Exporting Jpgs on a MAC to be viewable on TV

Hi Everyone,

I’ve run into this exact issue before when exporting JPGs from a Mac for digital signage! Macs sometimes add extra metadata or resource forks that confuse certain TVs, especially when the USB is formatted as APFS or exFAT. Try reformatting the USB to FAT32 (MS-DOS) and make sure your JPGs are RGB (not CMYK) before exporting.

I also found that simply opening the exported image in Preview and re-saving it as a new JPG fixes compatibility most of the time...You can check more about file compatibility through Apple’s support app—it really helped me understand why TVs reject certain Mac-generated files!

Bundle Of Thanks!

Do you have any illegal characters in the file names? This really has nothing to do with InDesign.

Hi Genevieve,

Try building your InDesign document this way:

File > New > Document > Web > View All Presets > and choose 1366x768 (although you will change it).

In the right-hand pane, change the pixel dimensions to 1920x1080. This will give you a Full HD pixel page in a 16:9 ratio for a typical television monitor/screen. Save a preset named 1920 x 1080 if you like. 

Now build your TV screen "pages". When fully edited, export to JPG or PNG (at 72ppi). Transfer your resulting files onto the stick storage device. It will likely play just fine.

You are correct, the stick will not need the macOS companion files that begin with an underscore.

A test of the storage stick would be to see what file storage system it uses. Ideally, it should be formatted to exFAT for macOS to read and write to that storage device. Otherwise, you might have to move the files thru a server to a Windows PC and copy the files into the device thru a Windows device that speaks FAT, FAT32, and exFAT file storage system flavors. Does the TV storage stick come with directions?

Did you try to use PDF/X-4 instead of JPEG?