Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
A few days ago, I mentioned Jacob Bronowski and his TV series The Ascent of Man. Here’s that scene of him speaking at Auschwitz, explaining the difference between science and dogma.
(hat tip to Alun Salt for providing me with the link to this key scene)
Henryk Górecki’s 3rd Symphony, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, was composed in 1976. While many take its meaning as a remembrance of the Holocaust, Górecki himself said that it was an evocation of the ties between mother and child.
Here’s the second movement in a filming that underscores the Holocaust interpretation. It’s an extract from Holocaust – A Music Memorial Film, which was shot in Auschwitz. The soprano is Isabel Bayrakdaraian, and she is accompanied by the Sinfonietta Cracovia, conducted by John Axelrod.
According to the Wikipedia entry for the 3rd Symphony, the text of the second movement is an inscription scrawled on the wall of a cell of a Gestapo prison in the town of Zakopane, in southern Poland. The words were those of 18-year-old Helena Wanda Błażusiakówna, a highland woman incarcerated on 25 September, 1944. It read “O Mamo nie płacz nie—Niebios Przeczysta Królowo Ty zawsze wspieraj mnie” (Oh Mamma do not cry—Immaculate Queen of Heaven support me always).
(hat tip to The Observer for the link to the video)
Here’s a stunning time-lapse video made by Stéphane Guisard of the night sky at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Do watch it at the full 1080p resolution and in fullscreen mode for the best effect. Seriously beautiful. I just wish that the night sky around here was as clear, but alas there’s simply too much light pollution here in the densely populated Netherlands.
(hat tip to The Bad Astronomer)
When I was growing up. Jacob Bronowski was a presence on the telly. He was the scientist, the boffin, who could be relied upon to explain science to the rest of us. In 1973, he presented a ground-breaking series, The Ascent of Man, that gave him a platform to present his humanist view of the role that science has played in the development of our species.
The bit that sticks in my mind, that probably sticks in everybody’s mind who saw the series, is the scene where he is ankle-deep in a muddy pool in Auschwitz, and he suddenly bends down to bring up a handful of mud before the camera, while talking to us in that faintly-accented voice of his. Except that this is not mud, this is ash. The ash of millions of human beings who were consumed by the ovens of the Nazis. I can never watch that scene without being overwhelmed.
Last night, I saw that scene again. It was part of a documentary, My Father, The Bomb and Me, presented by the historian Lisa Jardine. She is his daughter, and she explored aspects of his life that she knew little of. For example, the fact that he worked in operations research during WWII, designing more effective bombs, and she wondered how she could reconcile that with the loving father that she remembered.
Her documentary succeeded brilliantly, bringing to life a man who was both humane and who was deeply affected by remorse at some of the things that he had to do in his life. The depth of that remorse was expressed by the simple act of cleaning his glasses in public on a talk show. It sounds ridiculous, but watching his daughter watch the video of that sequence with her seeing the deeper meaning in what he was doing as he carefully sought for the just words to answer the interviewer’s question made everything come clear, and the thought arise, in my mind at least, that here was a good man doing the best he could, as he always had done.
[…] or Dogma Posted on December 13, 2010 by Geoff Coupe A few days ago, I mentioned Jacob Bronowski and his TV series The Ascent of Man. Here’s that scene of him speaking at Auschwitz, explaining […]
I have mentioned the astounding Antikythera mechanism before, but here’s something really brilliant: it’s been reconstructed using Lego. What I like about the video is that it demonstrates how the various component parts work together and end up as a machine for predicting solar eclipses. Quite wonderful.
I’m looking forward to the release of Adele’s next album “21” on the 24th January. That young woman has talent. Here she is singing one of the songs from the forthcoming album.
[…] wrote a couple of months ago that I was looking forward to the release of Adele’s next album: 21. We got it a couple of weeks ago, and have been playing […]
I hope that the above title is somewhat of a rhetorical question. I would hope that, on balance, despite its many failings, the UN still counts for something in this sorry world.
However, when it gets down to a personal level, I find myself questioning whether the ideals in fact count for very much in the face of politics.
I read two weeks ago Paul Burston’s blog entry where he wrote that he sat down and wept at the news that of the United Nations panel’s decision to remove sexual orientation from an anti-execution resolution. As he said:
The resolution has contained a reference to lesbian and gay people since 1999. Today, it was announced that this has changed. Other groups are still covered, including those facing persecution on the grounds of religion. But not us.
According to Pink News, “the vast majority of countries in support of the change were African or Arabic” – ie, those countries with the worst records on human rights abuses against lesbians and gay men, countries where gay people are regularly stoned, flogged and publicly executed.
What surprised me is that I had not seen even a mention of this on any mainstream news web site (e.g. newspapers and the BBC), so I had hoped that Paul had been mistaken.
But no, it does in fact appear that this has occurred. Here’s the UN record of the meeting.
As William Crawley asks: Does the UN now support the execution of gays?
I take a little comfort from the fact that the UK’s Association of British Muslims has condemned the removal of the reference to sexual orientation in the resolution. That is a statement of support from what will seem a surprising group to many people.
I wrote yesterday that some of us are involved in a war that is not of our choosing. It now seems to me that there are more of us involved than I had at first appreciated.
Geoff, I take peaceful co-existence so much for granted, gay politics is not even a blip on my radar. Reading you regularly now, as I do, makes me feel outraged (regularly).
I don’t know how something like that could even come up for a vote. It’s OK to murder some ‘kinds’ of human beings? Where are we?
Where are we? Well, I suppose that it’s simply more evidence that we’re jumped-up primates with a very thin veneer of civilisation. It really doesn’t take much to strip that away. Add to that a large splash of cynical politics, and: welcome to the world. The content of the Wikileaks cables hasn’t surprised me one whit.
WikiLeaks cables – My education continues. Now I just have to learn what ‘torrents’ are. I doubt the content will surprise me. I’m a cynic from way back.
You don’t need to venture into the murky waters of Torrents to read the contents of the cables. The UK’s Guardian newspaper is providing a handy-dandy guide to all the shenanigans: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-wikileaks
[…] Restores Resolution Posted on December 22, 2010 by Geoff Coupe I noted earlier this month that a UN Committee had proposed removing the reference to sexual orientation in the UN’s […]
World AIDS Day was on December 1st. I had the luxury of reflecting on lost friends, since it is my good fortune to be living in the Netherlands.
Some of us reflect on the fact that they are fighting in a war that is not of their making, and that the makers of that war are their fellow countrymen, who are in positions of political and religious power.
Brian Whitaker has an article in the Near East Quarterly describing the targeting of gay men in Iraq by vigilantes. It makes for sobering reading. Yet, at the same time, some of the absurdities that are resulting would be laughable, if it weren’t for the fact that their perpetrators wield guns and are only too prepared to use them:
The problem in post-Saddam Iraq, though, is that the official legal position counts for less than realities on the ground. The wave of “gay” killings was made possible by the breakdown of state control and the rise of local militias, some of them seeking to enforce their own interpretations of Islamic law. That resulted in people being killed for the most trivial of “sins” – among them barbers who gave customers “un-Islamic” haircuts. It reached a peak of absurdity when al-Qa‘eda elements in Iraq sought to impose “gender” segregation of vegetables. Claiming that tomatoes are feminine and cucumbers masculine, they argued that greengrocers should not place them next to each other, and that women should not buy or handle cucumbers.
Segregated vegetables. Huh. I know I should say something next but my mind’s gone completely blank. Peace to you & M. forevermore.
On second thought, wouldn’t it be counter-productive to have only men handling the cucumbers? They might get to like it … and so on and so forth over time … and there wouldn’t be any more Alqee’s to perpetuate the thought patterns.
JL – has anyone ever told you that you have a devious mind?
Not ever. Direct and ‘interesting’ but devious, no. But, doesn’t that sound like a plan? I think we should encourage cucumber-handling by men only, especially in Alq-country.
There can be no understanding between the hands and the head unless the heart acts as mediator
That is the opening and closing motto of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. A silent film released in 1927 that has become recognised as a masterpiece. It did not start out life that way; a poor critical reception led to it being heavily cut for distribution shortly after its release, and the original version was lost. Then in 2008, in a small museum in Buenos Aires, a poor, but complete, copy of the original was discovered. It has been used to supply the missing sequences, and now a restored version of Metropolis has been released that, at 150 minutes running time, is as close as possible to the original version and which has an additional 25 minutes of footage. It also has the original orchestral score composed by Gottfried Huppertz.
Until now, I’d never actually watched a screening of any version of Metropolis. Of course, I’d seen stills in books and magazines, or short sequences in TV programmes many times; but the whole thing? – no.
