Server Existential Crisis

[Mike]

2 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Not surprised those take an age to load, each image is nearly 2Mb, 5 megapixels.

eg:

Location:-       https://i.imgur.com/HJYnGyV.jpg

Type:-             JPEG Image

Size:-              1,928.87 kB (1,975,165 bytes)

Dimensions:-  2,592px × 1,944px (scaled to 1,133px × 850px)

 

If the OP reduced the picture size to say 1200*900 pixels file size would be around 400kb, the photos would load 5 times faster, use much less storge space, and no-one would know the difference with image quality as the forum software appears to be loading the full image and then scaling it down.

Thanks Dave - saved me doing it

 

I think the flashing/pulsing of the placeholder grey image is an indication that it's downloading the image from wherever.  A bit like the old whirling circle or the older egg-timer.  As can be seen from that pic, it's WAY too lager to download before you scroll to it, and you should expect the grey box to linger whenever a large pic is loading.  Remember THAT ISN'T THE FAULT OF THE SERVER, but a limitation on the bandwidth allocated by the photo-host.  If people continue to host pics that are ill-suited to displaying on web pages, these grey boxes will continue to happen.  Our review pics usually hover around 200-300kb at max, and those pics are plenty sharp enough.

 

Back in the old version without lazy loading, that 2mb pic would have been downloading while you viewed that thread, and if you scrolled past it before it had finished you wouldn't have even known it was there.  Now it's a case of "a watched pot never boils".  Because you're all aware that there should be a pic there, you wait & get annoyed because it's not showing, then blame the forum software.  It ain't us, it's the people posting MAFFISS pictures!  Here are a few tips to avoid this, and avoid annoying your fellow members:

 

• Process your pictures before you post them using whatever software you have
• Save them as medium quality .jpg as .png gets less attractive the bigger the pic
• Save your pics at 1280 or 1024 pixels wide as a maximum
• Save your pics with a maximum height of 800 pixels
• Check the size of your pic after saving, making sure it's 300kb or less if you can

If you follow those guidelines as closely as you're able, we should avoid most if not all of the grey boxes.  Of course, that won't help any historical issues of people posting HUGE pictures. 

 

Lastly, if you're getting lots of grey boxes, check your internet connection, check a Britmodeller review, as these should be tuned perfectly to work with the lazy loading as almost 100% of the reviews from 2019 onward follow the guidelines above.

[Courageous]

3 hours ago, Mike said:

MAFFISS pictures!

I post images at 800x600, but can the BM host limit the size of the image or inform the 'postee' that they need to resize the image, after all, they've put limitations on the signatures...just asking?

 

Stuart

[Uncle Uncool]

On 8/2/2019 at 10:33 AM, Christer A said:

like trying to get 2000 people through an opening that can handle 2, and the amount of People is steadily increasing.

This is likely to happen the day the owner at Dukel Hobbies finally accepts to bring the new Airfix 1/48 Hawker Hunter kits in the country...

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Thanks Mike good to know its not on your end. I can accept it knowing its on the outside, and its someone else's software issues. Just have to whittle some plastic while I'm waiting. 

[Julien]

9 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Not surprised those take an age to load, each image is nearly 2Mb, 5 megapixels.

eg:

Location:-       https://i.imgur.com/HJYnGyV.jpg

Type:-             JPEG Image

Size:-              1,928.87 kB (1,975,165 bytes)

Dimensions:-  2,592px × 1,944px (scaled to 1,133px × 850px)

 

If the OP reduced the picture size to say 1200*900 pixels file size would be around 400kb, the photos would load 5 times faster, use much less storge space, and no-one would know the difference with image quality as the forum software appears to be loading the full image and then scaling it down.

Yes, and I have seen even bigger files than this linked to, upto 4MB

[Julien]

3 hours ago, Courageous said:

I post images at 800x600, but can the BM host limit the size of the image or inform the 'postee' that they need to resize the image, after all, they've put limitations on the signatures...just asking?

 

Stuart

We cant limit that as its a link not an upload. Its reliant on the post to consider people having to look at a large file and wait for it to upload on their system.

[Dave Swindell]

15 minutes ago, Julien said:

Yes, and I have seen even bigger files than this linked to, upto 4MB

Yes, me too.

 

14 minutes ago, Julien said:

We cant limit that as its a link not an upload.

The forum software appears to be downloading the full size image (hence the wait for the flashing grey box to clear) and then resizing it to a smaller size for better display, note the scaled size vs full size in the image I quoted. If this is happening in the forum software, then I'd have thought it would be just as easy to block the image.

