Low quality pdfs from TNA

**Franek Grabowski** · 24th November 2020, 00:26

Gents
I have downloaded immediate post war ORBs of No 249 Sqn. The quality of the file is so low, that it is completely unreadable at times, an effect of jpeg compression. I think I should ask for replacement file. Does anyone experienced that before?

**highgroundsman** · 24th November 2020, 08:01

Hello Franek,

This has happened with me on at least 5 occasions. I informed TNA straight away and they rescanned the files for me, it took them around 4-6 weeks,
unfortunately with the the pandemic and limited staff it might take longer to get your files now.

Regards
Dave.

**wwrsimon** · 24th November 2020, 10:08

It's happened to me a few times, and as Dave recommends, drop them an e-mail (or contact them via the 'Live Chat' function if that's available) and they'll get them rescanned. Timings may vary, of course!

Regards

Simon

**ColFord** · 24th November 2020, 22:52

TNA have been advised that there is a block of ORB scans where the setting that have been used to reduce the PDF file size has consequently led to the PDF versions they have linked online to suffer from pixelllation, block artifacts and other issues, basically making them unreadable. ORBs in the range 220 to 250. They have checked the original scans which were used to produce the PDFs and they are quite legible. There are one or two instances where the original scans were not best quality (originals were not good quality) and they will retry and rescan those to provide a slightly better scan. So it is a process of having to recompile the original scans into new PDFs with the proper settings to be provided online. Naturally enough given the restrictions due to Covid-19, this will delay the compiling of the new PDFs and rescanning. If you have identified any with this issue you have downloaded, contact TNA and they will add those to the list and resend them to you when they are done - useful if you have been making good use of the free downloads currently, or worse still if you had paid for them earlier.

**PNK** · 25th November 2020, 11:21

The original scans can be accessed, for a large subscription, via The Genealogist. Only really worth it if you want to view a lot of ORBs though. We had a short sub to it and the quality was good but there were plenty where the originals were very poor. We may consider another subscription next year but my wife has quite a few genealogy subscriptions and spending currently over £500 per annum on all online subscriptions makes it hard to justify, especially as TNA is currently free!

**Franek Grabowski** · 25th November 2020, 15:13

Thanks guys for comments. I am perfectly aware of various quality issues of ORBs further increased by microfilming. Nonetheless in this case it is definitely a problem of a macro or algorithm used, applying way to much compression to the pictures. It is totally blurred. I shall contact TNA staff, fortunately no hurry on this one.

**davidmsims** · 27th November 2020, 19:10

I've had this with 226 ORB's - just request a rescan

There is NOTHING wrong with the source material - they just applied too much compression

They (the management) tried to blame the age of the source but them I showed them older material scanned with a proper scanner and they went very quiet

**ColFord** · 2nd December 2020, 22:45

All, as an example, a file I downloaded from TNA which had the file compression issues resulting in the pixellation and block artifacts had an original file size of 13Mbs. The new file, beautifully crisp images, easy to read, tops out just a tad under 100Mbs. These are files I originally advised TNA of issue back in late May, but due to the various shut downs and limited operations, they have only been able to get to now. Well worth the wait. The turn around on a couple of small sized files with the same original issue has been a bit quicker.

Regards,