Now I have. I bought the Blu-ray/DVD of the restored version. It is indeed a revelation. The imagery is quite breathtaking in places – mixing both ancient (Rotwang’s house and the Cathedral) and modern (the city and the machine halls). The film is full of allegory (for example, the machine hall becomes a vision of Moloch to the city owner’s son) and often makes use of occult and religious symbolism. For example, Rotwang, the evil scientist, is almost akin to a medieval alchemist, much given to decorating his house and equipment with pentagrams, while the subterranean cavern where Maria speaks to the workers is full of Christian imagery.
The acting, as was the fashion in silent films, is not very subtle, and the ending is rather simplistic. However, its visual power cannot be faulted and the orchestral score adds to the effect. Lang certainly knew how to do crowd scenes – the workers’ mob pursuing the false Maria, or the children fleeing the flooding underground city have an intensity that astounds. Metropolis is indeed a masterpiece.
Today is World AIDS Day. One of those occasions that you wish you didn’t have to have, but which is important to remember and do something about.
At a personal level, it’s a chance for me to recall some lost friends: Kerry, Lance, Eric, Humphrey, Peter, John, Kingsley, Graham, and Neil. I’m sorry that you’re not around with the rest of us today.
Ach, another year. Meanwhile, I have to ask myself WTF are the younger generation doing ignoring the lessons of history?
[…] AIDS Day was on December 1st. I had the luxury of reflecting on lost friends, since it is my good fortune to be living in the […]
Just over a week ago, I gave a status report on the issues that I was having with Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011. In summary, there are three major issues that I’m concerned with at the moment:
Microsoft acknowledged issue (1), and have now produced a fix. If you go to the Download page of the Windows Live Essentials software, and re-download, you’ll get the updated version. The build number of the WLPG 2011 that was released on the 30th September was 15.4.3502.922. The updated version is now 15.4.3508.1109.
In summary, Microsoft have told me the changes are:
I’ve done a few quick tests, and I think I can point to a couple of additional behaviours:
So as far as I can see, I can use this latest version of WLPG 2011 safely, provided that I do all my geotagging and geocoding work outside of WLPG 2011. That way, WLPG 2011 is only ever reading GPS and IPTC Location information, and it will never write out GPS or geocodes into my files.
Microsoft acknowledge that there’s room for improvement here in future versions of WLPG and will be revisiting this feature. For example, I think that if they were to provide a mapping interface within WLPG itself, then users could check or modify the GPS coordinates and use WLPG to write them out into the files.
So long as WLPG 2011 never writes out any metadata to my files, then I won’t get hit by issue 2 (Makernotes corruption) or issue 3 (file compression).
What’s the current status of those issues?
Well, Microsoft also acknowledge issue (2), but currently treat this as a lower priority. I see that today the issue has been escalated, so perhaps they’ve begun to work on it. Until it’s resolved, I personally don’t want to use WLPG 2011 to do any tagging (e.g. people or descriptive tags), because then metadata gets written out to the files, and that will trigger the Makernotes corruption.
As I noted in my last status report, issue (3) is interesting, because not everybody is being affected by this. As I reported last time, it does seem to be caused by some kind of interaction between WLPG 2011, the Windows Imaging Component library in Windows itself and third-party Codecs that some of us need to install to handle non-JEPG image formats.
I’ve been doing some more investigation, and I think I have a workaround for my particular case.
I’m using the FastPictureViewer Codec Pack, because the codecs handle a wide range of image formats, which Windows and WLPG cannot do by themselves. One of the codecs is designed to handle auto-rotate of JPEG images. It looks as though that if this is installed into the WLPG/WIC/Codec pipeline, then I get the unwanted file compression. So my workaround is to de-install this particular codec in the FastPictureViewer Codec Pack. Hopefully, this issue will get resolved in a more robust fashion in the future.
So, of the three major issues that I started with, the first has been satisfactorily resolved (with room for future improvement), the second is being worked on, and the third has been identified and perhaps Microsoft and the third-party Codec developers will come to some sort of resolution in the future.
This all means that while I won’t be using WLPG 2011 to do any tagging work, It can safely be used as an easy-to-use photo browser by family members. And it can also be used by family members to edit photos, since the original files get preserved. It’s a major step forwards from the geotag disaster that hit me back in August. My thanks to the WLPG team for their work in addressing the issue.
Addendum, 12 July 2011: Last week, a new version of WLPG 2011 was released; build number 15.4.3538.0513. However, even though Microsoft acknowledged the MakerNotes corruption bug back in December 2010, this new build of WLPG still has the bug. Sigh.
[…] There’s an update to WLPG 2011 that addresses the geotagging issue. See here for more information. […]
[…] Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 – Status Report 2 […]
[…] There’s an update to WLPG 2011 that addresses the geotagging issue. See here for more information. […]
[…] Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 – Status Report 2 […]
Glad to see that your issues have and are being addressed to your satisfaction Geoff. See! Microsoft do listen to their users!
Thanks, TG. Yes, I agree, sometimes they do listen – but not always, viz. the WHS debacle currently underway…
The response from Microsoft is good news. Geoff, I will post a comment with a link to this post on my reviews or the geotagging issues so others can learn of the progress. Thank you for your diligent work on this. And thanks to Microsoft for listening and responding positively.
You can also use Microsoft pro photo 2 for mapping?
Yes, you can use Pro Photo Tools 2, but I prefer Geosetter over PPT2…
Speaking of GeoSetter, I just found a little helper for some of my problems. GeoSetter reads AFCP-IPTC, (Phil defined it as such) which means I get to delete it en masse instead of using ExifToolGUI to pick through photos one at a time deleting errant keywords and copyrights one line at a time. Not that I minded entirely but am really glad for this different way of doing it.
Now only if they fix the slideshow issue and let me choose the old rich transitions and high quality slideshows, I won’t uninstall it. 🙂
[…] The busiest day of the year was December 2nd with 188 views. The most popular post that day was Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 – Status Report 2. […]
I noticed when doing a backup that the backup program wanted to backup some files I hadn’t changed. Checking the files I found that some had been randomly geo-coded, while an uncompressed TIFF file had been compressed.
I thought the culprit might have been Windows Live Photo Gallery, and thankfully your blog post comes up near the top of Google search results to confirm the problem. Thanks for posting the fix as well.
Hi! Do you know if WLPG makes anything run in the background even when it’s not being used, and/or do anything to the photos on the drive…? Because I would like to install the Movie Maker, and WLPG is a pre-requisite which I have no intention to use…
Cheers.
As far as I can see (from Task Manager) WLPG doesn’t run in the background (or have anything running) when it’s not open as an application.
Thanks!
Geoff, how on earth did you get a list of installed WIC codecs? And after that, how did you figure out which WIC codec windows was using to “manhandle” your JPG files?
Great and thorough writeup, BTW. Thanks!
David, it was a small utility that Axel Rietschin made that will enumerate the codecs installed on a computer. He gave the link in one of the Microsoft forums – but I can’t find it now (and Microsoft have done some major overhauls on their forums, so some of them no longer exist). I suggest you drop him an email – he’s the guy behind the FastPictureViewer http://www.fastpictureviewer.com
Thanks a lot! After reading your posts, I went looking for a way to figure out which WIC codecs were installed on my system, but Google seems to think that anything with the word “codec” in it MUST be related to video. I’ll try and get in touch with Axel.
It turns out that even though I have “bad” version of WLPG installed AND the old beta version of the FastPictureViewer codec, my JPEGs aren’t getting compressed when I add/edit tags and such. Weird.
I should shell out and get the latest version, since we all could be waiting for another 10 years for the Camera manufacturers and Adobe to get it together and release x64 codecs.
If you are still looking for Axel Rietschin’s codec enumerator I believe you can find it here:
http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/bin/EnumCodecs.zip
Axel expands upon it in this post:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=36553242
Tom, thanks for the links. I’ll go and get it, it’s always useful to have around.
I have a limited understanding of file structure, so it is possible my questions are addressed here already. We store picture files on a network server (ReadyNAS) (50,000+) as jpeg and NEF files. The files are accessed by multiple computers. We are using WLPG (build 15.4.3508.1109) for face recognition. We need the face recognition information to stay with the photo, so that any of the computers can find photos based on face names, both for jpeg and NEF files. Today we attempted this for the first time, confirming faces to names on one computer (in jpeg and NEF files). After closing out of that computer and opening MLPG on a second computer, the names for the faces were not present. The modified dates of the picture files to which the face recongnition names were added have not changed, and there are no separate .xmp files in the folders of the NEF files. The face recognition names are still available through the computer that named them.
Is what we’re seeking to do possible?
Thanks.
Ed, I don’t think it is possible for the NEF files. This is Nikon’s RAW format, and with RAW formats, WLPG will neither write out metadata into the image files themselves, nor create Sidecar (xmp) files. It will only hold the metadata (e.g. the Face recognition metadata) inside the database on the computer where the metadata was created. Thus, you won’t be able to share this metadata easily with a second or other computers running WLPG.
Now, it should be able to share metadata for jpeg files (because WLPG should be writing the metadata into the jpeg files themselves). However, from what you say, it sounds as though this is not working either, which is a bit strange.
