Image aspect ratios

[CharlesWiltgen]

There's nothing like good ol' square cover art, but shows and episodes often need images and other artwork for scenarios like social media sharing. At the show level, this might look something like:

    <image>
        <title>My Awesome Podcast</title>
        <url>https://mypodcast.com/cover-art.jpg</url>
        <link>https://mypodcast.com/</link>
        <sm:image-collection>
            <sm:image link="http://mypodcast.com/pinterest-pin.jpg" aspect="0.39" type="promo">
            <sm:image link="http://mypodcast.com/instagram.jpg" aspect="1" type="photo">
        </sm:image-collection>
    </image>

Social media image sizes change regularly, but specifying aspect ratios keeps this reasonably evergreen. The client can choose the image with the aspect ratio (and possibly type) that's best for the specific use case and fill as necessary. (1.91 is a Facebook shared link thumbnail image, 0.39 is Pinterest pin art, 1 is Instagram, etc.)

I can also imagine a target attribute that lets creators hint that an image is preferred for use with (for example) Facebook.

[farski]

Are there examples of any other sharable media supporting this kind of thing? I guess I can't remember a time when I had to define an aspect ratio for something, and that hasn't seemed to inhibit my ability to ever share anything on all sorts of social media.

[ziggythehamster]

Why not make <sm:images> a container of <media:content>s? Or, even easier, make the specification declare that <media:group> can be placed inside of <image> (this may break clients that do a search for the first media:group element inside of an item, though).

The aspect ratio can be calculated by dividing the width/height attributes, and the client can pick the most appropriate image.

[GluedToTheScreen]

content below moved from https://github.com/syndicated-media/sn-spec/issues/47

GluedToTheScreen--- The real answer would be to reference a SET

While hires images are good in cases where you're only viewing your own subscriptions or some limited list of recommended podcasts, and are absolutely necessary when the target display is BIG screen, there are cases where downloading smaller images is best... thumbnail images... hires would unnecessarily make the load much bigger. For example, scanning many SERIES images (perhaps hundreds).

PabloFernandezDelkader----

I mean, there’s obviously a need of high resolution images at level (hir-es screens in phones and big hi-res screens in tablets). Without asking for a modification of the RSS standard Apple got everyone of us to use a tag to fulfill that need. Podcachers parse it & creations tools integrate it in their feeds.

`

https://myURL.com/2.jpg http://myURL.com https://myURL.com/3.jpg http://myURL.com https://myURL.com/4.jpg http://myURL.com https://myURL.com/4.jpg http://myURL.com `