Something has changed recently. I can no longer post an Xbox screenshot to the forum due to a 5MB size limit.
This has made it a massive headache for anyone trying to do so. What am I supposed to do?
• Take screenshot
• Upload to OneDrive
• Download screenshot onto a computer running Photoshop
• Alter the image size/quality to get it to 5MB or less
• Upload the screenshot to the forum
For one, I no longer have Photoshop. Two, I use my iPad for 99% of my Internet use, I have limited photo editing tools on my iPad. Three, I’m spending my volunteer time here beta testing this product. Posting screenshots is a major part of communicating issues for the team. I do not want to spend my time editing screenshots to post them here.
This is massively frustrating. Microsoft cannot afford the server space to allow us to post screenshots from an Xbox?
I can understand a maximum size limit for photographs. What I do find disappointing is the fact that the resolution was limited to 1920 x 1080 more than a year ago. I take screenshots in 4K that are saved in PNG format. I always convert them to JPG because PNG files are ridiculously large: a 4K Flight Simulator screenshot can be over 10MB while a VERY good quality JPG of the same image is typically just over 1MB. I can actually reduce the JPG in size to LESS than 1MB by increasing the compression somewhat while still retaining excellent quality.
This is a 3840 x 2160 image saved at 80% JPG quality which is 1.38MB on my computer
This retains the size of 366KB. I really do not understand the logic behind all this: I would appreciate some clarification please. I do believe good quality 4K images really showcase the strengths of the sim
I took at look at the settings - nothing has been changed recently as the 5K limit has been in place for a few years now. This forum is full of images, so the limit is necessary in order to keep the forums running smoothly. I will reach out to the web team to see if this is something we are okay to increase. Thank you!
Thanks Jayne. As mentioned: I completely understand and fully support the 5MB size limit. My request is to allow 3840x2160. i.e. 4K RESOLUTION files as it is possible to have very good images at this higher resolution with files that are way smaller than 5MB.
I just noticed this for the first time last night. Never met a size limit before. It does seem something has changed. Since photos and videos are often used for diagnostic purposes I hope we aren’t losing quality we need.
Did the forum software used to automagically scale down uploaded images? I looked at the last image I posted here:
If I tap on the screenshot the forum says it is 140KB, yet the screenshot in my OneDrive is shown as 10.4MB. Unless that 140KB is the keyframe size. Either way, I was able to upload said 10.4MB screenshot 3 days ago, but cannot now.
You can also upload the image to a pic share site like Flikr or any of several others. From there, use the share button and look for the BBCode option. Copy and paste that into the forum and you’ll be able to post at whatever resolution you have stored on the site. It ends up looking like this:
I get that that may be an option, but I don’t understand how three days ago I was able to post the same sized screenshots that I’ve been doing since ‘21 and now I cannot.
If you’re capturing in jpg format, there’s a not-so-well-kept secret. The more complex the image is, the larger the file size, even if they’re the same pixel count. I’ll give you two examples below from my current collection, captured by the GeForce Experience screenshooter so they have the same compression properties. Both are 3480x2160 (16:9 4K), but the first one is nearly 51% larger on the disk:
If you want to control compression yourself, you can go online and look for a program originally written by Matthias Holzer called FSScreen. It has a very small footprint when running, and to take a screenshot, you simply press the PrtScrn (Print Screen) button. If you’re running multiple monitors, use Alt+PrtScrn. When you do that, the program takes what Windows just put into the system clipboard and pulls it out into 24-bit .bmp format in the same folder that the app is running from. I still have the copy of the application that I downloaded to use with FS2004 running on Windows XP. It runs perfectly in Windows 11. Since the files are saved in 24-bit format, they’re 24 bits per pixel, or three bytes per pixel. This means that one file at 16x9 4K resolution is 24,301 KB (regardless of content). After your flight, you can use any photo editor you like to open the files and convert them to png, jpg, or whatever you like. (Gimp is an excellent freeware alternative to Photoshop.) Depending on the format, you can control the compression rate to save detail or reduce file size.
I’m using an Xbox, which I stated more than once here.
I don’t want to come across as ungrateful — I truly appreciate you trying to help.
Unfortunately, the Xbox generates screenshots at a fixed size. Short of me doing a bunch of extra work to reduce their size, I’m stuck with whatever size they are.
Dangit - missed that. I’ll still leave the reply for others that might need the info. As for captures in the console, I wish I could tell you more. Still, converting from jpg to png in something like Gimp may help.
And I’ll also post a correction - The GeForce Experience captures in png format, not jpg, although the file size variance is still there. Essentially, more complexity means a larger file if there’s any type of compression.
Check to see if there is a setting in the console that lets you adjust the quality/compression level in the built-in shooter.
I will second this. I recently posted in another thread a screenshot of my in-game cockpit hoping others could figure out what settings I might have incorrectly set. Well, there’s a lot of fine detail that is difficult to see because the forum downsized my 3440x1440 shot where everything is clear, down to 804 vertical res and only ~200kb. Difficult to read guages, switches etc.
It has been suggested that linking to a photo hosting site is one way of showing full 4K images. This is a test of that functionality and comparison to forum hosting image:
Thank you so much for looking into a solution to this for us!
I still cannot upload. The size constraint is still an issue. It’s now stating 6.9MB as the limit.
Any idea as to why this suddenly became an issue if the forum always had the size restriction in place? I cannot for the life of me make sense of why the sudden inability to do as I’ve always done when posting screenshots. I promise you, I’ve changed nothing and am doing nothing differently on my end.