Perhaps you need to give the WLPG on the second computer a bit of time to read the metadata on the jpegs? Alternatively, it might be that WLPG doesn’t share Face recognition metadata in the same way as other metadata – I thought that it did, but then again I don’t use the face recognition feature of WLPG at the moment (because of the Makernotes issue). Try tagging some jpegs, and see if the tags are shared across computers…
Hello Geoff,
A little late to the party on this, but do you know if issue 1 above (GPS coordinates) is also fixed in the edition of WLPG still offered for use to XP users? I’m fearful that many of the bug fixes will roll forward in the new releases, but bypass those of us still using XP (and therefore orphaned by Microsoft). I’ve been stuck using Picasa (as a viewer only) since all this surfaced, and have simply stopped tagging anything. Thank you so for your efforts on behalf of everyone.
A.J.
Hi, A. J.
To the best of my knowledge, the XP version did not do any form of geotagging at all, certainly not automatic geotagging. That whole issue (and bug) got introduced with the Wave 4 version of WLPG. I’m pretty confident that the XP version is Wave 3 – and you should be safe with that.
And Geoff, I know you are not Microsoft help, so I apologize if the question above is too much…but honestly, Microsoft has so re-structured the help forums for Windows Live components to make them quite difficult to search and use. Just thought you might know something offhand.
A.J., tell me about it… It’s quite the most unhelpful help system I occasionally have to use…
I take back that comment.
Microsoft has just migrated their Media Center forums (The Green Button) to yet another forum platform (http://experts.windows.com/) and it’s even worse than WindowsLiveHelp.com…
Hi Geoff.
Do you still use IDimager to edit your IPTC-information? Can you recommend it for TIFF-files? Or do you or other here have other suggestions (maybe free)?
Thanks,
Jesper
Hi Jesper,
Yes, I still use IDimager as my primary digital workflow tool, and as my primary tool for IPTC metadata work. I’m afraid I don’t use TIFF files, only JPEG and CR2 formats, so I can’t say how good it will be. IDimager will certainly handle TIFF files, and it’s one of the formats where metadata can be inserted into the file itself, so that’s what IDimager will do.
If you want free (or at least one where a donation is welcomed and well-deserved), then try GeoSetter. That uses ExifTool under the covers, so it’s pretty good for metadata work.
Hi Geoff, i’ve read through all your posts about WLPG and you seem to know more than most. I’m at a complete loss finding information through the MS Support site. Your issues seem more in depth than mine so i’m hoping you have a simple suggestion that could help me.
I just got a new laptop (Windows 7) and restored all my backup data from my old laptop (Windows Vista). Now i’ve noticed that my photos are randomly messed up. In particular, volumes of photos have had the date taken info changed. Because of that, photos are not filed correctly, folder names are wrong….not to mention that the critical original date info is lost. I’ve also lost many of my tags and comments.
I found a so called ‘fix’ on the MS Support site and ran it. Nothing has changed. Is there a fix for this that you know of? I’m feeling so dejected when I think of all the hours and days i’ve spent carefully filing, tagging and labelling my photos. I’m a garden designer and so not only do I have my personal photos, I have all my client gardens and personal stock images. ugh, its a nightmare. any suggestions you have would be most welcome. btw, i really enjoyed your wedding album 🙂
Hi kristi,
I’ve just seen your message. I’ll get back to you tomorrow with hopefully some suggestions. It’s late here…
Kristi,
Can you help me understand exactly what you did when you say that you “restored all your backup data from your old laptop”? Did you at any point use the “Import photos and videos” feature of WLPG? And the “fix” that you found, was it this one:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951173/en-us
Let me know the answers to these questions, and I’ll try and give you some decent answers. Thanks.
When i bought the new laptop I took it to a computer repair guy and he transferred all the data from my old hard drive to the new one. When I opened WLPG for the first time I do not recall having to import anything or add folders, my photos and folders were already visible.
The fix that I ran can be seen here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951173
the file itself was called Microsoftfixit50020.msi
I don’t really understand why but after poking around a bit to assess the extent of the ‘damage’, many of my files now have the date taken changed to June 8, 2008. why this date?? who knows! not all have been changed to that date but a good many of them. I just know they are wrong when files with this date are in a folder called Easter 2002.
thanks Geoff. i appreciate your input. i’m at a loss
Hi Kristi,
Thanks for the info. It has helped me understand what you did, but I’m afraid I don’t have any blinding insight to offer as to what caused the problem.
To recap, and to make sure I’m understanding the situation correctly:
1) Your old laptop ran Vista. You had your photos, arranged in folders, stored on that.
2) When you got your new laptop (running Windows 7), a computer repair guy transferred all the data from your old laptop to your new one.
Am I right in understanding that he preserved exactly the same structure of folder and their contents in this transfer? – In other words, when you use the Windows Explorer (not WLPG) to browse the folders on your new laptop, you see the same folder names, and the same photo content as on your old laptop? BTW, do you still have your old laptop, with the original data? That would be very useful, because then you could make direct comparisons.
I suspect that when you use the Windows Explorer, the folders and their contents will look the same as on your old laptop, but that when you use WLPG – because it displays photos according to metadata, the structure looks completely different.
If you were using WLPG (or the Vista Photo Gallery) on your old laptop, and things now look completely different with WLPG on your new laptop, then it sounds as though somehow the metadata in the photos has been changed in the transfer between the two machines.
Here’s where if you still have your old laptop comes in very handy. Use the Windows Explorer on both laptops and pick a few photos to compare. Right-click on a photo and choose “Properties” – then compare the properties in the “Details” tab. That tab shows you the metadata inside the photo, such as Date Taken. It will also show you the date of when the photo file was created, and when the file was last modified (e.g. when you added a tag or a comment into the metadata).
If the sample files are different (e.g. the Date Taken field is different, or the Tags are different), then something has happened as a result of the files getting transferred. I have to say that this seems unlikely, but I think we need to establish whether or not this is the case.
Let me know how it goes.
Oh, one last thing – that fix you applied – it wouldn’t have had any effect in your situation, because it is for when you use the Import function of WLPG, and, as you say, you did not do that with the files from your old laptop.
I really appreciate all your time and effort to help me Geoff. Unfortunately, the old laptop is dead done…hence the need for the new one. So no comparisons are possible. Your recap is correct, the re-install of my files was a duplicate of what was on my old machine. I really don’t recall having to import the first time I opened WLPG but perhaps I did?? Maybe I did import the entire My Pictures folder. My memory fails me on this. That could be when everything went pear shaped.
The date information and tags are most definitely messed up. And I dont foresee any easy way of getting things back to the way they were. I wish MS would just stop forcing us to upgrade. For a small percentage of people the upgrades and fancy new features may be of interest but I think for the majority of computer users, once you figure out how something works its preferable to just have it stay the same. I feel the same about Windows Live Mail. I tried it and promptly uninstalled it. what a nightmare! I’m now using and old copy of Outlook from Windows 2003 but unfortunately i lost so much of my stored message and contact organization in the transfer. It’s such an inconvenience.
Thanks again for all your input. I am really grateful 🙂
Kristi,
It’s been awhile (last Fall) since I had WLPG on my computer. What I recall is that My Pictures was imported automatically. You wouldn’t have had to do anything to bring them in.
The dates you’re seeing that have now gone wrong: Are these the dates that used to be ‘date taken’ or is it the modification dates? WLPG may have decided that ‘import’ was cause for changing the modification dates. The ‘dates taken’ should be as they were, of course.
[…] display my geotags correctly, as you can see from the examples I show in this blog post. And once Microsoft had corrected a horrendous geotagging bug in WLPG, I was still left with the fact that WLPG will merrily corrupt Makernotes in Exif metadata if you […]
Geoff, I know I mentioned a few months ago (somewhere in this labyrinth of WLPG complaints) a problem I had discovered with time stamps on thousands of photos that had been exposed to WLPG ever so briefly and wondered if it was the cause.
I am just now getting around to surveying the damage in more detail and I see similarity to the woman speaking above. It goes way beyond the times being off by 8 hours as you’d previously suggested. That would be relatively simple to fix.
No. What I’m finding are months and years thrown every which way. These are all digital photos kept in folders by year; 2004, 2005, 2006, etc up to the present. The photos are numbered in a consistent way (year-jlb-####) as they come off my camera so I know they were at one time in dated sequence.
What I have now, for instance, as I sort the columns by NAME in folder 2005 are photos with dated-taken:
1/1/2005
8/9/2010
1/14/2005
8/9/2010
8/19/2010
2/12/2005
3/16/2005
8/8/2007
11/10/2010
It carries on in a nauseating fashion like that through each year’s folder.
Did I miss something in your ever-illuminating blog that would shed some light? Even the teeniest globe that is not another train coming would be so appreciated.
OK, got some light.
According to GeoSetter which shows all kinds of time information, the date now showing as date-taken is the last modification date.
