PSE 20: iPhone import, thumbnail and video problems

[daveb6722477]

Hello all,

I am having a number of issues viewing photos and videos in PSE 20 Organiser, mainly related to files which I have imported from my iPhone, which I’m really hoping that someone might be able to help me with.

Last week I ‘upgraded’ from PSE 9 to PSE 20 (still on ‘trial’). I am using Windows 10 (with all updates installed). I am currently using an iPhone 11. I have 29,563 items in my Catalogue in Organiser.

Initially I was unable to import anything from my iPhone, but after reading some very helpful guidance on this thread I changed my phone settings and am now able to import all my files.

However, I am experiencing the following issues:

Video Files

• All video files (.mov) imported between April 2011 and prior to this week do not show a thumbnail (all video files imported prior to April 2011 do have a thumbnail.)
• Some video files imported this week (all also .mov) have a thumbnail, others do not.
• Selecting (clicking on) any video file (regardless when it was imported, and including all older files which always worked perfectly well in PSE 9) immediately causes Organiser to crash. Therefore I am unable to view any of my 492 video files.

Photo Files

• When selecting most (but not all) files, the image is blurry. For .jpg files, updating the thumbnail resolves this.
• However, all files imported from my phone this week are .heic files (I have no idea what this file format is, but I gather it’s something to do with changing my phone settings to allow them to import).
• For these .heic files, attempting to update the thumbnail causes Organiser to crash.
• The orientation of many of these .heic files is incorrect. Attempting to rotate them causes Organiser to crash.
• Some of these .heic files do not have a thumbnail (just an hourglass)

Missing Files

• Most (but curiously not quite all) files imported between December 2011 and May 2014 (4,524 items), and between June 2014 and April 2015 (1,003 items) are ‘missing’ (i.e. they don’t seem to be connected to the photo’s file location).
• Double clicking any of these ‘missing’ photos opens the ‘Updating catalogue information’ box and then the ‘Auto reconnect missing file …’ box. Sometimes this quickly connects the file and brings up the photo; sometimes this connects a number of files (sometimes a few, sometimes a lot, but not just the one I clicked on); and sometimes it causes Organiser to crash. I have been unable to discern a pattern here.

Organiser Won’t Open

• Sometimes (typically after a crash) Organiser won’t open, and I have to restart my PC.

The only other oddity I have noticed, which may or may not be relevant to these issues, is that in the bottom left corner of the Organiser screen there is a constantly whirling circle type thing. Hovering the mouse over it brings up the message “Generating Thumbnails (1 of 4904)”.

Do any of you good people know what is going on here? Many thanks in advance for any suggestions you might have (I’m not very technical, so please keep it simple!). Should I just give up on PSE 20 and revert to PSE 9?

Cheers,

Dave

[Greg_S.]

Have you installed the Microsoft HEIF and HEVC Extensions apps from the Microsoft Store?  (The HEIF is free; the HEVC costs a dollar.)  These are required to properly view your original iPhone images.  It's not clear whether you can see any HEIC format thumbnails.  If you can, then I assume you have installed the extension for photos. 

Your missing files issues is completely different, but may be related to what you have been doing with importing the files from your phone and using different formats to do so.  We need a little more detail about which files are missing.  Are they from your phone or from other sources?

Since it appears that the Organizer is stuck at 1 of 4904 thumbnail generations, then maybe it is only the HEIC files that are causing the problem and you have not installed the extension.

I have invested a lot of time dealing with this issue and you may have seen my comments in the thread that you have linked.  As far as I am concerned, the problem of importing files belongs to Apple, not Adobe.  I have now taken a different approach than you.  I see no advantage to using HEIF photos or videos on my computer (and there are several disadvantages).  I therefore use the Most Compatible setting on my iPhone to import media to my Windows computer.  I have done this using Windows Explorer or the Windows Photos app to import the files (as .jpg and h.264 videos).

Given all of the improvements that have been made in Elements since version 9, I would definitely recommend that you persevere with 2020.  Your Elements 9 will certainly not be able to import any HEIF files from your iPhone.

[daveb6722477]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for your reply. I haven't actively installed any extensions app, but when I search for HEIF in the store I see that the 'HEIF Image Extensions' app is already installed. Also, I can open and view all of the .HEIC and .MOV files no problem in Windows Photos, so I guess that's not the problem. Some, but not all, of the HEIC files have a thumbnail.

I suspected that the missing files issue might be a different issue, so thanks for that confirmation. All of the 'missing' files seem to be .JPG files from my Canon camera. I'm slowly 'updating thumbnails' of these a batch at a time, but it's now crashing as often as it's not. I'm now down to "Generating thumbnails (1 of 3638)" - it's going to take me ages to do all of them!

Out of interest I've just opened up PSE 9 again - you're quite right that I can't import any of the HEIC files captured on my iPhone and now sitting on my PC, but I can import and play all of the iPhone's .MOV files (which is more than PSE 20 will do ...). 

