Folder shows no images after updating tags

[Wouter]

I have been a very happy daily user of f-stop for many years, however since a few weeks I encounter a really strange issue on one of my devices.
After editing my holiday photos with tags the folder these images are stored in no longer show any photos. Sometimes this happens after editing 10 photos, sometimes after just one edit. Only when editing tags in another folder (which then shows no images) do the images show up again. I have tried many things from clearing cache to changing settings like not to save changes immediately, but nothing helps. This is on a tablet running Android 7. My mobile device does not have this issue.
As I have 46.000+ images on this device so rebuilding thumbnails takes quite a while… I has always worked well and has always supported my workflow this way.

Any suggestions?! I cannot remember if this happened since one of the recent updates.

[Goran]

Under “Settings//Main//Included folders” do you see “Scanning type”? If you do, which option is selected? Does changing to other option makes any difference?

Also, do I understand correctly, that even if you do not really save metadata, it will still not show folder?
Even if you change just one image in a folder with ten images, it won’t show any images? Is the folder visible in the list of folder so you can tap on it (and not show any images), or is the folder itself missing?

[Wouter]

I was set to ‘custom scanning’. Is this a new setting?
I have set it to ‘media store’, but in changing that setting all is rebuild. Which with 46000+ photo’s takes more than a day. And I still had the same issue.

When having it set to not autosave, I believe images disappeared after saving. However now trying to reproduce to be exact in my answer I do not see this behaviour. Scanning type is set to ‘custom scanning’ now.

The folder does show, but with 0 images and folder thumbnail becomes blank.

Thanks for the quick response!

[Wouter]

Now I was able to reproduce.
– autosave is off
– tagged 2 images and just confirmed by selecting the ‘check’ icon. So did not save metadata yet.
– folder is now shown empty

[Wouter]

And to be clear; it does not happen all the time. Sometimes each edit, sometimes it works smoothly for 10 edits in a row.

[Goran]

I’d say it has something to do with number of images, though it’s hard to say. I know that rescanning 46000+ images is slow and tedious, but as I can not reproduce the issue, this will be hard to solve. I suggest maybe you could try downgrade couple of versions to find where the issue started. Also, it would be beneficial to know whether this also happens when you have only 4000-5000 images in database.
Maybe you should contact me by email, so I can send you previous versions.

[Wouter]

Hello, an update for my side regarding this issue. It was driving me mad, I have tried everything I could think of but nothing worked. I have now gone back to v5.3.24 and disabled auto-update of the app. I have not encountered the issue so far, although may be it’s too early to conclude it certainly looks like it is related to a change in v5.3.27.

Hope this helps you to identify what it could be and provide a fix in a next version. If there’s any more info I can provide to help please let me know.

Regards,
Wouter

[gorannagy]

In that version we added possibility to use “Media Store scanning”. Maybe that was enabled for you?
If you are willing to try, you can maybe test whether changing scanning type under “Settings//Main//Included folders” makes any difference. For me it didn’t.

[Wouter]

Initially this was not set to media store scanning, but did encounter this issue. I have tried testing with it but my photo folders are not in a location accessible for this android version. So I would then not have access and could not test.

I have done a lot of tagging now back on version v5.3.24 and this is running smooth!

[Goran]

Which folder was it? As it seems it was not an ordinary folder (normal folders are usually accessible in all Android versions), maybe that can give me some clue.

[Wouter]

I use DSCloud to sync my photos with my Synology Diskstation. This (on older android versions) has to be stored in /android/data/com.synology.dscloud. The standard media scan does not have access to that.

[iostrym]

Hello we exchange by email month ago about the exact same problem. And I have also the same configuration as my folder (called lgg4) is a ds cloud folder (Synology application). It was working since years without problem. But recently this year all subfolder of lgg4 folder display no more photo in f-stop.
(But photo are still there).

Particularity of this lgg4 folder is that it is located in sdcard in android/data/com.synology.dscloud/ folder and there is a .nomedia file in android/data folder.

Lgg4 is manually added and display photo. But before new version of f-stop, subfolder were also included.

If I add manually a subfolder in f-stop the content is displayed. But I can’t add manually more than 50 folders !
I played month ago with media scanning option and it resolve my problem but now it no more works.

Do you have a workaround to resolve my problem ? Ps : I sent you email this week about my problem

[Wouter]

Hello iostrym, unfortunately it has been silent for some time now. What I did is download the v5.3.24 apk file (from a reliable source) and disable auto-update of the app. This version does not have this problem.

Really hope support is picked up again. Actually hoping for some nice new features as I still fully believe in F-Stop. I have moved on to a new tablet and use it even more now. In fact one of the reasons to buy an android tablet versus an apple one is the very existance of F-Stop! In my research I was unable to find anything close to F-Stop on iOs.

[iostrym]

Thanks, could you please provide me a link to download this apk ?

