My Passport Wireless Pro and “Content Unavailable”

[HunterBoss]

Good evening

Much frustration with Lightroom CC on my iPhone and iPad. And it doesn’t seem like anyone’s figured it out.

Like a lot of you I don’t want to travel with my laptop on vacation. The reviews of the My Passport seemed to indicate it was THE solution to have. But how is it?

I can get the photos into My Passport easy enough. I can have LRCC on both the iPhone and iPad easily find the folder with the images. I’m even now getting thumb nail images for the raw files (I seem to have read a review somewhere saying that wasn’t possible.) The first time I selected all the images, it successfully imported about 5% of the total. And not sequentially either.

Now for the past 2 hours or so, all I’m getting from inside LRCC is “Content Unavailable” or nothing when I do get it to select all. And. I have tried selecting one image at a time. Same story.

What am I doing wrong?

Christopher

[Akash Sharma]

Hi Christopher,

Sorry that you're getting a message "content unavailable" while accessing your Lightroom library on iPad and iPhone.

However, I am having trouble understanding the issue correctly.

Are you getting this message "content unavailable" on both Lightroom on your iPad and iPhone and what exactly is the message? Previews unavailable or content unavailable?

Thanks,

Akash

[HunterBoss]

Content Unavailable was the message. That was the heading on the message. But now that message is gone away. Mostly.

[HunterBoss]

So the "Content Unavailable" situations seems to have resolved itself. Not sure why. I still get it a bunch, but just clicking on it again gets me connected.

I was able to add another 20 or so images this morning - both raw and jpg - but now nothing more. I've enough local space on both the iPhone and iPad. So I'm not sure what's going on. Right now it looks like the laptop is coming on vacation and the Passport is going back to the vendor unless they can help.

Thanks

[cmgap]

Thanks for the update. FWIW - you can still bring just your iPad if you transfer your photos/videos via a Type-C SD card reader. That's if you won't run out of storage on the device. That way you won't necessarily need wifi to get your images from your camera to your iPad.

[HunterBoss]

I have the Apple made SD-Lightning card reader. That only lets you pull files into iPhoto. And only jpg. Based on both my experience and what I've read online. Apparently there's now some difference with an iPad Pro. I just have an amateur iPad.

[cmgap]

What are you shooting with? When I transfer via the reader I am able to add RAW images to the Photos app. I am using an iPad Pro mostly - will test this on my iPad Air.

[HunterBoss]

Please let me know if you can get it to work on the Air. That's what I have. I can't get it to work.

[cmgap]

I just tested this on my iPad Air with just one RAW .NEF (Nikon) file from Dropbox (substitute this for your wifi Passport) and I was able to add it  to Lr – it was slow even with my relatively fast wifi connection (15MB). The RAW file is 43.1 MB and  I'm sure that if I add 10-20 or 200 photos at a time – it will not be a speedy process. If I were to rely on this workflow while on location I'd only add photos overnight.

I did upgrade recently to the iPad Pro. Now my on-location workflow using the usb-c card reader, I import RAW images directly to the device > into Photos > add to Lr from Camera Roll > confirm sync is complete > delete from Photos . There is no way that I know of to bypass the Photos app using the card reader.

[HunterBoss]

Both Jao and cmgap

MANY MANY MANY thanks. I've no idea what I was doing wrong before.

I was noticing that photos my wife was taking on her iPhone were showing up in LRCC (we share the same iCloud account and see each other's photos on purpose.) and I wasn't doing anything to have that happen.

After I saw Jao's comment, I went and tried it on the iPad not iPhone. It actually said it would only pull in one of the file types as my camera creates both RAW and jpeg. It was RAW. It even asked if I wanted the card erased.

So I'm now returning the WD Passport and traveling light with just a card reader.

Many thanks

Christopher

[cmgap]

Great - thanks for the update. PS. A good rule of thumb is to reformat the card in camera not via Lr.

[Jao vdL]

I was noticing that photos my wife was taking on her iPhone were showing up in LRCC (we share the same iCloud account and see each other's photos on purpose.) and I wasn't doing anything to have that happen.

There is a setting in mobile Lightroom CC where it automatically imports every image from the camera roll. It is in the gear icon->import. If it is enabled and you have iCloud photo library enabled, it will pull in every single image in your iCloud account, even those shot with other phones. It appears to be enabled by default so something to check.

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

HunterBoss  wrote

I have the Apple made SD-Lightning card reader. That only lets you pull files into iPhoto. And only jpg. Based on both my experience and what I've read online. Apparently there's now some difference with an iPad Pro. I just have an amateur iPad.

The sd lightning reader will read both raw and jpeg files into photos into any iOS device. From there you can import the raw into Lightroom CC no problem.

[cmgap]

iOS devices will not recognize (read or write) to external drives like the Passport. Firstly you have  to add your images to your Photos app and then add them to Lightroom on your phone or iPad (and then once everything is synced - delete them from the photos app). I haven't been able to find a workaround and it is not an elegant workflow to have to go through Photos.

[HunterBoss]

It’s able to read from the Passport. I now have about a third of my images in LRCC. Both raw and jpeg. It’s just not adding all of them.

And based on comments on various forums, if I put them through iPhoto I only get jpeg. Not what I’m looking for.

Thanks though.