Thumbnail Update after Edit

RM8 Update (8.1.1) gave us
• New: Added “View” and “Edit” buttons for edit media panel. “View” displays images in viewer. “Edit” opens the media item in the media editing program associated with the media type.

RM8 Update (8.1.3) gave us
• Fixed: Edit button on media viewer now uses the “open” association making it easier to select your desired media viewing program.

RM8 Update (8.1.4) now gives us
• Fixed: Changing a media item now updates the thumbnail

However, If I use the Edit button to edit an image, for example a crop, the thumbnail does NOT get updated.

Under the Media tab>3 dots there is an option “Build thumbnails”. This does not appear to do anything but invoke a blank popup (as below). Is this supposed to do something? Does anybody else see it doing anything?

How do I get the thumbnail to update after an Edit within the program without removing the media and re-adding it. Even if I remove the media and re-add it the old thumbnail still remains with zero tags and I now have two thumbnails.
Blank popup

I’m presuming that “Changing a media item…” means selecting a different image/file (as opposed to editing the image already selected) and that most recently, prior to this update, RM8 was failing to change/reflect the new thumbnail from the different image? I’ve always understood RM7&8 thumbnails to be built at time of filename selection and never changing as long as the file remains in the original path. One could match the original name and substitute a completely different image and the thumbnail would remain in its original likeness. Running the Build thumbnails doesn’t even open a dialog for me. Your question about shouldn’t the thumbnail change be depicted upon editing the in-place file is certainly a valid feature request.

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Best described as work in progress! It is working but no coding for the progress dialog. Open File Explorer, go to your .rmtree file, Build Thumbnails dialog on screen and you will see the file size increasing (assuming there are thumbnails to be built).

There does seem to be a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip when it comes to updating the thumbnail. I opened a rmtree file in both RM8 and in SQLite Expert Personal. Using the latter, I deleted the thumbnail blob from the MultimediaTable record for an image. At no time did I see the the image disappear from any of RM8’s views but the thumbnail would reappear in the MultimediaTable. Whenever RM tries to use an empty thumbnail, it immediately generates it.

The “Build thumbnails” function does work but only on those records having a null or empty thumbnail. It has no mechanism to check if a file has changed.

If, in the Edit Media window, you select a different Filename for that media record, its thumbnail is updated because you have told it there is a change.

I think the required approach is to save your edited image with a new name and then select that edited file in the Edit Media window and save. If you have saved your edited image over the original file, then you need to change something else in the Edit Media window to invoke the Save checkmark.

If RM8 had an internal editor (as RM7 does), it would know that a file was changed. This lack of detection now that the editor is external is probably an oversight from that legacy. A Refresh Thumbnail function for a selected media item would be a desirable response. A global Rebuild Thumbnails once existed but was really slow; maybe it should be an option.

Yes, I have been doing a ‘Save as’ in my editing program and adding a +sign to the file name. Adding the +sign in the Filename field generates a new thumbnail. As I use a particular format for naming my media files and don’t really want the +sign I then go to File Explorer delete the old file, rename the new file by removing the +sign and change the name in the Filename Field. This is tedious but works. I then have to go to the Media tab and bin the old thumbnail which is still there.

If you are not preserving the original file then save over it with the cropped image. In the Multimedia window, find and select the old thumbnail or the media record in the list. Double-click on the thumbnail in the gallery or click on the thumbnail in the right pane to open the View Image window as in this example which shows the old thumbnail in the right column and the current file image in the left:

  1. Edit one of the fields to trigger the Save checkmark (2). Could be as simple as putting a space character into an unused field. In the example, I put a “q” into the Ref#.
  2. Click the Save checkmark.
    That will trigger a rebuild of the thumbnail from the file.

You can accomplish the same thing from within the Edit Media window without opening the View Image window, saving a click or so but you don’t get the preview of the revised image. However, you’ve already seen it in the editor if you started from Edit Media.

I note that IrfanView sometimes puts a lock on the file that RM objects to but I’ve not yet seen a pattern to it. Otherwise, the file can be open in IrfanView in Windows 10 without conflict. This may not be true for other image applications or OSs.

Triggering the Save checkmark certainly works but putting a character into an unused field to achieve this is not exactly intuitive! Thanks.

Learned behaviour from other areas of older versions such as after merging sources from different templates or changing a source to a different template using SQLite. Poking under the hood helps to understand what’s going on.