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iScreensaver Forums
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Author
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Topic: Gradient Clipping
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mgilvey
Junior Member Posts: 13
Registered: Jan 2003
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posted 01-12-2003 09:36 AM
  
Greetings,
In my haste to construct my first screen saver, I neglected to read much of anything, particulary the messages on this board. Now that I've read them, I'm not sure I've done anything wrong. Let me give you the skivvy.PROBLEM: iScreensaver appears to be clipping a gradient that is in my presentation. SETUP Photoshop:
I decided to target 17" monitors (1024 x 768) but to save on file size I scaled them down to 800 x 600 figuring there wouldn't be that big a difference. The images are 800 x 600 @ 72 dpi saved as JPEG Quality 12—they look perfect. Flash MX:
I constructed a slide show from scratch at 800 x 600 @ 1fps with the photos spanning 5 frames each (5 seconds each). The SWF was published with JPEG Quality 100 and targeting the Flash 3 Player. The file was saved as a native MX fla file. I looked at the SWF through Flash Player (version 6) on my 17" monitor and it looked terrific, even at full screen. iScreensaver:
I tried both Exact sizing and Proportional settings and I get the same result. You can see the difference on the following page (btw, it might be nice if I could just attach the image to this post so it would always be available for folks to look at—would that be possibel in the future?):
http://www.t-i-w.com/downloads/GradientClipping.jpg The image on the left is a screen shot of the SWF played full screen, the one on the right is the final iScreensaver version. Got any clues? ------------------
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Have an AWESOME
day!
Mark Gilvey IP: Logged |
iScreensaver Support
Administrator Posts: 602
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted 01-12-2003 10:02 AM
Mark,
Great post! It's nice to have all the details presented so clearly.To my eye, the difference between the right and left images are that the one on the left is 24 bit and the one on the right is being displayed at 16 bit. Technically, our software uses QuickTime to play back the Flash Movies. In general, this results in identical functionality, but in some cases there are very suble differences. The general rule of thumb is that if iScreensaver should play back your SWF file exactly as it would play IN THE QUICKTIME PLAYER. So, I'd suggest this: try playing your SWF file in QuickTime Player, and see if you have the same results. If so, it means that you may have found a bug in QuickTime. If not, it is possible that it's a bug in our software although I'm skeptical because we pretty much just use the generic QuickTime movie player... Let us know what you find! IP: Logged |
mgilvey
Junior Member Posts: 13
Registered: Jan 2003
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posted 01-12-2003 02:43 PM
This is bazaro! I opened the SWF (again, that particular image looks fine when played with Flash Player) in QuickTime and it looks just like it does in iScreensaver.What's that tell us? I think the short answer may be to use a different image that doesn't have such a subtle gradient or adjust this one so it works. But that's the short answer I want to know what you think. Just in case you'd like to play with it, I put the original raster image at:
http://www.t-i-w.com/downloads/8x6EPbyMG003.jpg Keep me toasted. P.S. Thanks for the compliment ;-) Mark ------------------
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Have an AWESOME
day!
Mark Gilvey IP: Logged |
mgilvey
Junior Member Posts: 13
Registered: Jan 2003
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posted 01-12-2003 05:37 PM
I took the short road and adjusted the image so the gradient wasn't so subtle, problem resolved. Now what if I have a screensaver containging white objects on a white background? It will clip again right?IP: Logged |
iScreensaver Support
Administrator Posts: 602
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted 01-12-2003 05:51 PM
Mark, one thing to consider is that many users don't have the quality machine, or quality of vision that you have. Remember that no matter how good you make you saver, there will be people running it on old monitors set to Thousands of colors, slow computers, ancient versions of QuickTime, etc.. Also, unfortuantely the dithering algorithms under many versions of Windows are really poor (this is one of our design reasons for using QuckTime, as it tends to equialize the performance across Mac & windows) but only to a degree.Therefore, although it helps to be a perfectionist in the design stage, one must have a Zen-like appreciation of the fact that it just "ain't gonna look perfect" on some people's computers, and that fact is out of your control. IP: Logged |
mgilvey
Junior Member Posts: 13
Registered: Jan 2003
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posted 01-12-2003 06:08 PM
Man, I wish people would use that kind of logice when building web sites as well, it would save me from having to jump through a lot of hoops.Thank for your help. IP: Logged | |
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