These screens are getting cheaper and cheaper and low resolution media art is going to look reeeaaaally bad on them. Viewing a 1000x1426 poster on a 4k screen is like viewing a 500x713 poster on a 1080p screen. Not good.

Higher resolution doesn't have to mean obscenely higher file size either. TMDB is heading in a direction I don't like, which is to encourage users to upload images in the highest possible quality they can, file size be damned. Some posters on there are reaching 7+ MB in size. Asinine.

It doesn't have to be like that! With more pixels available you can use higher levels of compression than you normally would and the resulting image will still be far superior in quality.

For example, here's the current top-voted poster for the TV series "Penny Dreadful" here on fanart.tv:



Now here's the poster I'm currently using in my media library. Sourced from TMDB and then further compressed for size:



Ignoring the fact that the fanart poster is vertically squished rather than properly cropped (undoubtedly a side effect of the non-standard aspect ratio required for posters here), the 2000x3000 version is still in a different league of quality and the difference in file size is negligible. With the example above you gain 76% more pixels with only a 24% larger file. That's roughly a 420% increase in image quality for a mere 210 KB. Hell, you could keep the current file size caps in effect for the new resolution if you wanted. Easily doable.

Having that many pixels available also allows you to not have to use such severely crushed blacks to make the background colors blend correctly. You can actually have high quality posters with accurate RGB levels! What an era we live in.

Anyway, my point is that 4k TV's are coming and they're coming sooner than you think. At least here in the United States. I know we have people from all over the globe here... but they'll all be getting them sooner or later too. Fanart.tv really needs to add a new "UHD Posters" section like you did with the ClearLogos. If you insist on being different with the aspect ratio then 2000x2852 would be the 4k equivalent of 1000x1426. I certainly hope you join the rest of the industry and switch over to 1:1.5 though.

[Nopealope]

More examples...













(lol)

[Kode]

When would you display a poster bigger than 2/3 the height of the screen (713/1080)? It's an interesting question though, maybe we should drop the section completely if somewhere else is doing it better than we are, I don't know, we'll discuss it internally.

[Nopealope]

When would you display a poster bigger than 2/3 the height of the screen (713/1080)? It's an interesting question though, maybe we should drop the section completely if somewhere else is doing it better than we are, I don't know, we'll discuss it internally.

The movie pre-roll screen in Plex is what was bothering me:



Anyway, please keep in mind that in the examples above I opened the TMDB posters in Photoshop and then manually re-saved them with higher levels of compression. The fanart images were just re-uploaded with no changes. The default posters on TMDB can sometimes be huge... so I wouldn't really say they're doing posters "better" than fanart.tv. They're doing them in higher quality, but I can't rely on them for automated scraping. It still takes some manual input on my end to make the images useable.

My desire for fanart.tv is for it to support higher resolution posters but with file size caps still strictly enforced.

Oh, and in your discussions please don't forget to touch on 4k backgrounds! You're gonna need those too.

[ArieS]

Fair enough. Send me a 4K TV and I'll do some testing

[Nopealope]

Fair enough. Send me a 4K TV and I'll do some testing

I'll save you the trouble! The 2000x3000 posters look better.

[leepenny]

I think for newer/popular posters finding poster in a good size is easy (damn, these days I can find banners/artwork 12000 pixels wide for new movies) - for older posters the search becomes more difficult - 1000x1426 is an 'optimum' size whereby even good examples of old/difficult movie posters can be found - (its hard enough as it stands to find good examples of movie posters from the first half of the 20th century - at the proposed size it may - even would - be nigh on impossible for lesser movies) - I'm sure in the future a larger range of higher resolution type posters will be available but at this time there arent the resources out there to fulfill what you would need. Im not saying it won't be proposed in the future but at this point in time it is still IMHO early days