For instance, a photo taken sometime between January 1st and January 14th, 2005 is showing a last-modified date of 8-9-2010 which is also showing as its ‘date created’ and ‘date/time original’. AND what is now showing in Windows as ‘date taken’.
The only 2005 date in that whole list is ‘modify date’ (meaning first modify date) of 8-19-2005. This is probably the first time I added GPS co-ordinates and tags. Why it was modified again 8-9-2010 I don’t know. Might have been catching up on tagging.
So, GeoSetter can’t fix this because the original dates are gone forever. HOWEVER. Remember the massive Carbonite restore? Well, I kept it and I still have all the folders from 2004-2010. Ha! I spit on you WLPG.
It seems as though, in your case, something, sometimes, takes the current “file modified” timestamp and is stuffing that back into the “date created” and “date original” fields. What that might be, I don’t know. I’ll have a look at some of my photos to check them out.
I recently found a neat trick for searching in Windows Explorer on Windows 7. You can use dates and date ranges for searching in the Search field in combination with terms such as datemodified, datetaken, and so on.
It wouldn’t surprise me that an earlier version of WLPG did this sort of thing – I know that I have a batch of scanned photos that did have the “date original” manually set, but which have now all been set to the date of scanning instead…
And I recently realised, from reading some of the posts on the Picasa forum, that earlier versions of Picasa apparently did not touch the “date modified” field at all, even when it modified the file. That seems to be a fundamental error, contradicting the proper operation of the operating system itself…
I started with the year 2004. Anything that still had that year in the date-taken appeared to be off by 8 hours so I batch repaired that. The other ones with some other year I manually adjusted with GeoSetter by comparing side by side on two monitors with the restored photos (pre-WLPG) that seem to be correct.
The reason I’m blaming this mess on WLPG is that my 2011 photos are fine. And the only software I was using on my photos for GPS and IPTC in 2011 was either GeoSetter or Photo Mechanic.
WLPG is long gone from my computer and so is Picasa although I still read with interest anything you have to say about them.
I see that the current version of WLPG is 15.4.3555.308, as of March 21, 2012 according to Wikipedia. Do you have an update to your last addendum of July 2011 to see if this has fixed the bugs you identified in 15.4.3538.0513 ?
Thomas, the Makernotes corruption is still there in the latest release. Frankly, I doubt whether Microsoft will ever fix it, it’s been there for so long. The file-size bug has been fixed – but this was fixed in the third-party codec, not by Microsoft.
Hi Geoff, Just to understand – how bad is the Makernotes corruption. What kind of information does it corrupt when you add tags in WLPG. Wondering why Microsoft put this issue as a low priority?
Hi Kannan – if you take a look at this post: https://gcoupe.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/more-problems-with-windows-live-photo-gallery-2011/ – you can see an example of Makernotes corruption done by WLPG. The original file contained 98 elements of camera-specific data from my Canon DSLR. Once WLPG got its paws on it, there were only 11 elements left; the rest had been corrupted by WLPG.
Microsoft probably puts a low priority on fixing this because the vast majority of consumers would never realize that anything was wrong. Only if you’re a serious photographer and want to ensure that your original files contain uncorrupted metadata would this be an issue. The problem is that preserving Exif metadata can be a bit tricky. It can certainly be done – other tools can do it – but neither Microsoft nor Google have bothered to make the effort. WLPG corrupts the Exif Makernotes, whilst Picasa simply strips them out altogether. Neither is an acceptable solution for a serious photographer.
Thanks Geoff. I compared some metadata outputs and noticed a change in a few tags. Am almost okay to compromise on that – but my main problem right now is WLPG writes metadata to database only in one machine while in another machine its nice and writes to the file. So for now its unusable as windows explorer shows different metadata than WLPG. Wish there was a setting to write to file always.
Kannan, that problem about WLPG not writing out metadata into files is a known one. See http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/gallery-files/metadata-changes-made-in-windows-live-photo/eb30158f-0a4f-4779-9212-e87e04e28cf0
Are you using a third-party codec, like FastPictureViewer? If so, and you’re using FPV, try turning off the auto-rotation feature in it. That may help…
[…] Some of you may recall that, when it was first released in 2010, Windows Live Photo Gallery had a major problem with geotags. It was writing out GPS coordinate data into photos that was often completely wrong. Microsoft got this fixed in December 2010. […]
Nobody does this better than Hans Rosling. Here’s a particularly nice example:
(hat tip to Pharyngula)
Last night, BBC Two had a terrific interview of Christopher Hitchens conducted by Jeremy Paxman. It was a joy to listen to Hitchens laying out his ideas and thoughts on his life and politics. What was not a joy was to look at him and realise that he is not long for this world. He has a particularly virulent cancer that gives its hosts only a 5% chance of pulling through more than five years.
Still, at least we will have the record of his work to remind us of the need to keep fighting for reason and the Enlightenment against the forces of superstition and theocracy. And for the moment, at least, we still have Hitch.
…and here’s to KBO…
A rather clever illusion. Simple, but the timing has to be just right…
(hat tip to anaglyph on Richard Wiseman’s blog)
Foie Gras – simply delicious and simply cruel in its method of production. An article in today’s Guardian puts both sides of the argument well:
Foie gras is objectively, indisputably cruel. What a tragedy, then, that it should be so delicious, with an incomparable interplay of sweet and fat, the semi-solid and semi-liquid, the smooth, buttery earthiness and the velvet blush of offal. For many who love food, it has a kind of beauty, even though that beauty was wrought from agony.
Yes, I’ve tasted it – and it is every bit as good as described above. However, knowing now what I know about the method of production, I would think hard about eating it again.
There seems to be something in the water at the campus at Redmond. That must be the reason why I cannot fathom some of the decisions being made in Microsoft at the moment.
The latest is today’s announcement from the Windows Home Server team that they will be dropping the Drive Extender technology for the next version of Windows Home Server (codenamed Vail) due to be released in 2011.
I just don’t understand the rationale behind this. As far as I’m concerned, it’s been a brilliant piece of technology that just worked, and has been the underpinning of why I bought version 1 of WHS in the first place. If a drive failed, I could just slot in a new one, and the system would automatically recover. The drives didn’t all have to be the same size (as in a RAID setup).
And now, Microsoft announce that they are dropping this for Vail, and claim that customers don’t want or need it. Hello, I’m a customer, and I want it… It was, and is, one of the major selling points of WHS.
Is the world going mad? Or is it just Microsoft?
Well there’s been quite an outcry from WHS users since yesterday’s announcement. So much so that the unfortunate Michael Leworthy felt it necessary to issue a second statement . Reading the two together merely underlines the title of my post, and serves to point out the disingenuousness of Mr. Leworthy.
Yesterday, for example, his reason for announcing the dropping of the Driver Extender technology was:
When weighing up the future direction of storage in the consumer and SMB market, the team felt the Drive Extender technology was not meeting our customer needs.
Yet today, clearly somewhat shocked, and yet knowing that the reaction was only to be expected he says:
Hi, it is a rough day for Vail, and I have been dreading today for a while as an avid Vail user myself. We know this is popular feature in regards to our home server product, and as such all expected that it would have created this type of outreach from our community.
Meanwhile, Paul Thurrot, over at his blog, probably reveals the real reason behind the dropping of the technology:
In a briefing last month, I was told that Microsoft and its partners discovered problems with Drive Extender once they began typical server loads (i.e. server applications) on the system. This came about because Drive Extender was being moved from a simple system, WHS, to a more complex, server-like OS )(SBS “Aurora”) that would in fact be used to run true server applications. And these applications were causing problems.
In addition, the Windows Home Server group now finds itself lumped in organisationally with the big boys: the Business Server group. So the business scenarios where the Driver Extender technology is showing shortcomings is overriding the simple fact that for home use by ordinary consumers, the technology works well and unobtrusively. Just which customers was Mr. Leworthy talking about when he claimed the “technology was not meeting our customer needs”?
I suppose that the writing has been on the wall for Windows Home Server since last week, when HP suddenly announced that it would be selling Drobo servers – a clear rival to HP’s own MediaSmart servers based on WHS. What’s the betting that HP will shortly announce the dropping of the MediaSmart Server line entirely?
(Update 1 December: well, that was an easy bet – HP has announced the dropping of the line, and the Windows Home Server team do their best “Crisis? What crisis?” impression)
I think it’s worth quoting a chunk from the post over at We Got Served:
Back in August 2008, Charlie Kindel, then General Manager for Windows Home Server at Microsoft outlined the guiding principles of Drive Extender, the spirit of which runs right across the platform “as a server designed for ordinary people”:
Windows Home Server storage system design requirements
- Must be extremely simple to use.Must not add any new concepts or terminology average consumers would not understand. Simple operations should be simple and there should not be any complex operations.
