Plugins

[Zekuma]

Yesterday, I upgraded to XnViewMP 0.97 (Win 10 64bit) from previous version.

Up until then I have been able to view and edit HEIC files without any trouble in XNViewMP previous versions. Now I cannot open, nor edit. There is no image in the Image preview either.

The HEIF plugin files are correctly installed in the Plug-ins folder.

I was able to open HEIC files using Photo built into the latest version Win 10 64bit, but after reinstalling XNViewMP in admin mode, Explorer now points to XNViewMP icon and not the thumbnail and tries to open XNViewMP upon clicking on a HEIC file.

I noticed Microsoft auto installed HEIC viewer and HEVC updates in the past 2 days, as per data in Windows Store. I have uninstalled both and reinstalled, but no help to resolving the issue.

There was also an upgrade in XNConvert 64bit the day before as well.

Any ideas?

[xnview]

Yesterday, I upgraded to XnViewMP 0.97 (Win 10 64bit) from previous version.

Up until then I have been able to view and edit HEIC files without any trouble in XNViewMP previous versions. Now I cannot open, nor edit. There is no image in the Image preview either.

The HEIF plugin files are correctly installed in the Plug-ins folder.

There is no need of Microsoft HEIC plugin, none of your heif files are loaded?

[Zekuma]

Yesterday, I upgraded to XnViewMP 0.97 (Win 10 64bit) from previous version.

Up until then I have been able to view and edit HEIC files without any trouble in XNViewMP previous versions. Now I cannot open, nor edit. There is no image in the Image preview either.

The HEIF plugin files are correctly installed in the Plug-ins folder.

There is no need of Microsoft HEIC plugin, none of your heif files are loaded?

No, none loaded. There are residual thumbnails, but if you click on one, the data shows, but no preview. Double click to open and instead of editing, it tries to open a file on a blank screen, presumably a viewer or browser that then fails to display. Esc to get out of the white screen and you are left with another XnViewMP open.
It is almost as if both XnViewMP and the system fail to recognise the heic plugin within XNViewMP anymore.

[xnview]

could you send me a sample file? which windows version?

[Zekuma]

could you send me a sample file? which windows version?

Windows 10 pro, Version 2004, Build 19041.546

As per screen shot, no preview on the HEIC file anymore. Almost as if XNView doesn't recognise the codec inside the plugins, nor knows to use it to open a single image edit on double click.

[CameronD]

I have observed a similar problem with a set of HEIC images.

On initially browsing to a folder with maybe 50 images, trying to open an image will instead open in the separate heic viewer program.

After the thumbnails are completed, then trying to open the image gives an error message box from xnviewmp - but I did not save a screenshot and I cannot reproduce as I have fixed the problem.

I removed the heif.dll plugin from xnviewmp folder (it was 2017 version!). restarted xnviewmp.

Then it mostly opens images correctly in the expected xnviewmp image edit window and I can move next/previous as normal.

But:

• it still needs to complete the slow process of scanning all images in the folder first.
• it may have already cached the thumbnail, but stored incorrect catalog information about the image.
• In "details" view the entry for properties (H and V resolution, pixel count) is blank for most images - this is an indication that the catalog DB is wrong.
• I need to use menu item "view->update catalog from files" after selecting all images - then it works properly.

The easiest way I can think of is to go into settings-> catalog->tools and delete the folders with bad data. If you have already applied flags, categories etc to these images then it might be trickier.

[Zekuma]

I have observed a similar problem with a set of HEIC images.

On initially browsing to a folder with maybe 50 images, trying to open an image will instead open in the separate heic viewer program.

After the thumbnails are completed, then trying to open the image gives an error message box from xnviewmp - but I did not save a screenshot and I cannot reproduce as I have fixed the problem.

I removed the heif.dll plugin from xnviewmp folder (it was 2017 version!). restarted xnviewmp.

Then it mostly opens images correctly in the expected xnviewmp image edit window and I can move next/previous as normal.

But:

• it still needs to complete the slow process of scanning all images in the folder first.
• it may have already cached the thumbnail, but stored incorrect catalog information about the image.
• In "details" view the entry for properties (H and V resolution, pixel count) is blank for most images - this is an indication that the catalog DB is wrong.
• I need to use menu item "view->update catalog from files" after selecting all images - then it works properly.

The easiest way I can think of is to go into settings-> catalog->tools and delete the folders with bad data. If you have already applied flags, categories etc to these images then it might be trickier.

Thanks, I was able to replicate this and got my HEIC file editing back again. Simply deleted the heif.dll file from plugins.

Perhaps it is a flawed dll in the latest version, or however win10 interacts with it and the auto-updated Microsoft HEIF plugins from the other day. I couldn't say. It is a little slower than the previous XNViewMP version. I had the previous standalone zip file of the HIEF dll files installed in the plugin directory prior to the latest upgrade. Just copied that one into the plugins folder to see what happens and it stopped reading HEIC files again, so definitely something interacting wrongly.

Happy to dig the updated Microsoft HEIF files out of the directory and attach for analysis if someone tells me where to find them.

[xnview]

I removed the heif.dll plugin from xnviewmp folder (it was 2017 version!). restarted xnviewmp.

??? the new heif.dll is 2020

[Zekuma]

I removed the heif.dll plugin from xnviewmp folder (it was 2017 version!). restarted xnviewmp.

??? the new heif.dll is 2020

Can you post a zip of the 2020 heif.dll set. As i don't have any in there at the moment I can test it.

The one deleted sitting in my Recycle bin is vers 1.0.0.1 15/10/2017 date. Could it be that the new Heif dll does not overwrite the same file name of one sitting in the plug-ins, and the old one prevails.

[CameronD]

I removed the heif.dll plugin from xnviewmp folder (it was 2017 version!). restarted xnviewmp.

??? the new heif.dll is 2020

Yes, I have no idea why the old file was still there (or where it originally came from). I used the x64 install for xnviewmp 0.97 and previous ones.

Maybe I just manually copied the old dll from somewhere else in my attempt to get it working early this year.
If it was manually copied, does that mean the installer would not recognise it and therefore not overwrite it?

Update ... I just reinstalled 0.97 and the new heif.dll appears.

Also I notice that some of the images still did not have camera data in the database, just image properties had been added after the rescan. So I guess it was using some intermediate dll version that it had found elsewhere in the path.

[Zekuma]

I removed the heif.dll plugin from xnviewmp folder (it was 2017 version!). restarted xnviewmp.

??? the new heif.dll is 2020

Yes, I have no idea why the old file was still there (or where it originally came from). I used the x64 install for xnviewmp 0.97 and previous ones.

Maybe I just manually copied the old dll from somewhere else in my attempt to get it working early this year.
If it was manually copied, does that mean the installer would not recognise it and therefore not overwrite it?

Update ... I just reinstalled 0.97 and the new heif.dll appears.

Also I notice that some of the images still did not have camera data in the database, just image properties had been added after the rescan. So I guess it was using some intermediate dll version that it had found elsewhere in the path.

Confirm. This works. Clearly the installer does not recognise manually installed dll's from the past workarounds and does not overwrite them. Maybe something to address in the next version's installer routine.