Orientation of Photos-Apple TV

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Level 1

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Orientation of Photos-Apple TV

Concerning correctly displaying photos on ATV, I have recently noticed that even though my pictures have been rotated correctly on my Windows PC using photo software, they do not display in the corrected orientation on ATV. All of my older pictures are fine, but I recently purchased a new digital SLR and the trouble began. I have tried re-saving and re-syncing to no avail.

Very perplexing and of course, renders the ATV useless for slide shows or picture viewing. BTW-It appears all my older photos and photos not shot using the Canon or Iphone are oriented correctly. Any ideas?

DETAILS: I have a new Canon D40 and have observed this problem. I used my photo software to make sure the photos were correctly oriented and then re-saved them. I re-sync'd the ATV. I did this numerous time. I also have the same problem with the Iphone pictures I have loaded. All pictures look fine on the computer. But appear sideways on the ATV.

Homemade, Windows XP

Posted on Mar 20, 2008 6:33 AM

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Answer 1

xnav

Level 5

7,089 points

Mar 20, 2008 8:35 AM in response to jayground

The attribute indicating the image is rotated is stored in exif metadata. Canon has many unique metadata tags and it's possible that the TV does not read them all correctly, but your PC software does. [This tool|http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/index.html] allows you to dump all the metadata. I suggest that you compare a rotated file that works with one that does not.

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Answer 2

jsnod

Level 1

9 points

Mar 20, 2008 11:51 AM in response to jayground

This is a known issue, and Apple has a fix posted here

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305236

HOWEVER, that fix is Mac/iPhoto specific. It is useless for me. I have the same issues, however I use Picasa on WinXP for my photo management. I agree with the previous poster, Apple probably just needs to improve the AppleTV's EXIF parsing because there are a lot of variations out there based on app.

The weird thing is that some photos are displayed correctly, and some are not. I haven't researched enough into whether it's based on Camera model, or which application rotated it (Picasa, Photoshop, WinXP Browser, etc..)

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Answer 3

fnc

Level 1

8 points

Mar 20, 2008 4:13 PM in response to jsnod

Some photo cataloging software saves the rotation in the catalog and does not change the exif data of the photo. You may have rotated the photo in Picasa and it views correctly there but it will not be rotated in other photo software.
Modern digital cameras sense the orientation of the camaera and seta value in the exif data to indicate upright or horizontal. This can be fooled if the camera is held at an angle.
I use ACDSee and it has the capability to change this EXIF setting. Note that this is different to rotating and saving a photo. The first method only chages a flag, the second method re-writes the image and there is some quality loss. Do a Google search on loss free jpeg rotation. There is a list of loss frre capable software.

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Answer 4

jsnod

Level 1

9 points

Mar 20, 2008 4:17 PM in response to fnc

Picasa rotates the file, re-saves it, and saves a backup for you. Furthermore, images edited in Picasa and opened in other programs have the rotations preserved. Except for AppleTV.

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Answer 5

fnc

Level 1

8 points

Mar 20, 2008 4:42 PM in response to jsnod

If Picasa resaves the file after rotation, is it possible that the EXIF rotation flag was not updated and ATV rotates it again? Only a guess!

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