HS :
It is great to find someone who use f-stop + ds cloud.
I don’t find any other solution to have a real bidir sync between my Synology nas and my phone. I can tag photo from the nas, from picasa (linked to nas) and from f-stop and everything is shared.
New DSM 7.x kill ds cloud and there is no other way to do this. I don’t understand how other people deal with their photo.

[Wouter]

Not sure if they appreciate me sharing a link, but apkmirror.com is what I believe to be a reliable storage and has a great search function.

I run ACDSee on pc to manage photos that are stored on or are synced to my diskstation. However I hardly fire up my laptop anymore and do most using f-stop.

I have an older diskstation, but I believe new DSM supports Syncthing that can replace DS Sync well.

[iostrym]

Thanks for your answer. Me also, tagging is mostly done using f-stop and I’m quite never in front of my computer. Do you have a solution for face tagging ? I did it massively one time to time using picasa. It is compatible with photostation. But I don’t have a tool to read face tag on Android. (Except ds photo but research is weak, not possible to do a logical & in search…)

[iostrym]

I had also an answer from dev that I don’t completely understand saying that dealing with hidden folder will be more complex because of new google policy from November. On brief, he may know how to correct the problem but he is not allowed to do by google. Or something like this…

[TonyG1]

I have a similar problem, but no solution. I have a Sony NW-ZX507 Media Player (Android device). I have two folders containing .JPG images on an SD card – one contains Artist Images, the other Album Covers. Both folders show up in F-stop, but the Album Cover folder displays blank black space where the image should be – the folder name displays correctly, the file count is correct and the grid is all there; image filenames and size are correctly displayed.
The Album Artist folder displays its content perfectly.

[gorannagy]

It seems as if the thumbnails are not generated or are not generated properly. You can try forcing F-Stop to regenerate them by selecting those thumbnails (blank spaces) and then selecting “Refresh thumbnails” from the menu. If that doesn’t help please send couple of those images to our support (support@fstopapp.com).

[TonyG1]

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately refreshing didn’t work, but I have managed to fix the problem – for reference this is what I did:
I transferred some of the Artist Image files over the Album Artwork folder, and they showed up perfectly, so I looked at the source of the JPGs. All my Album Artist files are downloaded from whatever source I can find, but the Album Artwork JPGs are generated using an AppleScript that takes album cover art from my iTunes Music Library and copies it as a JPG to my Album Artwork folder. I noticed that all the Album Artwork JPGs are exactly the same file size – 273KB; they’re also standardised to 300×300 pixels, so I wondered if the JPG format generated by the AppleScript had some non-standard attributes (because it’s Apple…).
I ran the contents of my Album Artwork folder through Pixillion Plus (Image File Converter). The input and output files are both JPGs, but the output files have a smaller file size, although both versions are 300×300 (Example – input JPG 273KB, output JPG 100KB. All the Input files, as stated above, were 273KB, but the converted output JPGs range from 5KB (Beatles White Album cover, so not surprising up to to around 400KB.
So my assumption is that either Apple Music or the AppleScript itself adds a stack of padding and/or metadata that F-Stop can’t process – basics such as Artist, Album, and Image Size are read, but the image itself gets blocked. Pixillion recognises it as a JPG but appears to strip out all the non-standard content.

[gorannagy]

Thanks for the update. Would it be possible to send me one of those JPG files, so I can take a look? F-Stop does use system API for image decoding, but also does some other stuff. I’d like to see if it is only F-Stop that can not show those thumbnail, and if there is something I can do to improve this. support@fstopapp.com

[TonyG1]

I’ve emailed files to you – 3 JPGs as generated via iTunes/AppleScript, and the same 3 JPGs after they’ve been “converted” in Pixillion Plus.
Would be interested to know if you figure out what is preventing the images from showing. Now I know that I have a way of fixing it it’s not a big deal for me – Pixillion converted the whole folder – 1,014 files – in less than a minute. It’s just annoying that I have to add another process.

[gorannagy]

Yes, I checked. Original JPGs do no have JPG header at all. Even some of programs I use on PC can’t load images. Maybe they are not even JPG format, and only use that extension for some reason. Some programs maybe don’t really care about extension and actually use headers when loading images (Android does to), but it seems that this header is unknown to Android. At least that what I found by quickly looking at the issue.

[TonyG1]

That’s interesting. I have asked the script developer about the issue, but his response wasn’t very helpful:
ME: I just upgraded to a new Sony Walkman (NW-ZX507) that runs on an Android platform, and I’ve found that I can’t get the Album Artwork files to display (I see the filename but no image). All other .jpg image files I have transfer and display normally…I have observed that …the resulting .jpg file is always 273k and wondered if there’s something about these .jpg files that is different to a “normal” jpg?
DEVELOPER: I couldn’t say why things are the way they are at your house.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by TonyG1.

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