P: (Mac) Direct Camera Connect fails to show previews in Import Dialog

[touheyphoto]

My system has worked perfectly for many years, but I’m encountering strange issues on import in Lr Classic that have recently plagued me. 

When importing via a plugged in thunderbolt cable into my R5s:

- image previews no longer load into the thumbnails, or will load dramatically slower and one at a time. (Whereas they used to snap into each empty thumbnail cells immediately)

- sometimes it will show no photos to import (which was frightening the first few times to see). I’ll cancel and reopen the import prompt which usually works after the second or third try.

- sometimes import window will show photos from other shoot days but not my most recent images. I’ll cancel the import prompt and reopen. Often it’ll all load in after a few tries.

- If I get through these issues, the most difficult part is actually importing. Import can take 5 minutes before starting, if I’m lucky. (It used to start within 10 seconds.) Two out of three times the import completely fails to start. 

Other details: 

- This seems to happen with all three of my Canon R5s

- I’m encountering this issue on my Mac Studio running Ventura 13.3.1

- My Lr Classic (v. 12.3) catalogues and previews are stored on my internal HD

- My photos are stored on a 70TB OWC Thunderbay. (I switched from Drobo 8D fairly recently)

- The same R5 and imported photos load like normal on my MBP when imported. 

- This is happening with multiple LrC catalogues

- This issue started happening for a few weeks, prior to updating to the latest Lr Classic

Since this issue is happening with multiple catalogs and cameras, I was thinking it was either with my Mac Studio that stores the catalogues, or my OWC Thunderbay external since it stores the photos. However since this issue seems to happen before I technically need to select the destination drive, now I’m thinking the issue is my computer where Lr is running. 

Could this be a RAM problem? Has anyone encountered this issue before? 

Any ideas based are greatly appreciated since importing after a shoot has gone from taking 10 minutes of my times to 2 hrs. Hopefully this can help others too.

[dw24154351]

Definitely a bug @Rikk Flohr: Inactive 

Updated to 12.4 from 12.3 and the previews fail again.

Tried another camera and an iPhone, previews are still failing to display.Import screen 12.4 not showing preview thumbnails with iPhone as camera.

[dw24154351]

@Sameer K Putting a CF Express into a card reader is showing previews.

So the problem is narrowing down uploading via a camera interface. In my test cases, iPhone or Canon.

[grants43850880]

So, I just did something that allowed me to see the previews from my Canon R5 while attempting to import. I opened the preferences, turned off GPU support and turned it back on, and I cleared both the video and photo caches. On the next attempt to import from my camera, I got my previews back.  I don't know if this is a long term solution because when I opened a new library, I lost my previews on import again.  But going throught the same process in he next library brought them back again.

[dw24154351]

Good call.

Just toggling GPU support from Auto to Off and back to Auto, without purging an caches shows the previews.

However, quit and start LrC again, the problem returns.

[grants43850880]

Yep. I just found that out. SMH..... And here, I thought I had it all figured out. Yikes.
It's like adding an extra complicated step to just see the photos on my camera. I sincerely hope a smart Adobe developer stumbles across this thread soon. 

[dw24154351]

@Rikk Flohr: Inactive @Sameer K are the Adobe folk who should be watching this and escalating the issue. The challenge is whether it is wide spread since they tend to prioritise based on volume of reports.

Clearly this bug was introduced in 12.4 so Adobe Developers should be able to look at what they've introduced into the 12.4 build compared with 12.3. In this thread it has been reported for both Windows and Mac, so it isn't one-platform specific. There has to be a code change directly affecting the update of import previews that has some connection to GPU rendering of thumbnails. But having it work on direct load from a card vs not work with camera uploads points towards an internal camera upload API / thumbnail generation.

If I double click an empty preview, I do see a full screen preview. So the previews seem to be being pulled from the camera, just not shown in the grid. I can't make the grid itself update - even changing the GPU preferences and then toggling grid vs full screen modes in the importer doesn't improve the situation.

[dw24154351]

It seems that maybe after about 20+ minutes the thumbnails update.

I just left the screen on the import step with all the blank previews. Noticed the screen change / refresh with actual thumbnail images. 

[dw24154351]

Just tested again, not disconnecting the camera but the refresh time from blank previews to automatically refreshing was about 3 minutes. Yes, re-selcting the input source forgets any previews previously shown - so a cache isn't being leveraged here. However, 1 minute after that, the camera connection drops, presumably because the camera goes to sleep after inactivity, so the source is no longer available.

Looking at Activity monitor, LrC is at 240% CPU so something is being calculated whilst waiting on the Import screen. Once the thumbs display, CPU drops to 10%. So the previews missing seems to be more previews on import taking a super long time to render. There's no async UI update as thumbnails are being generated - so the entire grid stays blank.

So potentially two issues to investigate when a camera is plugged in 1) why are thumbnail previews taking so long to render in 12.4 to 12.3, 2) async UI updates as each thumbnail is rendered is not working, they are only updated at the very end of all thumbnails being created, 3) what is different about the pathway for direct connection of a card via a reader, why does that work and does not work for cameras over USB.

