Photo display problems

Discussion in 'Forum Announcements and Feedback' started by emery, Oct 28, 2015.

  1. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    Wow. I've only looked at a few BPotD pages and the one of Mariko's that was dropping thumbs; those looked good. And one of the Guangxi postings with 36 photos. I had a 3-second wait for one of the photos. I have not been complaining about 3-second waits.

    What was it that needed to be done?
     
  2. Daniel Mosquin

    Daniel Mosquin Paragon of Plants UBC Botanical Garden Forums Administrator Forums Moderator 10 Years

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  3. Daniel Mosquin

    Daniel Mosquin Paragon of Plants UBC Botanical Garden Forums Administrator Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    It does seem snappier to me.
     
  4. vitog

    vitog Contributor 10 Years

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    In my case there is a huge difference as of today. Ever since the switch to XenForo software, I've been able to open perhaps only 10-20% of the photos by clicking on thumbnails. Now they all seem to work, typically in less than one second. There was an improvement in the last week or two, but a quick test just now worked 100%. I used Chrome on Windows 10.
     
  5. Daniel Mosquin

    Daniel Mosquin Paragon of Plants UBC Botanical Garden Forums Administrator Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    That's great (should also point out that this has nothing to do with the forums software--and, if this resolves it, it wasn't even the server configuration, but rather a network setup issue) @emery, how is it working for you?
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2017
  6. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    From here, fixed! I'm at a fast network location, though it never worked this well even here. Just tried a bunch of cases, saw zero probs even in the viewer.

    I'll check it this WE when I'm back in the country, where it was _really_ broken. But I'm very optimistic based on what I see here.

    Thanks!

    -E
     
  7. Daniel Mosquin

    Daniel Mosquin Paragon of Plants UBC Botanical Garden Forums Administrator Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    Ok, I'm re-enabling something which may slow things down again (but not as much as before), but makes things safer overall. I can still do speed tweaks, just check again to make sure everything still works.
     
  8. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    This is great. Have just verified it at my "slow connection" location. I saw zero problems with either the viewer or opening in a new tab.

    I think this is a huge thing, I got the impression (maybe just me) that traffic on the Maple forum was way down since the switchover, and I had put it down to the image problems (as well as having been off the air for a while, of course).

    So congratulations, and thanks again for all the hard work involved in getting this fixed!

    -E
     
  9. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    Slightly different problem, this with uploads. I hadn't noticed this before so I think it is new.
    I typically drag and drop images. They take a while to upload but all get there eventually. Today though, after 2 images the rest were simply discarded. This happened on 2 posts successively in the "First to leaf out" maple thread.
    I then tried to upload using the "upload a file" button. None of my pictures appeared, I think because my camera saves images with a JPG suffix, i.e. all upper case. (It's a Canon, so probably a pretty common problem). I was unable to change the filter, and unwilling to rename the images. :)

    The long and short is that after a frustrating time I only managed to upload a few images.

    -E
     
  10. Daniel Mosquin

    Daniel Mosquin Paragon of Plants UBC Botanical Garden Forums Administrator Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    All I can suggest is to forward these along to my email address and I'll ask Wendy if she's up to doing a comprehensive testing with them (busy time of year for both of us).
     
  11. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    Yes, willing. When you forward them, make sure to send them in some way that maintains the file size. Or I've set up a Dropbox folder; you can PM me your email address and I will invite you to use it.
     
  12. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    OK, the files are too large to email, so I'll PM you Wendy. Very busy here too, so may not be super fast. In order to replicate the situation you'll have to throttle the upload speed to 256kb which is all I get here in the sticks.

    I tried to reply earlier but got an "unexpected database error" hopefully just a glitch or maintenance.

    -E
     
  13. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    We have the dropbox set up, but I'm wondering about the files sizes comment. One of my new scouts was unable to upload a 2mb file to the forums, got a message, though, that it was too large. I had trouble with his photo myself, figured that it was the dimensions that might have been too large. When he reduced that, his photos were ok. Speaking of that, @Daniel, where is the list of allowable file sizes? I've looked everywhere I can think of.

    We all had the "unexpected database error" last night; glad that's fixed.
     
  14. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    I thought, as with Facebook, the files were automagically resized (scaled) and saved with an appropriate resolution when uploading. Pretty sure that's been my experience, anyway I haven't gone to higher res pics or anything.
     
  15. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    @emery, I had a quick look at the five files you just sent. According to what I think I learned in the Image size problem? thread, the file sizes at 2.4mb, 8 megapixels, 3264x2448, should be fine. The JPG extension is fine. I uploaded them in the Test Bed by drag and drop and by the Upload a File button with no problem. I did not try reducing my connection speed, which you mentioned in a PM somewhere, which terrifies me, but I don't have time to work on that right now.

