JPEG CD compatibility

 

I have made a regular CD with a number of JPEG images in different resolutions just to see if the player can recognize images in different resolutions. I started out with a JPEG picture at 1600x1200 pixels and converted it to the following resolutions:

bullet 2000 x 1500
bullet 1600 x 1200 (no conversion needed here)
bullet 1536 x 1024 (standard Kodak Picture CD format for 35 mm film)
bullet 1536 x 864 (standard Kodak Picture CD format for APS film)
bullet 1280 x 960
bullet 1024 x 768
bullet 800 x 600
bullet 640 x 480
bullet 400 x 300
bullet 320 x 240
bullet 200 x 150
bullet 160 x 120
bullet 100 x 75
bullet 80 x 60

I had to crop the 1536 x 1024 and 1536 x 864 a bit to preserve the aspect ratio.

I also made a 640 x 480 progressive JPEG to see if the player could show progressive JPEG.

This is the picture I started with (but this is in a much lower resolution, click on the picture if you want to see the original one (1.9MB)).

When I played the JPEG CD in the NorthQ, I first got into a navigation menu:

In the navigation menu I have to choose which picture I want to start with.

I choused "01_2000X1500" and the slide show started. Each picture is displayed about five seconds, and you can pause or press "NEXT" at any time. Here is what I got on the TV:

2000 x 1500 pixels
1600 x 1200 pixels
1536 x 1024 pixels (standard Kodak Picture CD format for 35 mm film)
1536 x 864 pixels (standard Kodak Picture CD format for APS film)
1280 x 960 pixels
1024 x 768 pixels
800 x 600 pixels
640 x 480 pixels
400 x 300 pixels
320 x 240 pixels
200 x 150 pixels
160 x 120 pixels
100 x 75 pixels
80 x 60 pixels
640 x 480 progressive JPEG.  I took this screenshot during the drawing of the picture to the screen. You can easily see the "progressive" part here. First the picture is very blocky, and then it gets better and better.

The result looked as the 640 x 480 pixels picture above, but it took a while to get there.

The result of this test shows that the NorthQ player seems to read any format of JPEG pictures, and resizes them to fit the TV screen (except really small images).

It can also read progressive JPEG pictures without any problems, even if it takes much longer for it to display them on the TV.

I don't know which resolution that produces the best output, but I guess that if you go higher than 800 x 600, you wont see any difference in the picture quality. It's not really fair to compare the images above, since they are all at half resolution, and have passed a PC-TV card and an extra JPEG compression on the way to this web page. But they give you an idea of what to expect.

I also made a multi-session JPEG CD, and the player had no problem whatsoever to read pictures from all sessions, even if the CD wasn't "closed" (if you "close" a multi-session CD, you cannot write to again).

If you would like to burn your own CD's with JPEG-pictures so they start showing the pictures without you having to go through the "SmartNAVI" menu, do like this:

  1. Start your favorite CD burning software.
  2. Create a directory called "pictures".
  3. Put all your JPEG images in the "pictures" directory you just made.
  4. Take this file an put in the root directory of the CD (an ordinary text-file with one line, "Disc = KODAK PICTURE CD" in it). The file must be named "info.cd".
  5. Burn your CD.

That's it! When you insert the CD in the NorthQ DVD-player, it will automatically start showing the pictures on the CD.

 

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