I would add a 4th point 4) is there a way to optimise the use of the cache? I get that this could be tricky if a card from one camera has overlapping filenames with another camera. But there must be a sensible way to finger print the combination of card and camera and possiby make use of image / thumbnail checksums (if they exist).

[dw24154351]

4 points is more than 2.

Looking at GPU history it doesn't look any different in "idle" compared to the phase when the thumb previews are being generated. So my guess here is that the GPU isn't actualy being leveraged to create previews. 

[Bobldoo]

Just to set the cat amongst the pigeons..... My previous posts indicated I have the same problem with Canon R6, 7D & R6ii via USB or Thunderbolt, iPhone and iPad (USB) all displaying same issue. I've just been out with my little pony Sony (sorry) and they've imported fine! So I tried my Sony video camera(also Sony USB) the thumbnails are there instantly! To confirm just taken a few with a Canon and they're blank until you click away from the device and then reselect it and they appear, so the problem is still there. 

[dw24154351]

This is good data. It may be a Canon and iPhone interaction. Previews worked properly when the card was uploaded from a card reader. So what is similar about Sony and direct from card? Internally different vendors might have slightly different serial import code pathways.

If you go back to Canon and wait a couple of minutes, does it eventually render for you? The other thing to look at is whether LrC is burning CPU during this waiting period - you can see this with Activity Monitor, CPU tab.

[dw24154351]

Also, if you double click a single preview and it opens in the larger view, does the thumbnail image render?

[Unpopular]

Yes, double clicking the grey 'missing' preview renders it, but clicking back to 'grid' view returns to all the previews still being blank. This is on iPhone... 

[dw24154351]

Same for me too. So we are seeing the same behaviour.

[johnrellis]

"It may be a Canon and iPhone interaction."

There are reports in this thread of the misbehavior on cameras from Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, and Apple.

[johnrellis]

"I've just been out with my little pony Sony (sorry) and they've imported fine!"

Perhaps you have the camera configured to use the Mass Storage protocol for USB connections rather than Media Transfer Protocol.  Mass Storage causes the camera to look like a card reader to the operating system and LR, whereas the misbehavior here seems limited to the Media Transfer Protocol. Only some cameras implement Mass Storage (sometimes called MSC), whereas most cameras default to Media Transfer Protocol (MTP).   

[johnrellis]

See here for reliable workarounds to this bug:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-mac-direct-camera-connect-fails-to-show-prev...

[touheyphoto]

Hi John,

I originally reported this issue in LrC 12.3. My hopes were that updating to 12.4 would fix the issue, but it didn't and apparently based on what I'm reading, most others had the issue introduced with 12.4. 

I'm still plagued by this issue and my only workaround for my Canon R5s is pulling out the card and using a reader. 

For the iPhone I cannot do this though.

Have there been any updates or resposnes from Adobe I may have missed?

Thank you as always for your time and insights. 

[markusa95411370]

Auch ich habe keine Vorschau mehr in dem Importfenster von Light Room 12.4. Import direkt von derFujifilm T3 Firmware 5.01, über USB MacBook Air. Kann mir jemand sagen ob ich hier möglicherweise eine Einstellung übersehe. Hat bis vor kurzem tadellos funktioniert. Nein ich möchte nicht mit einem Kartenleser arbeiten, und ja da werden die Vorschauen im Katalog wie gewohnt angezeigt. Sobld jedoch die Kamera ausgeschaltet wird werden die Vorschauen angezeigt. Was jedoch nichts nutzt da beim widerholten Einschalten die Übersicht neu ohne Vorschau aufgebaut wird.

[markusa95411370]

I also don't have a preview in the import window of Light Room 12.4 anymore. Import directly from the Fujifilm T3 firmware 5.01, via USB MacBook Air. Can anyone tell me if I might be missing a setting here. Worked flawlessly until recently. No, I don't want to work with a card reader, and yes, the previews in the catalog are displayed as usual. However, when the camera is turned off, the previews are displayed. However, this is of no use, since when switched on again, the overview is new without 

[johnrellis]

"Have there been any updates or resposnes from Adobe I may have missed?"

Any Adobe updates would be posted here, the main bug report.  LR releases about every eight weeks, so we might expect to see LR 12.5 this week or next.

"For the iPhone I cannot do this though."

 See here for a summary of the known workarounds for phones:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-mac-direct-camera-connect-fails-to-show-prev...

[dw24154351]

For now you have to trust that all the images are fine and download without seeing previews.

You want to only download new images, rather than all.

Interesting to see that the camera power off event might actually trigger a re-render. It seems that whilst nothing is showing, previews are being generated, but for some reason really slowly.

Downgrading to 12.3 is another alternative - I've been forced to do that because an upload plugin is not compatible with 12.4.

[RAW Photography66]

Hi guys, this has only happened recently, I think when I moved accross to a Mac. But cant say if its everytime I import, I think it is.

On importing new images I dont see the image in the thumbnail.

I am running on a Macbook Pro Max M1 Ventura version 13.4.1

[GoldingD]

On the left, under Source, if you select Files instead of Device, what happens?

[johnrellis]

The screenshot indicates you're importing directly from the D850 via a USB cable. Adobe has acknowledged a bug with importing via cables on Mac. See here for known workarounds:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-mac-direct-camera-connect-fails-to-show-prev...