    If you have such a slow speed, and since they get reduced on the forums anyway, wouldn't you rather do a reduction to the 1200x1500 megapixels that the forum reduces to before you upload them?
     
  16. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    I used to run the line that I wanted my computer to work for me, not the other way around, but at one point, it just became easier to have the faster uploads, so I export my photos in one operation in Picasa to a for-posting folder
     
  17. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    That was quick! Sorry it took so long to get them uploaded.

    Yes, normally the files are resized by the uploader. Resizing them individually would be onerous if I want to share a lot of pics; I don't have to do that on FB for example.

    For the JPG extension I think if you try to use the upload - via selection (not drag and drop) you'll see that they don't show up. Only lower-case jpg is shown. At least that's the case for me.

    Perhaps my problem came from dragging subsequent files into the drop area before the previous had finished. Something to try if your bandwidth permits! Otherwise I did find that there are applications that allow you to control upload speed in Windows 10, e.g. How to Limit Bandwidth to Certain Applications in Windows 10 My problem is that I have quite a long distance on copper to the junction, a problem that is not uncommon in Europe anyway, so that my upload speed is limited to 256 Kb (0.25 Mb/s).

    I'm willing to jump through various hoops personally but I think the issue is usability generally. I cannot be alone in noticing that the frequentation of the Maple Forum has vastly diminished, various members now participate actively on FB but not, or rarely, here.
     
  18. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    I don't recommend Picasa, which is no longer being supported, but I assumed any photo management program would have an export function, where you can select several photos and select the export size. Or I sometimes use FastStone Photo Resizer, in which it is easy to select a group of photos and resize them all at once to new files. I think you can rename them at the same time.

    I do get the point about a problem in general is a problem - the ability of motivated people to come up with work-arounds doesn't address the impact it has on other users who would just move on to another site.

    I used both methods with your photos in The Test Bed. They get renamed - I think upper case is removed from all the links (IMG becomes img).
     
  19. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    I hadn't tested that, but just did that. Drag some, drag others before the upload is finished. I have dragged them one-by-one. It's working fine, and now I see the box that indicates that the process is under way, a small black box that covers the the icons on the right on the top line, instead of the progress bar under each photo name at the bottom. When using Upload a File, all the file names appear at once, and there is a progress bar for each.

    At the link for Netbalancer, someone commented:
    As I mentioned before, I'm not keen to play around with things like that.

    @emery, are you still having problems? I'm more inclined to write a Help thread on dealing with low bandwidth, in which I would suggest reducing the file sizes before upload (for instance, FastStone Photo Resizer - Powerful Image Converter/Resizer),
    and using the recommended Upload method (click Upload a File), leaving fancier tricks (I consider drag and drop to be fancy) to people who have fancier systems.
     
  20. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    Well I certainly sympathize with that!

    If you can't reproduce it, and no one else is complaining about it, then we should forget about it I guess. I still had some problems, but haven't tried much to upload images.

    Frankly the fact the the upload menu doesn't see suffixes with a capital JPG is more annoying to me, I had to manually rename images in order to upload them this way (really the preferred way if drag-and-drop isn't functioning), and it certainly would limit the number of images I'm willing to mess with. There must be a way to fix this, perhaps a definitions file in the xenforo sw.

    As for a faq item telling people how to resize images, I would simply caution that not everyone uses windows. And of course the "recommended upload method" doesn't work for me unless I rename the files!

    best,

    -E
     
  21. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    @emery, I did upload your images with the JPG extension. It renamed them; I didn't.
     
  22. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    That's interesting. In clear, using the upload a file menu, it saw the JPG extended files? Definitely not the case for me using Firefox. I'll verify this when I get home tomorrow night.
     
  23. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    I've done it several times now, using the Upload button and via drag and drop, directly from our Dropbox - I have not copied the files anywhere. You can still see the names. I've just done another test, in Firefox. It turns out that the renaming to lower case only happens when the files are attached. Before that, it keeps the upper case names.
    upload_2017-5-15_14-35-44.png
    I always attach them, so it was only my immediately previous test where I can see that the upper case in the names is maintained in the original thumbs.
    Here is my Test Bed thread. I don't know whether to move some of those here or what.
    any problem with these photos?
     
  24. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    That doesn't work for me. I made a directory that contained test.JPG and test1.jpg. I clicked on the upload button and took a capture of what it shows me. Note only the lower case suffix appears.
     

    Attached Files:

  25. emery

    emery Renowned Contributor Maple Society 10 Years

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    Also note that the filter it gives contains only lower case extensions. On windows there is no distinction between cases, but that's not true on Mac or any linux. *nix, bsd etc.
     

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