- Must be infinitely & transparently extendible.Users should be able to just plug in more hard drives and the amount of storage available should just grow accordingly. There should be no arbitrary limits to the kinds of hard drives used. Users should be able to plug in any number of drives. Different brands, sizes, and technologies should be able to be mixed without the user having to worry about details.
- All storage must be accessible using a single namespace. In other words, no drive letters. Drive letters are a 1970′s anachronism and must be squashed out of existence!
- The storage namespace must be prescriptive.In other words, our research told us that consumers want guidance on where to store stuff. Our storage system needs to be able to tell users where photos go. Where music goes. Etc…
- Must be redundant & reliable. There are two components in every modern computer that are guaranteedto fail: fans and hard drives. Because they have moving parts, Windows Home Server must be resilient to the failure of one or more hard drives.
- Must be compatible.Compatible with existing software, devices, disk drives, etc…
- Must have great performance.
- Must be secure.
- Must enable future innovation. Both the amount of storage consumers are using, and capacity/$ are growing at Moore’s Law like rates (while nothing else really is). This creates a discontinuity in the industry and an opportunity for innovation. The storage system must operate at a higher level of abstraction to enable rich software innovation (file level vs. block level).
These guiding principles remain as valid today as when they were coined. Unfortunately, with yesterday’s announcement, Microsoft has simply torn them up.
The outcry continues. However, every now and then, someone comments that Microsoft are doing the right thing, because all we need is RAID in place of the Drive Extender technology. Clearly, not only are such people techies who simply don’t appreciate that Windows Home Server is intended for the home, to be used by non-techie consumers, but they haven’t appreciated the very real advantages that DE technology has over RAID.
To illustrate these, it’s worth quoting in full the comment by LarryA from the MediaSmartServer.Net blog:
After reading all the comments on this subject, I’m beginning to wonder if some of the people suggesting that RAID is a good replacement for WHS or how WHS isn’t reliable have ever used WHS. I have used WHS from the very first day it was available from Amazon and have never had a corrupted file. Also there are some features of WHS that RAID doesn’t provide. A few examples:
WHS backs up only one copy of identical files from multiple PCs. This saves a ton of space and backup time.
WHS backs up only those sectors that have changed. Again a savings of a ton of space and time. After the first backup of a PC, the daily backup for my 5 PCs is less than 10 minutes each.
Because of the first two automatic features I mentioned, I have about 20 terabytes of backups stored in only 2.6 terabytes of disk space. I have about 17 backups of each of my 5 PCs.
I can choose to duplicate a folder for extra security by a single click. I can undo duplication with a single click.
My WHS started with a single 500-GB drive and now contains drives ranging in size from 500-GB to 1.5-TB for a total of 4.78-TB of space available.
I can start a backup prior to installation of new software with two clicks and have to wait for less than 10 minutes for it to complete. On at least 2 occasions I’ve had to restore a PC because of a bad installation.
I don’t have to do anything to manage any of these features. Installation could not be simpler and my HP WHS takes up a tiny little bit of space under my desk.
I don’t know of any existing system, RAID or otherwise, that has all these features. If anyone knows of one I would like to hear about it.
And oh yea, I will never store my data or backups in the cloud!!! I’ve been a programmer in the financial industry for more than 35 years. So I have lots of experience with the internet, clouds and networks, all of which have been hacked.
Without DE WHS is a dead product. Microsoft take your cloud and RAID solutions and stuff’um!! Screwed by Microsoft again!!
Amen.
Oh, and one other thing. I see lots of comments in the blogs from people thinking that the Drobo FS product is a replacement for WHS. As far as I can see, it is no such thing. It’s primarily intended as a data store, not as the complete systems store concept of WHS. Yes, it does give you the storage pool concept of WHS, but that’s the end of it. It will not:
I can’t resist just pointing out that over at the Microsoft Connect (tagline “your feedback improving Microsoft products”) forum devoted to Windows Home Server, the responses from those of us asking Microsoft to put the DE technology back into the next version of WHS versus those who are saying that Microsoft should not is running at approximately 80-1 90-1 93-1 95-1 97-1 in favour of restoring DE to WHS. At the moment, it’s 3273 3602 3908 4088 4281 votes in favour of the restoration versus 44 against (as of 2 December).
Nonetheless, I wouldn’t mind betting that Microsoft will simply go ahead and ignore this.
I was watching the presentation that the unfortunate Mr. Leworthy gave at the recent TechEd conference held in Berlin earlier this month (i.e. just before the news broke about the removal of DE). Two things struck me:
So I take from that that despite the outcry over the dropping of DE from the next version of WHS, Microsoft will almost certainly blithely ignore it and carry on as if nothing has happened. Which rather gives the “your feedback improving Microsoft products” a cynical air worthy of typical marketing-speak. What a surprise.
[…] And yet, I find myself increasingly griping about the directions that Microsoft is taking. If it’s not the shortcomings of Windows Live, it’s the idiocy of the Windows Marketplace, or it’s the brain-dead decision to remove Drive Extender from Windows Home Server. […]
[…] that was my first reaction on hearing the news when it became public a month later, and the same reaction of many, if not […]
[…] What really gets to me is that Microsoft had the chance to build upon the base of WHSv1 as a server and media appliance that could be used by the average consumer, and they’ve thrown that chance away. […]
[…] of WHS v1) from the v2 product. The decision was greeted with howls of protest from WHS customers (including me), but Microsoft soldiered on and released WHS 2011 in […]
[…] Microsoft has just unleashed the Release Candidate of Windows Home Server 2011 upon the world. And as they had promised, they have surgically removed the one unique selling point that WHS version 1 had – the drive […]
[…] reorganised, and this year released the second version: Windows Home Server 2011. In the process, they effectively tore up Kindel’s guiding principles, and the result has been a product that while it bears the word “Home” in its title, is far […]
[…] Server group at Microsoft – small fish in a very big pond. In the process of developing WHS 2011, they effectively tore up Kindel’s guiding principles, and the result has been a product that while it bears the word “Home” in its title, is far […]
[…] improvement over the original WHS. Indeed, it dropped the major feature of the WHS Drive Extender, much to the dismay of WHS customers. There had also been organisational changes at Microsoft; the original product team had been part […]
I read in today’s Guardian that there was an auction today of Alan Turing’s papers. While I was pleased to see that Google had donated $100,000 to the bid of Bletchley Park to keep the papers for the nation, I couldn’t help but feel disheartened by the thought that Turing’s papers could potentially disappear into a private collection, to be gazed upon by a single, wealthy individual, quite possibly hailing from Silicon Valley.
Turing was an important individual in the history of not only computing, but in the fact that Nazi Germany was eventually defeated by the Allies. And Britain repaid that debt by persecuting him because he was gay, with the result that Turing committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide.
I can’t help feeling that Turing’s papers should have been acquired for the nation and humanity at large. Once again, we seem to understand only the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Perhaps all is not lost; if the new owner will arrange for the papers to be made available online, then something may come out of this. Perhaps the Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online can serve as a model here.
[…] 25, 2011 by Geoff Coupe For a while, it looked as though there was a real possibility that Alan Turing’s papers might disappear abroad, possibly to a private collector in Silicon Valley. However, news comes today that the UK’s […]
In view of the issues I’ve been having with WLPG 2011, I thought that it would be worthwhile to report that Microsoft are listening to those of us who are reporting tales of woe caused by using WLPG 2011. I’ve had a number of emails from the lead Project Manager of the WLPG team on the subject.
It seems to me that there are three major issues being reported at the moment:
Microsoft have acknowledged issue (1), and are working on a fix. I’ve been told that they hope to roll out an update soon for WLPG 2011 that may resolve the issue going forward.
Microsoft also acknowledge issue (2), but currently treat this as a lower priority. I think that’s understandable, because unlike the case for RAW files, Makernotes are not vital for JPEG files.
Issue (3) is interesting, because not everybody, it seems, is being affected by this. Some people are reporting that no compression occurs, whereas others of us are plainly seeing it. Indeed, I had an email from Microsoft stating that this reported compression was of utmost concern to them, but expressing confusion that they also weren’t seeing compression in their tests.
After thinking about this, it seems to me that one possible hypothesis to account for the difference is that those of us who are seeing file compression are using third-party codecs.
Most professional photographers (and many keen amateurs) are probably taking their digital photos in a RAW format. Windows and WLPG will not display such images out of the box; they require a codec to be installed to do this. Codecs are available from either the camera manufacturers or other third parties.
Now, it just so happens that I have a number of photos held in RAW or DNG formats in my collection, so I need to have a codec installed to view these in Windows and WLPG. I’m using the FastPictureViewer codec to do this, because it handles a wide range of image formats, which Windows and WLPG cannot do by themselves.
I noticed a thread in the PC Talk forum on the Digital Photography Review site where the original poster reported that he was also seeing this compression of files with WLPG 2011. Interestingly, there’s a number of contributions to the thread by Axel Rietschin, the developer of the FastPictureViewer codec. He claims that the Windows Imaging Components (WIC) library and Microsoft’s own JPEG codec use private and undocumented interfaces that are not available to any third party codec:
The underlying problem is that lossless transcoding, where a file is reconstructed to make room for new metadata, is not possible with the normal Windows Imaging Components codec interfaces: there is nothing that would allow anyone to retrieve the packed data, only pixels. Microsoft implemented this feature in their own JPEG codec using an undocumented interface called IMILCJpegDecoderFrame that WIC uses internally, but no 3rd-party JPEG codec (or 3rd-party codec for any other lossy formats) is able to provide this functionality.
And in a later message on the same thread:
Just to clarify: Microsoft worked around the limitation of the(ir own) API by implementing a private interface in their JPEG codec that presumably let them read/write the pixel data without decompressing it, and as a result both Windows and WLPG are able to perform lossless metadata updates and rotations on JPEG files when using the stock codec.
The problem starts only when replacing the default codec with a 3rd-party one which cannot possibly implement the internal (and undocumented) interface they use privately.
I think that this is what must be happening. Because I need to have a third party codec installed to handle my RAW and DNG images, this is also being used by WIC for JPEG images, and hence I’m seeing the file compression. Those people who only use JPEG formatted images have no cause to install an additional codec, so they are not seeing the compression.
This compression will only occur when WLPG 2011 touches an image file to write back information into it.
To date, I’ve been pretty lucky – I use IDimager to do my cataloguing and metadata work, and this does not use WIC. So all the image data is left untouched in the file, even though the metadata may have been edited. This is as it should be. (Note: IDimager is no longer available. Its successor is Photo Supreme, which I am now using)
Previous versions of WLPG I’ve been using were (mostly) just reading these files to capture the metadata for their internal databases. I say “mostly”, because I’ve seen some earlier files that have had Microsoft-specific metadata written into them, and some of them have been compressed. Those that weren’t would have been written before the time that I got a digital camera capable of using RAW format – so the built-in Microsoft codec with its undocumented private interfaces would have been used. Those that are compressed will be examples done after I had installed the third-party codec to handle RAW formats on my PC. There aren’t many of them, because it was rare that I used WLPG directly to edit metadata.
However, with the advent of WLPG 2011, and its current habit of writing GPS and IPTC Extension metadata into files (issue 1 above), then I’ve had a deluge of files that have been compressed, because when WLPG writes out the metadata, the file gets compressed.
In one sense, of the three issues, only issue (1) can be laid squarely at the door of WLPG 2011. Issue (2) is probably down to the implementation of WIC itself, and is independent of any application such as WLPG calling it.
However, issue (3) is somewhat more messy. It would seem to be caused by the architecture of WIC, and the fact that there are private interfaces being used by Microsoft that are not available to third party codec developers. It also has the result of making WLPG 2011 lie to the user whenever third-party codecs are installed. If the user sets WLPG to have no compression, then WLPG assumes that WIC will follow suit, but it doesn’t, and file compression will still result.
This leads me to a concern about the possible solution Microsoft are working on for issue (1). Originally, I had suggested that a simple solution would be to offer the user a way of turning off the writing of GPS coordinates into the Exif of a file. But now I realise that that is not sufficient. If WLPG 2011 goes ahead and constructs a geotag because it finds IPTC Location metadata in a file, then it will also use WIC to write out new IPTC Extension “LocationCreated” metadata into the file as part of its geotagging/geocoding function. And if a third-party codec is installed, the file will be compressed.
So really, the only immediate solution is to be able to turn off geotagging/geocoding entirely, otherwise metadata gets written, and the file gets compressed.
It’s the same with the face recognition features of WLPG 2011. I can’t use them, otherwise when the metadata gets written, WIC will compress the file. As far as I can see, the bottom line is that whenever WLPG writes out metadata into the file, it uses WIC, and if there’s a third party codec installed, the file will be compressed.
The only real solution, it seems to me, is for Microsoft to document the currently private interfaces of WIC, so that they can be used by third-party codec developers. In the meantime, it looks as though my only option is to install the Windows XP version of Windows Live Essentials. That way I’ll get a version of WLPG which will only ever read my image files and never be used to write to them.
I’ve just been using my laptop as a test system to see if I can reproduce the conditions under which issue (3) (the file compression) will occur. I think I can convincingly show that it is, as I suspected, the combination of WIC and the third-party codec.
First, on the laptop, I uninstalled the third-party codec (FastPictureViewer) that I had on there, and also, for the sake of completeness, Picasa 3.8.
The system was then Windows 7 Home Premium, with WLPG 2011 (build 15.4.3502.922), together with the built-in codecs of windows.
I then copied a folder of photos taken in May 2007 across from my Windows Home Server into the My Pictures folder of the laptop. These are the photos that are showing in the screenshots of the “24 Hours Later” section of this post. I also chose these photos to test, because one of them I had included in a batch sent to Microsoft to test. When Microsoft checked the size before and after the images had been geotagged, they found little or no difference in size:
Yet when I had done the same thing on my PC, I got a reduction in size of about 50%.
So I repeated the test on the laptop (which remember now has no third-party codecs installed).
I first used Geosetter to examine the metadata and size of the files. The files had IPTC Location metadata and the particular file illustrated above (20070524-1234-56) was 3.10MB in size.
Then I opened WLPG 2011, and let it discover the new folder of files. I waited a few minutes, and then went back to Geosetter to examine the files, and the above file in particular.
As expected, all the files now had GPS metadata added to them (this is issue (1) in action), but the interesting thing was that, just as Microsoft had found, the file sizes were very little different than they had been. This seems to suggest that, with the built-in codecs, no compression will occur.
Now I deleted the test folder, waited for this to be registered in WLPG and then installed the FastPictureViewer codecs. I then got a fresh copy of the folder from my Windows Home Server and repeated the test. This time, once WLPG 2011 had added the GPS coordinates, I found that the files had been shrunk by about 50%.
So it definitely seems to be a combination of the third party codec and WIC that triggers the file size reduction. One further interesting thing: since all the pictures are JPEGs before and after, then really only the built-in Windows JPEG codec should be used. There is a FastPictureViewer codec that handles JPEG rotation, but I wasn’t doing this, just adding metadata. So why is there a file size reduction?
There’s an update to WLPG 2011 that addresses the geotagging issue. See here for more information.
[…] are listening to those of us who are reporting tales of woe caused by using WLPG 2011. Please see here for a status report on where I think we […]
OK, 3rd great-grandmother, Nancy, and I are now here. Speak, O Great Ones.
JL, does the 3ggma decompress to the original quality? That certainly would be a welcome turn. Let me get the situation right: The problem occurred on a Windows 7 machine when WLPG was installed. Prior to that, had those images been on that machine for an extended period? After the “happening” you noticed a decrease in file size, messed up metadata, and noticeable decrease in image quality, is that a correct recap? This was on TIF files. What were the results on JPG files. Did any files remain unaffected? With WLPG removed has there been any indication of “malop”, if I may coin a phrase?
Sorry about my oversight. I jumped in here after that invitation for the great ones to speak. I do not consider myself to qualify for that title, just one who keeps learning and tries to share.
JL, a question for you: is there any correlation between files that have been compressed and their orientation (portrait or landscape)? In particular, are all the compressed files in Portrait, while no Landscape files show compression? Thanks.
JL – I think you can ignore my last question. Following further tests here (added above) I don’t see any correlation between orientation and compression on my system.
Guys, great or not, it’s early in the morning here, I’m on my way through breakfast and then out to an appointment. My life seems to be in one-step forward/2 steps back mode. Yesterday, one of my precious two monitors burned out so I’m having to add ‘order a replacement’ to my to-do list and stagger on with one in the meantime. The temperature has dropped about 30 degrees in the past few days; I’m freezing and have to jump up and down all day to keep from going into hypothermic insanity.
Briefly, and then I have to go for away for awhile – Yes, no orientation issues. Ludwig, my sense from looking across my thousands of photos is that every single one was affected in some way. “Some way” might mean ‘only’ metadata changes. ExifToolGUI allows me to export a text document of the entire list. Then I use a program called “WinMerge” (portable edition) to compare the output from a photo subjected to WLPG and one that I’ve retrieved from backup. I’ve done this on a handful of photos that made me curious for one reason or another and they’ve all shown changes of some kind. In an email from Carmen yesterday, he said that the pending update to WLPG will ‘reduce’ the EXIF damage but not eliminate it. I don’t know what ‘he’ means by “EXIF damage”. That was my term.
On October 15th I received a new computer with Windows 7. I’d never seen W7 before. I’d never used Photo Gallery before. WLPG was already installed as part of W7. A few days later I accepted the relentless pop-up box offering an upgrade to 2011. I believe that’s when the problems began but I don’t know because I’ve never used any of this before.
