Upgraded software

[Ben41]

I'm not really sure, but the screenshots I've been uploading recently don't seem to be as sharp as they used to be, despite them being from Blu-ray sources. Has the quality of display been degraded to make the pages load faster?

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Ben41

I'm not really sure, but the screenshots I've been uploading recently don't seem to be as sharp as they used to be, despite them being from Blu-ray sources. Has the quality of display been degraded to make the pages load faster?

I noticed that, too, and I was going to ask you if there was a problem with your computer until I noticed that some other people's screenshots are also of surprisingly low quality.

[Ben41]

I thought maybe it was the new VLC player, but I uploaded some screenshots I had taken before to the Apocalypse Now page and it just doesn't look as sharp as it used to.

[bunni]

Originally Posted by Ben41

I thought maybe it was the new VLC player, but I uploaded some screenshots I had taken before to the Apocalypse Now page and it just doesn't look as sharp as it used to.

I have an idea of what that might be. Try them again and see if it's better now.

[Ben41]

I replaced some of the screenshots from BAR section and fake DShK section of Apocalypse Now and they appear to be much sharper than before. I also replaced some Person of Interest shots in the Heizer and FiveseveN sections. Thanks for fixing it. What was the difference?

[bunni]

Originally Posted by Ben41

I replaced some of the screenshots from BAR section and fake DShK section of Apocalypse Now and they appear to be much sharper than before. I also replaced some Person of Interest shots in the Heizer and FiveseveN sections. Thanks for fixing it. What was the difference?

Traditionally we had used php's built in image libraries to create the resized images that appear on the site. In working to improve the speed of the site I configured MediaWiki to instead use Imagemagick (an external linux application on the server) to take load off of the php engine. Unfortunately MediaWiki by default instructs Imagemagick to resize images with 80% quality instead of 100%. This lead to the poorer quality of images you were seeing.

I won't try that again until I can configure it to use 100% quality; then I'll have you test it out with some side by side comparisons to make sure we're not losing image quality.

[Excalibur]

So are we going to get the "recent changes" and "New articles" option back? Those were a step up from constantly scrolling through the "recent changes" screen