Preferred artwork with downloads

[Caroline]

Hello
I would like to find out a bit more about what your preferred formats are for artwork that is available with downloads. Some of you like to have the booklet in print layout, some in web layout and it would probably be a good thing to have a layout that is better for PDAs too. We want to improve what we offer at linnrecords.com and your help with this is much appreciated!

Thanks
Caroline
Linn Records

[TomBK]

Caroline Wrote:Hello
I would like to find out a bit more about what your preferred formats are for artwork that is available with downloads. Some of you like to have the booklet in print layout, some in web layout and it would probably be a good thing to have a layout that is better for PDAs too. We want to improve what we offer at linnrecords.com and your help with this is much appreciated!

Thanks
Caroline
Linn Records

Hi Caroline

What an offer...Letting us in on this...

But totally in line with your/The Linn Teams effort of making this Community stay alive!

My most recent download was "He never mentioned love (Claire Martin)", a wonderful piece.

As for the artwork formats, Cover, Inlay and Sleeve artwork in jpg format, not as png.

Twonky won't accept pngs and for people not used to working with digitized images, saving from png to jpg might be too big a challenge together with having to learn this whole DS thing in the first place.

If cover art should be embedded or not...depends on many factors and I would prefer to hear comments from other users if this should be the standard. I wouldn't mind if it was, but again as jpg not png...

As for the Booklet I would prefer if it was kept at maximum quality. If some would like a web layout and I understand this as being a low resolution image, then just have both. It's easier downscaling a highres image than...and those wanting specific types of layouts should have the knowledge of doing this themselves.

Having said this I just want to add that apart from the file formats, your artwork is great! Nice, clean, crisp and clear images. Just keep them like this and you can't go wrong.

Thanks for listening

Tom

[Caroline]

Hi Tom
Thanks for the feedback. To be honest, I don't know what the best solution is, so all feedback is helpful. Have you found it possible to amend the artwork to a folder.jpg on a mac?

I too would be interested to hear more from people about embedded artwork and whether this is a good thing or not!

Thanks
Caroline

[rowlandhills]

One comment from me is that while I like to have front cover artwork as a JPG, anything which is multi-page (such as lyrics etc.) I'd much prefer to have in PDF.

[Manelus]

rowlandhills Wrote:One comment from me is that while I like to have front cover artwork as a JPG, anything which is multi-page (such as lyrics etc.) I'd much prefer to have in PDF.

JPG + PDF seems good to me too

[Briain]

Hi Caroline

Embedded or not:
That's a tricky question to answer as there are a few variables to ponder. Earler versions of Twonky worked best with separate Folder.jpg files only (with no embedded art) and using all embedded art caused a few problems. It seems, from what I've been told, that the later versions of Twonky 4 work well with embedded art only, but I've not tried them to find out for myself. Twonky 5 is not yet ready for the vast majority of users but I use it myself and works very well with embedded art. I don't know about Asset UPnP but Spoon might well jump in and add some comments to this post about Asset UPnP and its art capabilities/operation.

Art size:
Either way, you have to consider the art size and that's another thorny issue as everybody will have a different opinion on that one! Maybe you should have a chat with the R&D team about how art size will impact on things like CaraKinskyPDA going forward?

Personal preference:
I have decided to rescale all my embedded art to 160x160 pixels as the early version of Twonky 5 resized them to that size anyway (it didn't rescale and any other size of art looked very pixelated after resizing). The newer version of Twonky 5 is just out and it does enable other resolutions of art to be sent to the control point, but I havent tried it yet, I don't know how the latest Linn control points will be designed to handle different art resolutions and thus I don't know of the implications on having art at higher resolutions (this applies to both Folder.jpg and embedded art). I'd guess this will depend on what the media server serves to the control point and also how this impacts on the control point display speed when browsing a lot of albums (I would expect that KinskyDesktop would be great, but that for KinskyPDA, Windows Mobile solution is maybe the limiting factor; again, maybe speak to Davidd and Rockfather for a heads up on where things are heading as David was talking about a Windows Mobile patch to help it deal with quantity and will thus likely be familiar with its capabilities at handling quality vs speed as well).

Hope that helps, but probably not as I've presented you with more questions than answers!

Bri

PS I'd vote for the PDF notes as well.

[TomBK]

Caroline Wrote:Have you found it possible to amend the artwork to a folder.jpg on a mac?

Hi Caroline

The process of changing/saving the artwork from pngs to jpgs is very easy, on Macs as well as on pcs, if you know how to...any built in image viewer will do the trick. But someone not used to working with computers or e.g. people like my father, who's in his 70s will be better off with artwork that just shows straight after download. This issue might probably only be a Twonky one, I'm not sure, but most of us here rely on Twonky, that's why for the time being jpgs would be better as artwork format.

My thoughts on embedded art are the chance of choosing the wrong file type...at the moment it's jpgs but what if this changes? Would be a nuisance to reembed an entire music collection if fashion changes.
Some media servers might depend on embedded art, some might won't show art if embedded!
Just my thoughts...Don't know enough about different players/media servers to really make a stand here...

I can only agree with rowlandhills and Manelus that pdf is the preferred format for multi-page layouts, just like you have them today.

I'll be more than happy to answer any questions you might have on the subject...

Cheers

Tom

Edit related to Bri's post: TwonkyMedia 4.4.11 works fine with these combinations of artwork:
- Embedded both with and without a Folder.jpg file.
- With only a Folder.jpg file in the Album folder.