At first I only noticed the GPS damage, then I continued reading Geoff’s posts where he went on to write about compression and EXIF ‘alterations’ and I went back to look and, sure enough, that too. This all happened over a week or so. Then I uninstalled all of Windows Live Essentials. I don’t see any re-occurrence of ‘malop’ since then.
I haven’t tried to decompress a tif yet. I’ll have to go looking for instructions. I have to get on with other things but will check back in again later.
Erm, JL, I think Carmen is a “she”. Admittedly, I draw this conclusion from googling the name and coming up with a reference to Carmen “living with a wonderful hubby” in Seattle, and I do realise that I’m not one to talk, what with me living with a wonderful husband in the Netherlands. Nonetheless, I suspect that Carmen is female…
Sorries all around. I’m an aged female and get taken for a young boy on a regular basis. Even in person. I’ve leave all the other details to the imagination.
Sorry, Ludwig, I know I haven’t answered all your questions yet but will return momentarily.
Ach, nothing to be sorry about – just me being pedantic as usual…
Geoff, you’re a slice. I enjoy you very much. Now I have to go shovel ice.
Ludwig, I’m back home now with my brain only about 25% thawed out, so still not at my best. In fact, I’m in a state of considerable disarray. I have unread email going back as far as August when my computer crashed.
Geoff has written several posts on this blog about his discoveries after installing WLPG, in fact he was also using the beta version so his experience goes back much further than mine. He’s taken the time to document his findings with a delicious degree of fine detail. I’ve been able to confirm all of his experience by looking at my own photos and their metadata. We are in complete agreement so far.
I probably cannot follow any more of this for at least the remainder of today as I’m far beyond swamped with catch-up lists. My overwhelming temptation is to pull a down quilt over my head and pretend I was born an hour ago.
Ludwig, What do you use for decompressing tif’s? I had a look but, being unfamiliar with this concept, I don’t know what or who to trust. Do you have an old favorite and reliable method?
Afraid I am not of much use on this, I use TIFFs rarely. When I do I work almost exclusively in Paint Shop Pro PHOTO. This loads TIFFs, compressed or not and can save them with the option to save uncompressed or compressed (LZW). This gives me the ability to go back and forth – as I said, I don’t use this much. There are stand-alone decompressors available, but I have no experience with any of them. I would be happy to experiment with a copy of one of you files, but others here can probably be more helpful, and more knowledgeable.
I took one of the LZW-compressed photos and re-saved it through Adobe Elements as an uncompressed tiff and the original file size came back. Hallelujah!
Then I exported the metadata from ExifToolGUI, as well as for the restored version and used WinMerge to compare them side-by-side. There are differences but I’m in over my head here as to how important those differences are.
Geoff, could you please do a metadata analysis if I send you over the text files?
JL – I’ll do my best, please send them over…
Good to hear that JL has found a solution.
Most pleased with the positive response from Microsoft (see Geoff update post).
Hurray for all!
BTW, I’ve had a message from Carmen, there’s a new version of WLPG 2011 available. I’ll be blogging about the changes later today, as well as reporting on some more data I’ve found out about the file compression issue.
[…] over a week ago, I gave a status report on the issues that I was having with Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011. In summary, there are three […]
Making progress here, albeit slowly. Today I clicked through over 2,000 tif’s, decompressing where needed. Not every single photo. Some folders were completely compressed save one or two photos, other folders half and half, and some not touched at all. In total maybe 800 LZW’s out of the 2,000. I’d love to be able to tell you the difference but I don’t know what it is.
Right now I’m getting ready to tackle 2,469 jpg’s and I’m looking for dead give-away clues. Is a decrease in size the most obvious? What percentage of your jpg’s did you find compressed? I’ve seen clues like ‘big-endian’ and ‘Invalid EXIF text encoding’ but in some cases those warnings also exist on my backup files. Obviously, some of the damage was done previous to WLPG and possibly prior to arriving on my computer.
Any way to cut through the haze?
I didn’t use compression as the search criterion. My rationale was that WLPG was going through my files setting GPS coordinates, and while it may have been compressing the files as an unwanted side-effect, the primary drive was the setting of GPS.
So I used Geosetter to reveal which files had Geodata set. By using the presence of GPS coordinates as the search criterion, that gave me the subset to examine in the second stage, which was to discard those files where I had set the GPS myself.
I noticed that WLPG was only setting Latitude and Longitude, whereas the tool I use to set GPS also sets altitude and timestamps it. So that gave me a quick method of sorting the subset.
This has been going on for so long my mind needs a refresher course. 🙂
Waaay back in the day when the topic of jpg’s was on deck…
It doesn’t sound like that will work here since I already ‘fixed’ the GPS. Maybe I’ll assume everything is messed up and restore old files across the board.
Ah, right. Yes, I fixed the files by restoring the originals, rather than deleting the unwanted GPS coordinates.
Perhaps you could use the presence of a “JFIF” section as the flag that they’ve been touched by WLPG? I think that was the case for me. I think that files that have been compressed by WLPG will have the JFIF marker…
OK, I remember. Only the files with location metadata and without GPS had GPS added plus whatever else happened to them. So the damaged photos, or perhaps I could call them ‘altered’, are the ones that had the GPS added. So, that’s what I need to think about.
Just before all this started for me I had been adding states and countries to a lot of photos so I’m not terribly familiar because I didn’t have time to get used to the new data.
I would assume from that pretty much everything has been touched. What I was thinking, though, was that maybe not everything touched needs to be construed as ‘damaged’. Kind of like the LZW tif’s or perhaps that’s too hopeful.
The thing about LZW is that it’s lossless. JPEG compression ain’t. So, my theory is that any file where WLPG has added in GPS is also highly likely to have been compressed by WLPG as a side-effect. And since the compression isn’t lossless, the only real solution is to revert to a previous version of the file restored from a backup.
Right. As I recall this came in stages of discovery.
I first heard about the GPS, went and fixed all that, and then you wrote a post about the next round; the compression and metadata changes.
I’m back to square one here where the errant GPS is no longer there as a clue. Very few of those photos had legitimate co-ordinates but I think a lot of them had addresses of some kind. Sounds like I’m looped. I did see JFIF as I was clicking through in ExifToolGUI.
Right now I have 14.4 GB of backup photos from several sources so this is going to be fun. The original photos are spread through 105 folders (genealogists do projects!) And there are about 1,000 other files unaccounted for; a mix of png’s, gif’s, text, rtf and pdf.
Looking at two folders of digital jpg’s, from different sources:
The restored ones are smaller by 2-10K which indicates to me there’s extra metadata added to them by WLPG. The WLPG have IPTCext.
All have JFIF. Oddly the restored ones are 96 dpi in the JFIF block, the WLPG ones are 200 dpi. And yet under the Photoshop resolution they all say 200.
The WLPG ones have byte order of Big-endian; the restored ones don’t say.
It’s all coming back to me now: IPTCext and Big-endian …
OK,if Photoshop also uses JFIF, then that’s not a discriminator. But it does look as though IPTCext can be used as a clear flag that the file has been touched by WLPG, since nothing else uses it in your workflow…
Just when you think you must have seen it all, here’s another one:
Png’s with WLPG-added XMP data but no updated modification dates. If I was trying to double-check by dates (and I was) that one goes out the window. They both say April 8, 2005.
Tsk. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy …
WLPG 2011 – the gift that keeps on giving…
The Big-endian situation is interesting because I see it all over the place; pictures I’ve downloaded from the Internet, (that could be anything) photos straight off my cousin’s digital camera … Is there a camera setting for reversing byte order? Maybe the software that’s ‘assisting’?
Everything I never wanted to know about metadata, this is the close-up course.
Don’t worry about the Big-endian vs Little-endian thing – it’s as futile as the eponymous originals. The point I was making was that, according to metadata guidelines, editing software should leave the order alone, whereas WLPG 2011 is flipping it. You don’t need to look for means of flipping it back, just shake your head at the irony of WLPG 2011 flipping it in the first place, in defiance of the very guidelines that Microsoft helped to write.
OK, now you’re making me look up words in the dictionary. Eponymous?
Just curious – I have originals straight off my cousin’s camera with Big-endian. I’m wondering what software she’s using to download them.
Yesterday I discovered the folder that houses half of the jpg’s; 1300 of them. The ‘easy’ restore, where I bring back an entire folder at once, only got 400. I had to restore the other 900 one at a time from earlier restore dates.
Next step is to open them in Photo Mechanic and copy and paste the IPTC 1,300 times.
Ah, sorry – are you familiar with Gulliver’s Travels? That’s the origin of the big/little endian wars…
Re your cousin’s camera – the endianess is set by the camera itself. The software used to download it will just leave it alone. The issue comes in when something reads in metadata, makes a change, and then writes it back out to a file. Such apps are called “Changers” (for obvious reasons). WLPG 2011, when it changes metadata is therefore a “Changer” app.
Now, break’s over, back on your head (alas, another reference – this time to a very old joke)
Some of the photos are Big-endian and some are little-endian and they’re both off a Nikon camera. Maybe she has two of them? More questions.
