Thumbnail Issues - Most Recent Beta

[David]

When adding media there are occasions when the thumbnails have pink 'block' artefacts. Seemingly random and fixed by resaving to refresh the thumbnail from the Multimedia tab. Same can be done from  Record Albums > Multimedia Objects.
Fix - click on Change... > OK > thumbnail refreshes > no more artefacts.

Does anyone know what causes this?
A workflow or avoidance for prevention?

An example

[John Nairn, Developer]

I have not noticed it, but as you say refreshing them fixes the issue. You might check the "Options" pane of the Mulitmedia options panel. Mine are set to (which I think are default) to 192 pixels, not saved in file (box not checked), and 85% compression.

If you do not save them, they get recreated every time you open the file. In "olden" Mac days, recreating would be slow, but current Macs are much faster. The only reason to save in the file is to take file to another computer without taking all the multimedia files too. The thumbnails are then available for viewing (at reduced resolution). This option is being used now by another developer to get GEDCOM files from GEDitCOM II onto an iPhone with multimedia thumbnails for viewing.

Regards,

John Nairn

[David]

John - "not saved in file (box not checked)," appears to have fixed pink/green pixellation. Some scans had green borders.

[John Nairn]

Interesting. I think I should make that the default setting for new files (if not already). My guess is the problem was image deterioration. The thumbnails use jpeg format which has image compression. Each time you open, it is decompressed for display and then recompressed when saved. It appears that each such cycle causes a small change in the image quality that eventually becomes visible. The solution is to not save them. I could maybe program a counter to recreate them after some number of uses, but not saving is simpler approach (and it speeds up saving of files when thumbnails are not needed).

Regards,

John Nairn

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[Jim Eggert]

This may be the same image deterioration problem I noticed back in 2016 and again in 2019. You might check the GCII discussion archives for subject line “GEDitCOM II bug in displaying images”, dates 12/15/2016 and 3/10/2019.

=Jim

[John Nairn, Developer]

Sounds familiar now. I am notarizing build 3 to post in a new minutes. In this version, new files are not create to "not save thumbnails." While that is best for keeping good thumbnails, there is one good reason toe save thumbnails. If you save thumbnails of all images in your file, you can take just the .gedpkg file to a new computer and still be able to view images. You do not need to copy all the multimedia files to the new computer as well.

To be sure you save all the thumbnails, a good process is:

1. Open "Options" pane of the "Multimedia Options" panels

2. Choose a size in pixels (depending on quality of images you want)

3. Click "Create All" button (if you changed the size, click "Delete All" first and then "Create All")

4. Check box to include thumbnails in the file

5. Save the file

This new saved version can travel and have all images. Of course you will not be able to edit multimedia on the other computer, but you can see them all.

John Nairn