Cheers,

Dave

[Greg_S.]

Out of interest I've just opened up PSE 9 again - you're quite right that I can't import any of the HEIC files captured on my iPhone and now sitting on my PC, but I can import and play all of the iPhone's .MOV files (which is more than PSE 20 will do ...).

If you can open the .mov files in Elements 9, you cannot be recording the videos in HEVC format.

I don't know what else to say about the slow thumbnail generation.  My only suggestion would be to import the files again using the Import from PC>Most compatible setting on your iPhone.  Use either Windows Explorer or Windows Photos app to import the files and they will come in to your computer as jpegs.  Either place the files in an Organizer watched folder or import them From Files and Folders.

[daveb6722477]

Thanks Greg.

Most of the video files are .MOV files, recorded on various iPhones dating back to 2010 (I had assumed that means that their format is MOV rather than HEVC?). I also have some .MPG files recorded on various cameras (Canon, Panasonic and Sony), all prior to 2010.

In PSE 9, all of them have a thumbnail and play without a problem, with the exception of a small number that I recorded recently in 'slo mo' on my iPhone 11 (these have a blank white thumbnail and play audio only - however even these play fine, though at normal speed, if I open them in Windows Photos).

In PSE 20 none of them (with the exception of a random handful of the .MOV files recorded since March this year, and all of the old .MPG) have a thumbnail - in place of a thumbnail they have a either a picture of a film strip with a 'play' arrow, a picture of an hourglass with a 'play' arrow, or a circle with a 'play' arrow.

And in PSE 20 none of them play - instead, PSE crashes as soon as I double click on any of these placeholder thumbnails. Interestingly, if instead of double clicking I right click and select "play video or audio", it sometimes crashes but sometimes (at random) brings up a video window containing the text "Media pending" in lots of different languages.

I'm not able to re-import any of these files from my iPhone, as even the more recent ones have been deleted from the phone.

I have tried deleting one of these video files from the catalogue and re-importing from the hard drive. This gives it a thumbnail, but still crashes PSE if I double click it to view.

The fact that these all play pefectly well in Windows, and all (apart from the slo mo ones) play fine in PSE 9, suggests that this is an Adobe issue (specifically a PSE 20 issue) rather than an Apple or MS issue? I am at a loss, as I currently have no way to view/play any of my 15 years of accumulated video files in PSE 20. My only option seems to be to revert to PSE 9, forfeit the recent .HEIC photos (which I can't import to PSE 9, and can't view in PSE 20 anyway), and set up my iPhone to use JPG.

My only remaining idea, which I'm not in a hurry to try as it might create even more problems, is to delete from the catalogue all of the files without a thumnnail and re-import them from the hard drive (which I have so far done with a single file), in the hope that this will give them all a thumnail and will somehow resolve the problem. Is there any reason why this might work?!

Many thanks.

Cheers,

Dave

[daveb6722477]

OK, so I think I have almost cracked this. In case anyone is experiencing similar issues, here is what I've done:

1. Purchased the Microsoft 'HEVC Video Extensions' app, as suggested above by Greg. This is despite none of my video files being HEVC format (the vast majority are .MOV format, with some older MPG and a handful of .avi files), so I have no idea why this would have helped (but it seems to have done).

2. Purchased a HEIC to JPEG converter app (from Duckhead software). I then deleted all my HEIC files from my cataologue (but not from the hard disc), converted all the HEIC files to JPG using this really easy app, then re-imported these newly converted JPG files to my catalogue.

This has resolved the "generating thumbnail" issues, and PSE 20 no longer crashes. I can now view/play almost all of my video files, and all photo files have a good thumbnail. I have also tested by taking and uploading some new photos and videos from my iPhone, without problem (though for the photos to upload the iPhone 'camera format' setting has to be "Most Compatible" - they will not upload if set to "High Efficiency", regardless of the 'Photo Transfer' setting). The photos import as JPG files, and the videos as .MOV files.

My only outstanding issues are:

1.  I have a totally random selection of 30 recent .MOV files which still will not play. 25 of them do not display a thumbnail, but 5 of them do. When I try to play any of these 30 files I get the message "The selected file cannot be played because your system does not have the required compresser/decompresser (codec) installed". I have no idea what this means, nor do I have any idea why only these 30 files are affected (or why 5 of them have a thumbnail). However I can live with this if I have to, as bizarrely I can still view them without a problem in Windows Photos.

2. Most of my recent .MOV files were showing the wrong date and time, however I have manually corrected these.

So my thanks to Greg, and I hope this might be useful for anyone expereince similar problems.

I have now encountered some other issues with PSE 20 (in particular the seeming lack of functionality, compared to PSE 9, when creating slideshows), but I will post about that separately.

Cheers,

Dave

[Greg_S.]

Thanks for reporting your findings and solution.