EM2 not displaying most Nikon D7000 NEF thumbnails

[Leon Werdinger]

Just added images from a Nikon D7000 to a catalog and most of the NEFs are just displayed as the generic file symbol - no thumbnail.  The thumbnails on about 10% of them do appear though.  When I double click on the files with the missing thumbnails the images open in Photoshop as usual, so the paths are set correct.

Any ideas?

[John Yaeger]

Perhaps futile, but I suppose I can always hope this post has been answered offline. It seems I'm faced with the exact problem and am now looking for a solution. D7000 NEF thumbnails do not show up in EM2.
Any one other than Leon and me with this problem? Leon, have you found a solution?

John

[ianw]

The answer to this depends on which platform you are on.  xMedia has never had the ability to understand raw files, instead relying on other tools for this.

If you are on a Mac, which I'm not, then xMedia uses something built in to the Mac operating system - which is also used by Aperture and iPhoto.  I saw an announcement that there was a RAW Compatibility Update released recently which I think had D7000 support added to it.  If you're on a Mac then you would need to check that you are up to date on this tool - although I believe you also need to be on a recent version of the operating system as well.

If you are on Windows then it might be a little more complicated.  xMedia can make use of QuickTime to do the RAW work, so you might want to make sure you have the latest version of that.  If you are on Windows 7 or Vista (and some flavours of XP) then Microsoft added something called the Windows Imaging Component, or WIC for short.  They don't want to have to build in and keep up to date with each different flavour of RAW file so have a mechanism that allows each camera maker to provide a tool for displaying their RAW files in Explorer and other applications.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Imaging_Component  You would need to download and install the appropriate codec and then you should be able to see your files.

A word of warning!  Note all the manufacturers have been that successful with this.  For example Adobe released a trial WIC for DNG files and it was rubbish - not a great way to encourage their use.  I have an Olympus camera and their WIC is almost as bad.

What I did find was a product called Fast Picture Viewer and you can buy a set of Codecs from them.  In fact I bought the Fast Picture Viewer application and now use this for reviewing my images instead of the xMedia light table as the speed, on my Windows 7 laptop, is much faster.  I can go through DNG files with a full size JPG preview at about an image a second and yay/nay them.  With this tool you get all the Codecs, so I can view my ORF files and DNG versions within Explorer and xMedia as well.  Pound for pound it's one of the best buys I've ever made as the time saved when reviewing images is significant.

Hope this helps.

Ian

[Leon Werdinger]

Thanks Ian and John,
Here's the reply I got from PhaseOne on this:

The D7000 files are not compatible with Expression Media even if they can be rendered by Apple image core.

The support for the D7000 will be available in the next release.
Unfortunatly we can not give a release date at this point.

[rod barbee]

Well, until the next EM release, you could always convert your NEF files to DNG (and embed the NEF for later retrieval). That way you can do all your cataloging in EM and have that metadata follow the NEF whenever you need to separate it from the DNG. (I'm assuming any metadata you embed in the DNG will be part of any NEF sidecare once you pull the NEF out of the DNG--maybe Peter knows for sure)

rod

[John Yaeger]

Thank you for sharing your PhaseOne info Leon. Thanks also to you Rod and Ian. It is understandable that not all files types can be supported before they are even born. For these files I'll include DNG in the workflow. I am on a Mac, with up to date OS and software, both iPhoto and Aperture show the D7000 NEF, it's just EM2 which can not render the newer NEF. I'm interested to see the next iteration of EM2, new branding and all.
John