Blurb Export hangs

[bgwg]

I created a 99-page book in Lightroom Classic 12.3 Book module (no updates available). I made a similar book last November and exported without a problem. And I've done other books in the past. Blurb hangs about halfway through the export. I get no error messages. It just stops working. At least one of the times the bar at the top left said 53%, but most of the time, it just shows a progress bar, with no message other than exporting, as if it is still working on it. I've left it running overnight and it never gets any further. I am able to export a PDF of the book.

I've deleted the cover photos since I know Blurb exports the cover separately when exporting a pdf, but the Blurb export still hangs about halfway through. The only unusual behavior this time is that I get a message

"Photos with transparency"

Some photos in the book have transparency. The transparent areas will show as opaque in your book", and it lists quite a few pages. I've never gotten this message before but I've also found threads that say it isn't really a problem, so I don't think this is why the book isn't exporting. But as a separate issue, Please advise if I should be fixing the photos with transparency before printing.

My computer specs:

Dell XPS 8930

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz 3.70 GHz

16 GB Ram, 15.8 GB usable, I ran a pre-boot scan and found no errors.

Windows 11 Pro Version 22H2 (no updates available)

OS Build 22621.1778. 

Thank you. Bonnie Giddens

[Rob_Cullen]

"Transparency" in images can be caused by using 'Transform' processes when editing and 'constrain crop' not checked, and PNG file-type images can contain transparent areas. Rarely a problem in books.

You might find an answer in this link to a post I made in 2021- It contains a suggestion to Find the Page where problems might be occuring.

BOOK PROBLEMS - Collected Notes

[bgwg]

Thank you for that link...it helped me realize that the transparency is probably in some merged photos. Although I do not think that is why the book will not export to Blurb. I AM able to export a pdf. Any suggestions on why the export might hang halfway through? Any logs I can download & share?

[Rob_Cullen]

Try resetting LrC  Preferences file as outlined at the below link, and restart the PC.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/

[bgwg]

I forgot to mention that I had already done that troubleshooting step. What next?

[Rob_Cullen]

That you can successfully export PDF it suggests there are no problems with the Book design in LrC.

I don't know why you would delete the Cover pages (or photos) as Blurb would need a cover (that 'sends' to Blurb automatically.) and is needed if you send the PDF to Blurb.

My experience is limited with transmission problems- in a slow PC system my books took many hours to 'send'. "Overnight" is certainly excessive.

Consider if your use a VPN, or anti-virus, or other app that is interfereing with the send. Have you sufficient available space (20%) on your Hard-drive? I think LrC caches the 'book' before it sends the book to Blurb.

Keep this thread going it other users may have suggestions.

[bgwg]

I've tried several other things since last posting.

1. I had some large merged photos that I had not cropped in the Develop module but in the book. So I cropped those in the Develop module. No idea why that would matter but since I'd never seen the "transparent" error message I thought I'd try that.
2. I disabled our "pi-hole". 
3. I made a copy of the book and tried to export that.
4. I rebooted each time before trying the export.
5. I am still able to export a pdf (~680MB file).
6. My 2 TB drive has 395 GB available.
7. This is how far the upload gets.

Any other suggestions?

[bgwg]

These are the suggestions I received from Blurb on how to upload a book if it is hanging.... 

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you're having with uploading your Lightroom book, and I'll be happy to help. There’s currently a bug within Lightroom that causes some uploads to fail.
 
First, check if there’s a comma in the title of your project. If so, please remove the comma and try uploading again.
 
If you don’t have a comma in the title, or you’re still having issues after removing the comma, please try creating a PDF of the book within Lightroom following the instructions below
 
If you are able to create a PDF then please try uploading your PDF files directly through Blurb.com rather than Lightroom and let us know if that works. If you can't create a PDF, you'll need to contact Adobe support via the link below.
 
To create the PDF from your Lightroom book project and upload it to us, please open your Lightroom book project and do the following:
 

1. Choose logo page>none from Book Settings (you can still add a logo page later)
2. Under Book Settings choose Book > PDF.
3. Choose JPEG quality 90-100 (if the trouble is due to timing out, a lower quality setting may help get the file to us without reducing the overall print quality).
4. Leave all other settings as is.
5. Click Export Book to PDF to the bottom right.

 
If you are able to export a PDF then upload your files here: https://www.blurb.com/pdf_uploader_frontend/index.html#/chooseFiles
 
If you are NOT able to create a PDF following steps 1-5 then please contact Lightroom support directly from the link below. They should have more detailed information to help you with this problem. (Blurb only handles the printing of your book. We can't troubleshoot Lightroom tech issues).

Without thinking about it, I left my upload attempt going. I was logged in to Blurb for help and tonight a window was opened showing the uploaded book about 36 hours after I started the upload. What is surprising is that I made some changes on the last pages after I started the upload (I forgot the upload was still attempting to run) and those changes are uploaded. Unfortunately, I have to correct some things and try again. So I will report back if it works again. Thanks for everyone's help on this.

[bgwg]

One final post on this issue. It turns out my computer ran a Windows update and restarted some "services" that Intel uses to prioritize gaming and videos over something like this photobook upload. There is quite a bit of info out there about them on the Dell community boards. To the extent that Adobe can influence future user control in this area, I am sharing the info here.  The following services need to be disabled. They throttled my upload speeds from 20+Mbps down to 0.3 Mbps. I have disabled them before but did not realize the Windows Updates would automatically restart them without me changing the settings. Windows updates restarted the following and I have now disabled all of them again:

Killer Network Service

Killer Analytics Service

Killer Dynamic Bandwidth Management

Killer AP Selection

If you have this problem, check if you have the Killer Control application running. Uninstall it. Some people say to uninstall any apps by XTend or Rivet. I think Rivet was the original company that created the Killer software but now Intel owns it. I did not have XTend or Rivet apps on my machine. Thanks to everyone that has tried to help me with this. I lost 2 weeks trying to get this uploaded and missed out on a BLURB coupon! Good luck to everyone else.

[Rob_Cullen]

Nice sleuthing! And I have never heard of the "Killer..." services in Windows.

Great you have the upload going again.