iTunes 9.1.1 and artwork
in [UK Mac]
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From: Rowland McDonnell on 11 May 2010 19:57 So here's me, trying to attach a picture of a Vincent Black Lightning[1] to my copy of Richard Thomson's `1952 Vincent Black Lightning'. What I see displayed using the various iTunes views of attached artwork looks low-res and/or badly anti-aliased. Okay, so test to see if something's gone wrong with the transfer of data from `downloaded image' to `applied to the track in iTunes'. How to test? I copied the image attached in iTunes by Get Info -> Artwork and copying the image I saw there (after putting a totally different image in the paste buffer to confirm that this step functioned). `Open new image using Clipboard' in GraphicConverter shows me what I copied from iTunes. Lo and behold, what I get is the full resolution image as downloaded from: <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/VINCENT_Black_Lightn ing.jpg>. But as displayed in iTunes, it's ropey. Does anyone have a clue what's going on and what might be done about it? Rowland. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry about this, but I get enthusiastic when I meet Vincents. One used to be parked up on the street down the road from me when I was young - on summer's weekends, you'd often see it. Black and chrome and shiny and lust-provoking. Smelt hot too, some of the times I passed - not being parked outside just for pose value, then. [1] If I had one, I'd give it modern brakes and modern suspension improvements. And a modern fuel filter[2]. And possibly modern wheels so I could use modern tyres. And then I'd *have* to fit a supercharger and nitrous oxide injection so I could run away from the Vincent Owners Club members trying to hunt me down and kill me. [2] Anyone else see Richard Hammond run into a problem in that line on Top Gear? - riding a Vincent Black Shadow[3] IIRC. [3] The Black Lightning is basically a Black Shadow with go-faster mods. REAL go-faster mods, for serious racing or just going bloody fast. I'm not sure I'd want 150mph on a bike with brakes like that. They were considered good brakes in the 1950s, compared to other 1950s motorcycle brakes[4]... [4] I had a 1970s Iron Curtain two-stroke with a better front brake than the monster in the picture. No, really - a twin leading shoe drum, about the same size and so better[5], and it actually turned off properly when you let go of the lever. Huh? Read up on Vincent brakes. The bikes are magnificent, but not without a few flaws. [5] The Vincent brake illustrated is the usual Vincent two-sided single leading shoe (sls) front brake; so while it's actually got two leading shoes, because each side is one leading shoe only, it counts as `two sls brakes' rather than as a twin leading shoe (tls) brake. They're bloody wide drums, mind, so they're two proper-sized sls brakes at the front, but tls is better all other things being equal. My CZ braked like it was hitting a brick wall during my ownership[6], although that did take weekly maintenance (clean out the dust and re-adjust the shoe balance). Since my riding style (and hence life) depends on having brakes that really work, I did the maintenance. [6] When it was all sweet, I could pull a stoppie in the right conditions. Pretty damned astonishing on a 1970s Iron Curtain 125 and I'm pretty sure you can't do it on a stock Vincent. The CZ brake[7] was meant to be good enough to halt the 350 twin with side car, and I had the single cylinder 125. [7] Yeah, just the one design. All CZ's road motorcycle wheels were identical. You got front or rear fitment or tls or sls brake depending on the plate that went over the side - holding the shoes, actuators, torque reaction fitment (CZ had an odd arrangement), etc. One design of brake shoe needed, one design of brake cam, etc., etc. (The casting was marked `CZ Jawa Desta'. Desta did forklift trucks IIRC, but I might be mistaken. I assume that the Czech authorities ran CZ/Jawa/Desta as a single concern with multiple brands.) So one set of tooling does for all front and rear wheels on all motorcycle designs. Which is practical when the range is nothing but utilitarian two-strokes ranging from 125cc single to 350cc twin. The CZ moped originated with a different firm and I think they always made it in a different factory - anyway, totally different line of development and manufacture. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Peter Ceresole on 12 May 2010 04:10 Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > Lo and behold, what I get is the full resolution image as downloaded > from: > > <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/VINCENT_Black_Lightn > ing.jpg>. > > But as displayed in iTunes, it's ropey. I'm not sure what you did, but I copied the image for which you gave a url, using Cmd-Shift F4 and select, to produce a .png. Dropped that onto the picture space for a tune in iTunes 9.1.1, OS 10.4.11. It displays full rez in iTunes when I click on the thumbnail- the way they all do. This may be another round in your struggle with 10.6? -- Peter
From: Rowland McDonnell on 12 May 2010 14:36 Peter Ceresole <peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > Lo and behold, what I get is the full resolution image as downloaded > > from: > > > > <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/VINCENT_Black_Lightn > > ing.jpg>. > > > > But as displayed in iTunes, it's ropey. > > I'm not sure what you did, but I copied the image for which you gave a > url, using Cmd-Shift F4 and select, to produce a .png. Dropped that onto > the picture space for a tune in iTunes 9.1.1, OS 10.4.11. You are sure what I did: I downloaded the original file - as I mentioned above (you kept that part of my original post in place above). > It displays full rez in iTunes when I click on the thumbnail- the way > they all do. Except, of course, that we have previously established that is not the case. We have established the need for file drag-drop since copy-paste often fails to provide a full-res image. > This may be another round in your struggle with 10.6? I think it's more likely that my eyes are better than yours, and that what you call `full rez' is what I call a ropey version possibly due to iTunes doing antialiasing the bad way. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Peter Ceresole on 12 May 2010 14:54 Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > Except, of course, that we have previously established that is not the > case. We have established the need for file drag-drop since copy-paste > often fails to provide a full-res image. You speak for yourself. In this case the copied image is of excellent quality. But I repeated it your way. Works perfectly in iTunes 9.1.1, just as before. Looks very similar too. So I still don't know what's going wrong except for your ongoing battle with 10.6.3. -- Peter
From: Rowland McDonnell on 12 May 2010 17:24
Peter Ceresole <peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > Except, of course, that we have previously established that is not the > > case. We have established the need for file drag-drop since copy-paste > > often fails to provide a full-res image. > > You speak for yourself. In this case the copied image is of excellent > quality. Is there any way you can put a screenshot up for me to see for myself? > But I repeated it your way. Works perfectly in iTunes 9.1.1, just as > before. Looks very similar too. What do you mean by that? The image I see is - as far as I can make out by peering closely at my 1920x1200dpi 24" LCD iMac's screen - suffering from particularly bad anti-aliasing when displayed here by iTunes. My eyes are quite a lot younger than yours and almost certainly better. Graphic Converter does particularly good anti-aliasing - but when I turn Graphic Converter's anti-aliasing off and shrink the Graphic Converter-displayed version down to the size displayed by iTunes, it looks perfect in comparision. So it's not that. The Vincent is displayed at much less than optimum resolution for some reason - quite unlike other artwork I've added using the same method with iTunes 9 and MacOS X 10.6. > So I still don't know what's going wrong except for your ongoing battle > with 10.6.3. Peter, there is no on-going battle with 10.6.3. I have no idea where you get these ideas from. To put things in perspective, I've had trouble getting artwork into iTunes before now - the last trouble, using iTunes v<recent> on MacOS X 10.6.Iforget, was resolved by someone suggesting that I drag-and-drop the file rather than going via the clipboard, because the clipboard route was buggy. And so it came to pass that I learnt how to avoid a bug in MacOS X 10.6. This is different - it's a new problem Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking |