White thumbnails

[tony salgado]

Anyone have a cure for the white thumbnails bug which refuse to be rebuild correctly regardless of the thumbnail settings I choose.

I currently have a catalog with over 12 thousand images.  I imported the images with the "use build in thumbnails" options selected. 

All was fine until I decide to change the thumbnail size and imaqe quality so I can view images offline at  640 px medium quality.  I selected all my images (12K plus) and let iview rebuild the items.  Hours later the result now is the thumbnails are white or show up looking like a jig saw puzzle.

I have read elsewhere on this forum as well as the iview forum that other end users have encounterd this same nasty bug.


My configuration is Iview 3.1.3 but I was running 3.1.2 and stil had the bug.  Should I consider going back to version 3.0?

I tested a new catalog with a single CF download with less than 200 RAW/JPEG combinations and still had the same white thumbnail bug.  So it does not seem the bug is related to the size of the catalog or number of images but is a major program bug.


Computer configuration:  Powermac G4 dual 1 Ghz with 1.25 gb SDRAM, OS 10.4.8,  Quicktime 7.0.4, Iview 3.1.3,


Thanks in advance for any help.



Tony Salgado

[peterkrogh]

Tony,
Do you still get this when you uncheck "Use Built-in Thumbnails"?
Peter

[tony salgado]

Hi Peter,


Yes the thumbnails display in white even with "use built in thumbnails" unchecked.

However the media is rebuilt at the selected pixel size correctly it is just the thumbnails that become corrupted either by displaying all in white or as a jig saw puzzle arrangement.

 I had made it a policy to aways backup the original catalog which I left alone before I decide to rebuild the main catalog with the larger size offline media viewing.

I have since then made additional backups of the original untouched backup which I can conduct more testing on.  I highly encourage others to always make a backup of their master catalog in the event  corruption destroys the main catalog.


 I had first discovered this issue  when I was using iview 3.1.2 on small catalogs.  I am seeing this issue on my dual 1 ghz G4 running OS 10.4.8,  QT 7.1.5. 

The catalog in question originally started out the use built in thumbnails checked and I believe the thumbnail size was mistakenly set to variable.  The catalog had been 93 MB before I started the rebuild items process


After I rebuilt the items with the thumbnails and previews settings set to: 640 pixels and medium quality, unchecked the built in thumbnails the catalog size was now close to 700 MB.

 However checking the file info in the finder I noticed the modification date had not changed but the file size did show the larger size.

 I would have thought that since the file had indeed been modified the file info would have mentioned this but maybe this will only occur when I do a save in Iview.

I will conduct a test with the same catalog on my intel MBP to see if this is a specific machine issue.


In anycase here is what I am doing on the G4

I have started from scratch again and created a new catalog and then imported the files with my settings as follows.

Thumbnail size 640 pixels, quality= medium
media preview create full screen preview = unchecked
display preview at all times= unchecked



Under general preferences

Media rendering
color match = checked
use alpha channel= checked
skip image with size greater than = unchecked


Under RAW
Rendering= checked use embedded preview if available

Preferred Engine= Apple


At first images I though that images shot with my 5D in RAW+Large JPEG were affected as JPEG only images display at first correctly but then after I select any thumbnail and click to look at the larger media size and then return to thumbnails at that point the thumbnails will become white or appear as a jig saw with the large media preview behind the thumbnails. Even after I rebuild items with different thumbnail settings multiple times the end result is always the same- white thumbnails.


It appears as there is some serious corruption going on but I can't discover what is triggering it.



Thanks for you help,



Tony Salgado

[tony salgado]

Peter,


I conducted a test with the same problem catalog I had on my G4 on my MBP and the catalog thumbnails display properly on the MBP.

Additional testing discovered that rebuilding the thumbnails and media previews on the MBP result in proper display in all cases.

So I have determined that the iview has an issue with my older G4 when it comes to proper display.  Unless my different choice of monitor display and video cards have anything to do with it. 

 G4 is using a Samsung syncmaster 955DF CRT monitor and  ATI Radeon 9000 Pro whereas MBP is using 23" Cinema display and the stock video card which arrived with my 15" MBP.

In case I will now rebuild my master catalog on the MBP.


Thanks,


Tony Salgado

[peterkrogh]

Tony,I think you need to track this one down before you do much more work o the G4.  You need to figure out if it was a bad catalog document, bad iView installation, or some other system problem.

If you take the catalog from the MBP and open it on the G4, and rebuild previews, do they build fine?  If so, that would indicate a problem catalog. (You can also try to move the catalog to the MBP and rebuild there, and observe the result).

If the problem persists on the G4, then I would probably reinstall iView, taking care to get rid of preferences. If the problem still persists on the machine, then I think you probably have an issue with some of the system-level components that iView leverages to do its work, which include Quicktime and the System itself.  I'm not sure how to check that short of an Archive and install from original disk.

This is one of those instances where it's nice to have two machines, and also one place where it might be nice to have a clone of the G4 drive that you could return to.  If you had a clone of the G4 system from earlier, you could try to boot off that and see if the problem persists.

Good luck.
Peter

[tony salgado]

Peter,


I am currently rebuilding a copy of the catalog on the MBP as my intial testing showed all was well.

When it is done I will open up that file on the G4 to confirm if the thumbnails open up properly.

I also was under the suspicion that Iview has an issue with my system on the G4 which is why I updated to the latest version of QT and OS 10.4.8.

Indeed it was easy to confirm this by having multiple computers.

I read else where here on the forum other users having the white thumbnail problem and wonder if they checked their catalogs on other machines etc.



Thanks again,


Tony

[tony salgado]

I have confirmed my G4 is the only computer having an issue with the thumbnails in iview.

My test conducted were to rebuild 640 pixel thumbnails on the MBP (thumbnails display properly) and then open up that same file on the G4 (which it did not display the thumbnails properly but the media view is correct.

I went one step further and opened up the catalog created on the MBP on my XP laptop and once again the thumbnails displayed properly as well as the rebuild media at 640 pixels.

So now I reinstalled Iview on my G4 again and the problem will not go away.

Possible issues I suspect are.

1) My G4 is where I originally installed the demo version of Iview and I believe some corruption was left behind even after I installed the paid version of iview. When I reinstalled on the G4 I was not asked to input the license number so this must be hidden somewhere.

2) Not all the files are being uninstalled on the G4 as I found some files which were left over and so i trashed these files.  However after doing the clean up of the Iview files I found ie preferences etc and reinstalling Iview twice I still encounter the white thumbnails.

Final conclusion for whatever reason if I rebuild my thumbnails on the G4 the catalog becomes corrupted.  Ultimately I was saved me by making a backup of the original catalog prior to rebuilding the thumbnails and it was from the backup that I made additional copies from where I rebuild the thumbnails on the MBP and confirmed thumbnails will display fine.  I will not touch the original back up as that is now my master catalog.

Since I also confirmed my windows XP machine displayed the thumbnails properly I can only surmise the issue is only with the G4.

I installed Iview on my XP machine only for this test and will end up uninstalling it.



Tony Salgado

[peterkrogh]

Tony,
Contact iView support for a complete list of files to trash. 

Installation of the demo software should not have caused this.

Can you rebuild thumbnails in the "corrupted" catalog and have them display fine?  If so, I'd say that it probably has bad thumbnails, rather than is necessarily corrupted.  If it behaves fine once its on the MBP, and all information seems to be present and intact, then I'd say it's probably fine to use.

Your point about backups is a good one.

Peter

[Pdepuhl]

I just had this same issue happen to me. When I change the size of the thumbnails, they show up, but in the list view they are still broken. I have grabbed a back up and the same thing happens. What did you end up doing to get this resolved?

System Info:

iBook G4
Mac OS 10.5.4
iView 3.0.1

... catching the light!

Pascal

[peterkrogh]

Pascal,
Did you try to make a new user on the Mac and see i the problem shows up in catalogs created in the test user account?
Peter

[Pdepuhl]

I ungraded to iView 3.1.3 and the problem has gone away - for now …

Pascal