Another thing to remember - did you actually go in and look at what your scans looked like on the submission page?
I didn't used to, but I did once and was shocked at how differently it looked once it had been compressed by the contribution server.

Quoting Dr. Killpatient:

Quote:
Now with the relaxed image thresholds of 500x700 and 200,000 bytes (that's bytes, not to be confused with 200k), I do all of my image work outside of DVDP and save over the image before contributing.  No upload recompression then!

This is key and I tried it today with 2 scans I was contributing.  First I just did a copy/paste out of Photoshop into DVDP and checked the results.  The image was saved as a 90k file and in DVDPI could see lots of artifacting.  I then saved the file directly out of Photoshop at the maximum quality setting for JPG which resulted in a 180k file.  Then, instead of using DVDP I went into the images folder, found the 90k file, copied it's name, deleted it, and renamed the Photoshop file with the same name and placed it in the directory.  Then when I checked in DVDP.. a world of difference in quality.

Quoting Dr. Killpatient:

Quote:
Now with the relaxed image thresholds of 500x700 and 200,000 bytes (that's bytes, not to be confused with 200k), I do all of my image work outside of DVDP and save over the image before contributing.  No upload recompression then!

There's always upload recompression. Always. There continues (since day 1) to be huge amounts of misconception being perpetuated about this.

When you import an image into DVD Profiler, it is put into JPG format immediately after the profile is saved, so there is compression from the start. The compression factor can be adjusted in "File," "Adjust Compression" when you import the image. If you want to minimize this compression (which you always should, especially if you're contributing), you'll want to set this to 100.

When you contribute the profile, two things happen to the cover scans:

1) If the image is greater than 500 pixels wide or 700 pixels tall, the image is resized to a maximum of 500 pixels wide by 700 pixels tall, which ever keeps the other below that threshold.

2) The jpg is recompressed (yes, a second time) at a factor of 50%.

The best way to contribute:

If you work with Adobe Photoshop, resize your scan using "Bicubic Sharper" to either 500 pixels wide or 700 pixels tall (maintain aspect ratio), which ever keeps the other below threshold. Usually, you'll be entering 700 pixels for height, as 500 for width usually results in a height greater than 700. You should also specify 72 ppi as a standard, although "dpi" or "ppi" is meaningless when working with images on screen.

Next, save the file as a bitmap. This guarantees compatibility with DVD Profiler and insures an uncompressed image. If you save as a JPG at this point, you'll be recompressing the image three times.

Import the image into DVD Profiler, making sure that "File," "Adjust compression" is set to 100.

This insures that no resizing is done by DVD Profiler, and that the image is as minimally compressed as possible before the 50% compression rate is applied on upload.

Correct, no image recompression if you avoid DVDP for replacing the cover.  I verified this by checking my byte count before uploading and on the voting page.  Byte count was identical.  Thus, no recompression took place.

Grendell I have been saving directly to my Images file for about 4 or 5 years now. Always been the best way.

Skip

Quoting Grendell:

Quote:
That's different from what it used to be, they must have changed it. If you can save directly to the images folder with only one compression at just below 200K in file size, and if there's no longer a 50% jpg compression on uploading like there used to be, then that would be the superior way to do it. A bit of a pain, however, as DVD Profiler uses cryptic file names for the images.

The file names are cryptic. They are just the UPC with a F or B for front or back.

Quoting Grendell:

Quote:
A bit of a pain, however, as DVD Profiler uses cryptic file names for the images.

As they've said it just the UPC, maybe region and an 'f' or 'b'.

I snag the UPC from Profiler by highlighting the DVD in question, going to the DVD menu (DVD|Change UPC) where you can copy the UPC using a simple <Ctrl>C.

Disc IDs are more manual than that.  Mercifully they are the exception not the rule.

Or you can take the easy route and sort the images in the folder by date/time.  Then make a change in the profile to the images you intend to update and save the profile.  The 2 images you want to overwrite will jump to the top of the list and then you've got the files you want to overwrite.