Apple TV (2nd Gen) screensaver photo shuffle

I tried the suggestion to put photos into an album and then use that album for a random screen saver.

It doesn't work!

My 4 star or better smart folder has almost 2,000 photos spanning a decade. After watching the screensaver on and off for an hour its obvious that there is some randomness. It is also obvious that the screensaver is only using a small subset of the photos in the album and that the subset used is not at all random : there are a lot from 2005 that show up in what seems like random order but none of my older or more recent photos are showing up on the screensaver.

There is clearly a problem here that isn't solved by limiting the screensaver to a single photo album.

Time to go to the Apple feedback link...

Putting a limited number of photos into a special folder is not really viable option. If I didn't want to see any photo I wouldn't keep it in the first place. The juxtaposition of very old photos with very recent ones, and everything in between, was a star attraction of ATV 1.

As for putting full resolution photos on the cloud - has anyone looked at their upload speed lately? It would take for ever and use lots of bandwidth every time I used them - and don't even start about putting lower resolution photos up there - If I wanted 2 megapixel quality I would have saved a lot of money and bought a 2 megapixel camera in the first place! Come on Apple, you can do much better than this. ATV 2 is a big backward step.

Add me to the list. I have to admit feeling a bit ripped off by this feature not functioning properly, it's one of the main reasons i bought the ATV in the first place. What really annoys me is that it's a such an obvious problem that there is simply no way that Apple couldnt have known about it, but they release it anyway. It's something an airline would pull.

Having "upgraded" from an ATV1, I'm also disappointed with the photo shuffling for all the above reasons.

If the ATV can randomly shuffle music, then why not use the same process to shuffle photos properly LIVE. I really don't mind if the little light on my router flashes as the ATV2 accesses photos as they're required. Just cache a few so you can build the transitions properly, and hey, if I decide to max out my wireless, just cycle through the few photos you have until you can get more.

Yes.. I'm brilliant. (Waiting by the phone for the job offer from apple).

Add me to this growing list of complaints. I think this is a pretty craparse feature to have.

Surely if the ATV can stream songs in random order, it can stream photos? If there isn't enough room in the ATV2 to do it, then can't they just build it in as a feature to iTunes &/or iPhoto?

I'm noticing the same thing... always just old photos, iPhone photos.. could be resolution thing I mean those photos were taken years ago with much older camera. Anyone know how to complain/send feedback? Any fixes yet? I guess wait for an update...

Msalib,
I don't think it has anything to do with photo resolution. Thinking this may only be a problem with large photo collections, I linked my ATV2 to an Aperture Album that only contains about 2100 images from a recent trip I took to Tanzania. The first time the screen saver came on it used about 20% of the photos, all from the first part of the trip. The last couple days (I've only had the ATV2 3 days), it again shows about 20% of the photos, but this time some are from a 2 day period in the middle of the trip and another portion are from a 1-2 day period near the end of the trip.

All photos were from the same Nikon 300 camera (thus, the same resolution), but it still only seems to cycle only a small percent of the photos. Also, it seems this problem is not caused only by large photo collections. I also have the original ATV and I loved the way it randomly selected from all the photos! I hate the way the ATV2 works!

I don't know how to send feedback for the ATV. Does anyone know how? I suggest we all let Apple know what we think!

Dave

We can leave feedback here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html

Cheers,

Sean

I sent feedback. Thanks for the link! Yeah I was just saying that cause my older photos were with an older camera with lower megapixels and it seems to focus on pics I took with my iPhone too which is lower resolution, but in any event it may have nothing at all to do with, just a hunch...

Same problem - annoying.
I'm using Vista. So my photos are in folders and in alphabetical order. I've noticed that it only seems to be pulling from the first few folders. For instance, Austin, Breckenridge, and BVI vacation pictures make the cut. But we never see pictures from St. Augustine.

This seems to be an issue based on the size of the photo library. I noticed the same problem. I was expecting the same behavior as with my 1st generation Apple TV, but instead it seemed only to use the first album I specified. I had about 6-7 GB of photos on my original Apple TV, and I think this one just can't handle all of that. I think it caches a certain amount for the screensaver, but it couldn't cache 7 GB and still be able to do other stuff.

It's aggravating, and I wish it had the ability to draw randomly from albums for the screensaver, but clearly it doesn't at this point. I ended up creating a special album on iPhoto with some "highlights" and that works fine. That seems to be the only workaround at this point. Either that or changing the screensaver album from time to time.

Add us to the list having the same issue. Have had Apple TV 2 (did not have the original version) for 24 hours and LOVE IT. But we noticed pretty quickly the heavy repetition of the same pictures on the screensaver. At first I thought I was overloading the system by having it pull from 3000+ photos, so I created a folder just for Apple TV with about 240 pictures in it, but it appears to be showing about 100 of those or so . . . over and over again. Will leave feedback w/ Apple too.

Hey, I have the same problem on my MacBook. I worked out that the Desktop Image settings in Preferences will only cache about 2100 images from any iPhoto selection - no matter how many photos are in that folder. And I have >100 GB free hard drive space! I suspect Finder based photo folders are OK, as it just takes the photos directly from that folder.

Having the same problem. Have about 11,000 photos. I rebuilt the iPhoto Library, set the Library to sort manually. It finally added new photos to my apple tv. only problem is that the same 25 out of 11,000 photos are rotating. VERY FRUSTRATING. Seems that the photos are being loaded and cached on the ATV.

I did find that if I set the slideshow to classic, i did get more photos to rotate, not many more, but more

Looks like a software/firmware update is in order

I have the same issue with around 15K photos in my collection. It is just for the screensaver - if I browse I can see all photos. This was one of the main reasons I bought it (to stream music and photos in the background).

Apart from this, I love my Apple TV. Everything else works brilliantly.