I don’t read enough … obviously, as I’m missing your jokes. The thought of 1,300 copy ‘n paste’s is deteriorating my mood.
Not having a Nikon, I couldn’t say which endian camp they belong to. It’s possible that a Changer has got hold of some, resulting in some being flipped.
I’ll leave you to your copy and paste work. You have my deepest sympathy, and this time, I’m not joking.
Geoff,
Just found the new (old) site. Useful as always. Noted today that Picasa 3.8 is claiming that “Picasa now supports XMP along with EXIF data.” Haven’t looked into what “support” means, precisely. But I’ve been using Picasa for several months now, after having my data trammeled once to often by WLPG. WLPG is such a frustrating program – I mean, it looks good, it’s free, it respects the “Windows” GUI – but damn, every version starts as the bummest of bum steers.
Anon. Jason
Hi Jason, yep, I share your frustration. WLPG could be so good (and I was quite happy with the last version), but WLPG 2011 took a major leap backwards, while ostensibly offering new features. At least the GPS issue has now been addressed. As I note elsewhere, it’s possible that the Makernotes issue may get addressed in a future release, so then I’ll feel comfortable about using it for face recognition.
However, there are a couple of “improvements” in 2011 that will probably never get addressed: the poor slide show quality, and the clunky workflow introduced because they took out the “Fix” button and introduced the “Edit, share and organize” button in its place.
Jason says
“But I’ve been using Picasa for several months now, after having my data trammeled once to often by WLPG.”
You might be interested in this thread…
Is Picasa 3 silently modifying exif info and dropping exif data!!! – Picasa Help: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=0d1f649e5114b394&hl=en
At this point, neither program seems safe to use.
Lilla
Thanks, Lilla. That’s an interesting thread on the Picasa Help forum. If I’m reading it correctly, the Makernotes corruption may be fixed in the 3.8 version, but extraordinarily, it appears that when Picasa modifies metadata, it does not update the “File modified” date/timestamp. If this is so, then I find this astonishing – it’s breaking a fundamental rule of file behaviour in an operating system. Even more astonishing is that Brian Rose, the Google employee, doesn’t even seem to think that this is wrong behaviour. Absolutely incredible!
[…] Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 – A Status Report November 2010 40 comments 5 […]
Geoff, this is so old and yet so not forgotten. I’ve just discovered that all my digital files have wrong time-stamps, not entirely but fairly consistently off by 8 hours.. My saved-just-in-case restored-from-Carbonite files last Fall have correct time stamps. I suppose there could be other things that have happened between then and now, so have you heard anything about WLPG also changing time-stamps? I thought I had but didn’t pay attention because I thought by then I had left this @#%^ situation behind.
JL, you wouldn’t happen to be in a Timezone that differs from GMT by 8 hours would you?
I remember a while back that I saw photos displayed in one tool being timeshifted by 1 hour (my TZ difference with GMT). It turned out that the tool did not, at the time, account for TZs. It could be that somewhere in your workflow, one of your tools is not accounting for TZs, dropping the TZ shift, and writing back the wrong time as a result…
As a matter of fact, I am.
I’m trying to figure out which software is to blame. Or rather my ignorance of how to use it properly. Post-WLPG would be GeoSetter. And nothing else I can think of. I’ve used GeoSetter quite a bit for adding addresses and GPS to photos over the past year so maybe that.
JL, I see that Geosetter has a checkbox to “save Time Zone to Exif data”. I’m curious to know what happens with that – if it doesn’t save the TZ data, does it restamp the time?
Might be an idea to ask Friedemann about this…
I saw that option too, and it may mean what it says: save Time Zone to Exif data”.
I tried turning it on, then editing and re-saving one photo. It didn’t affect the time at all and I couldn’t find TZ listed in the Exif.
I did some time adjustments using Photo Mechanic but it didn’t translate to GeoSetter which has it’s own option under ‘Date’ for changing time. I haven’t tried yet the other way around.
It looks like I’m going to have to carefully pick through these 3,250 photos in small
batches. Not every single one is off by 8 hours.
That is not a barrel full of fun. Sorry about that. I have the feeling that the problem is being caused by a combination of tools, rather than by one alone. I think that it will be the passing of data between one and another where the ball gets dropped. I hope that you find it, otherwise it may strike again…
I found about 120 photos yesterday that were ahead by 3 hours due to having recently sent my camera for repair in a different time-zone. They didn’t reset the time before shipping it back. I ‘fixed’ the time in Photo Mechanic but it’s not fixed in GeoSetter. Interesting, though, it did not put them off by another 8 hours, just kept the original 3 hour difference.
The only other software I use, although rarely, is XnView and it’s showing the correct time as I fixed it to be in Photo Mechanic.
I was somewhat nervous this morning. Today was the day that Watson and I were taking an exam to see whether he was a well-behaved dog. We’ve taken a number of courses together, beginning with a puppy course a year ago, but now came the test of the final course, which would be adjudicated by an independent examiner from the Dutch National Federation of Dogsports.
The exam involves a number of different tests, such as seeing how Watson responds to commands, and how he behaves towards other dogs and people.
I have to say that my confidence was not high – we did a dummy run a few weeks ago with our instructors, and Watson (and I) were bordering on the fail mark. The main problem area is that Watson is simply too over-enthusiastic about meeting people. The exam contains a couple of exercises that test how a dog reacts to people, and the idea is that he will remain quietly sitting when he’s in a group of people sitting at a pavement café, or when someone comes up and shakes hands with his owner. Watson, of course, loves people and jumps all over them at any opportunity. If he jumped up on people during the café test, it would be curtains – instant fail.
So we started with the test of him walking beside me, as I traversed a course. The dog has to sit on command at three points in the course – at the beginning, halfway through and at the end. We managed to do that, although the examiner said later that he was amused by all the hand signals and “turn left!”, “sit!”, and “turn right!” commands that I was giving to Watson…
Next up was the exercise of walking past food lying on the ground. The dog is supposed to ignore this and carry on. Watson has a habit of wanting to grab anything that smells as though it’s food, so I was a trifle worried about this. In the event, he walked past the food without reacting, so a quick sigh of relief, and then onto the most difficult test: the café test.
We approached the four chairs, three of them occupied, and the fourth empty, waiting for me to take my place. Watson, of course, was immediately fixated on the three people; tail furiously wagging and bounding forward wanting to greet them. Just what I didn’t want. I managed to get him sitting beside me with some difficulty, and then came the second part of the test. Two of the three people want to stroke the dog under test, the third is supposedly afraid of dogs, and there must be no contact between that person and the dog being tested. Watson is not so discriminating; he wants to say hello to everyone… Thankfully, I managed to steer him towards to the two people that he should approach, and keep him away from the third. The end of the test is when he returns to a sitting or lying position next to his owner’s chair. It was only with some effort that I managed to do this – Watson wanted to carry on saying hello to all the nice people…
After this, the rest of the tests were not so taxing. I stumbled through them, while reviewing in my mind what the outcome of the café test might be. Had we passed? Had we failed?
Finally, all the dogs had been through the exam, and we all waited anxiously while the examiner and the instructors deliberated over the outcome. We were called into the canteen, and given the results: we had all passed!
Watson had done well. Only the café test got a “Voldoende” (sufficient) mark, the rest were all “Goed” (good). I must admit I was a little surprised at the overall high marks – but I am very pleased that Watson did so well. Here’s the evidence:
With much relief, I headed home with Watson. As I turned into our drive, I noticed that Martin had decorated the entrance with bunting. He obviously had more faith in Watson that I did. A fact that was given further evidence by the appearance of a cake decorated with the words “Watson Geslaagd” (Watson Passed) and friends and neighbours to celebrate.
Thanks to everyone: the instructors at Agility Club Achterhoek (Sandra and Jonna, not forgetting Wendy for the first puppy course), the support of friends and neighbours, and of course Martin, but most of all to Watson for coming through on the day. I’m proud of you.
…and if I look exhausted in the photo above, then so I was. And so was Watson – he slept practically all afternoon…
As I was reading that, and laughing, I was thinking Watson must be a Lab or Lab cross. I had the honor of one’s companionship some years ago and never could temper his inclination to hug and kiss every stranger in his path. He was a dog of the world and loved by all. I’m glad you included a photo.
You were probably exhausted with nerves Geoff! I am so glad he’s passed. Love the name. I take it he’s Sherlock’s right hand man! Strangely I was talking to a lady at the bus stop the other day who is trying to get her four month old terrier from jumping up at people. Well done Watson!
Thanks, TG – yup, exhausted with nerves! Actually, Watson’s name is nothing to do with Sherlock, but came about because of two other reasons. See:
Ahh I see! Now explained.
[…] managed to pass the dog training exam with Watson, I decided to carry on training with him, and we enrolled in the Dog Agility course run by the […]
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