"UNSUPPORTED FORMAT VARIANT"

[Kevin]

PM 4.5.3.1

Nikon D200

Jpg 12 saved from RAW using CS2

Mac OS X 10.5.4

1gb ram

While keywording jpgs I noticed that a couple files were later blacked out in PM with red lettering where the image should be, stating "UNSUPPORTED FORMAT VARIANT". I think it happened while I was doing PM "quick search" checking the correctness of my keywording. These files can no longer be zoomed in PM or opened in CS2 which said "COULD NOT COMPLETE YOUR REQUEST BECAUSE AN UNKOWN OR INVALID JPEG MARKER TYPE IS FOUND". When I view the file in the finder the thumbnail appears much smaller with soft shadow edges.

The jpegs seem to be totally corrupted and I must revert back to the original RAW file and start again. Do you have any suggestions or any experience of this problem.

Kevin

[Kirk Baker]

Kevin,

PM 4.5.3.1

Nikon D200

Jpg 12 saved from RAW using CS2

Mac OS X 10.5.4

1gb ram

While keywording jpgs I noticed that a couple files were later blacked out in PM with red lettering where the image should be, stating "UNSUPPORTED FORMAT VARIANT". I think it happened while I was doing PM "quick search" checking the correctness of my keywording. These files can no longer be zoomed in PM or opened in CS2 which said "COULD NOT COMPLETE YOUR REQUEST BECAUSE AN UNKOWN OR INVALID JPEG MARKER TYPE IS FOUND". When I view the file in the finder the thumbnail appears much smaller with soft shadow edges.

The jpegs seem to be totally corrupted and I must revert back to the original RAW file and start again. Do you have any suggestions or any experience of this problem.

It sounds like Spotlight may have been accessing the files while they were being written.  I suggest letting Photoshop complete its save to the file before switching out of Photoshop.

-Kirk

[Kevin]

Hi Kirk,

Speedy reply much appreciated.

Although you may have something with spotlight involvement in corrupting the jpg files, you have perhaps misunderstood the situation. Photoshop was not open at the time I was keywording in Photo Mechanic, and I only used Photoshop in order to try and open the files after they were corrupted in PM. Photoshop could not open the files.

Any further ideas?

Cheers, Kevin

[Kirk Baker]

Kevin,

Although you may have something with spotlight involvement in corrupting the jpg files, you have perhaps misunderstood the situation. Photoshop was not open at the time I was keywording in Photo Mechanic, and I only used Photoshop in order to try and open the files after they were corrupted in PM. Photoshop could not open the files.

Any further ideas?

I don't have any idea how PM would corrupt your JPEG files, but if you want to upload one of them to our server, I'd be happy to investigate.

Contact me privately by clicking on my name to the left of this message and then click on the 'personal message' link.  I will respond with server upload info.

-Kirk

[dennis]

Kevin,

I looked at the file you uploaded and it is definitely corrupted, but in a way that Photo Mechanic just wouldn't do unless your computer is badly misbehaving (after all PM is used to caption hundreds of thousands of photos daily without any problems).  I noticed you are using Mac OS 10.5.4 now.  Have you seen this problem in the past?  What is the file system of the disk you are editing your photos on (e.g. internal vs external HD using FireWire, MacOS vs FAT, etc).  We know that Apple made some significant changes in 10.5.3 to file I/O that apparently affects FAT file systems (e.g. flash cards), and 10.5.4 had some other changes that also affect file I/O.  So my first thought would be that there is some file system corruption or possibly even bad memory (RAM).  Can you run some diagnostics?

--dennis

[Kevin]

Hi Dennis,

Sorry for not getting back sooner. Yes, you may have sniffed out the problem. I have the pictures uploaded to an external LaCie 250 gb firewire which I believe is formatted in Mac OS Extended (journaled). I verified the disk with Disk Utility and it seemed to be okay. Not sure what else I can offer you.

Kevin

[Kevin]

Oh yes... sorry. First time it's happened to me. Running a two month old iMac so shouldn't be a problem there I guess.

Cheers, Kevin

[dennis]

Yes, you may have sniffed out the problem. I have the pictures uploaded to an external LaCie 250 gb firewire which I believe is formatted in Mac OS Extended (journaled). I verified the disk with Disk Utility and it seemed to be okay.

Kevin,

If this is happening fairly frequently to you when using your external drive, then I would try just using the internal drive as a test to see if it happens there.  I.e. remove the external drive from the "picture" and see if you can get the problem to happen again.  If you can't then it sounds like there is an issue with your external drive (I would have expected this to be more likely with a "Windows/DOS" FAT file system and not a MacOS Extended format).  You might also check to see if your external drive has any firmware updates.  I recall a while back there was an issue with FW 800 drives and MacOS but I would think those issues have long been solved (but then again, Apple has had solved problems come back to haunt them in later OS releases).

--dennis