Whether we'd want to go down that route though is another matter, if image size was blocked after Mikes recommended max of 300kb we'd probably loose as many oversize images already posted off the forum as we did with the photobucket fiasco.

[Mike]

14 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

The forum software appears to be downloading the full size image (hence the wait for the flashing grey box to clear) and then resizing it to a smaller size for better display, note the scaled size vs full size in the image I quoted. If this is happening in the forum software, then I'd have thought it would be just as easy to block the image.

That's a good question, but by the time the image is downloaded, the major portion of the wait is done   I think we need to educate folks about HUGE photos, and in future if we see the flashing boxes, perhaps mention them to the poster as it's usually going to be either latency with the hosts, or the sheer volume of KB it's having to download.

 

To address another's issue about the pixel count, I once looked at a tiny 640x400 (around that size) picture that was almost 200kb in size and none too crisp or special.  My smaller review photos at 800x600 or below usually come in at about 50kb depending on the subject matter, so a lot of the KB sizing is about the effectiveness of compression Vs making the pic nasty.  Photoshop has a Save for Web facility that if you set it to JPG High will give you a great pic for not that many KB. SHIFT+CTRL+ALT+S will bring up the dialog if you don't usually use it.  It feels like finger origami the first time you try it, but if you use your left hand to hold down the three modifier keys, and tap S with your right hand, it's not so hard

[JohnT]

10 minutes ago, Mike said:

  I think we need to educate folks about HUGE photos, 

 

 

Mike - as a complete IT ignoramus (I know where the on/off button is and after that I am in old bufty territory) that would be hugely appreciated.  I suspect on the occasion I have downloaded a photo to the site that I was wholly oblivious to tech matters such as size etc.  For all I know a canvas oil painting had arrived at your end for scanning.   There might be just another member or two that are in the same boat as me and might also appreciate being educated in the dark art of IT.  If you can help us to help you then that would be great.  Maybe you should charge fees for the tutorials 

[Mike]

16 minutes ago, JohnT said:

Maybe you should charge fees for the tutorials 

no, that would be evil.  We've got a thread or two in the FAQ section, but I think I'll put together a more "hand holding" version and link to it from an announcement later this week.  That way more people will see it because it's in their faces, and if they choose not to follow the link before they close the announce, that's their look out

 

@JohnT I'm always happy to answer any questions you have on the phone, you know that

[cmatthewbacon]

If you host your photos on Smugmug, as I do, you can select from a number of different sized links to embed in forum threads. I suspect other photo hosts will have similar functionality. I upload the pics to SM from Photoshop, where I've saved them out at 1000 pixels wide optimised to a file size of 200K. Those are what SM sees as "original" size, and what I use here on BM. The Unofficial Airfix forum limits widths to 800 pixels, so I can just choose those from "XL" link in the sharing menu on SM. If I saved the images on SM in full size (which I have done occasionally with artwork or images for people to download), there's usually a 1000 or 800 wide version somewhere in the Small or Medium links on SM.

 

SM is a paid for service, but it's reasonably priced for a year, and offers a wide range of capabilities that suit forum posting pretty well...

 

best,

M.

[Eric Mc]

"Server Existential Crisis". Just had that message and some wittering about "The Antiques Road Show". What's all that about?

[Mike]

54 minutes ago, Eric Mc said:

"Server Existential Crisis". Just had that message and some wittering about "The Antiques Road Show". What's all that about?

You're a bit late to the party here Eric. This has been going on for a bit since the attack, and while it's easy to get rid of (hit F5 to refresh), it's a bit annoying, but we're talking to Support about it

[Robert Stuart]

Not all of us can afford PhotoShop (or, in my case, recover my old licence).  Professional quality, but the current licence scheme is too expensive for me.

 

I now use Affinity Photo (paid for, single payment - other products are available).

 

Gimp is free, produces good images.  I have a copy, but wound up paying for something else.

 

[Mike]

2 minutes ago, Robert Stuart said:

Gimp is free, produces good images.  I have a copy

yes, that would have been my suggestion for anyone without access to PS as it's free!  PS is not cheap, and after CS6 it's an ongoing cost that not many can justify. 💸

[Eric Mc]

1 hour ago, Mike said:

You're a bit late to the party here Eric. This has been going on for a bit since the attack, and while it's easy to get rid of (hit F5 to refresh), it's a bit annoying, but we're talking to Support about it

First time it had happened to me so it caught me by surprise. I can't understand why people would be so small minded as to carry out attacks of this sort.

[Mike]

30 minutes ago, Eric Mc said:

First time it had happened to me so it caught me by surprise. I can't understand why people would be so small minded as to carry out attacks of this sort.

#sadpersonatacomputer is my best guess.

[Dave Swindell]

6 hours ago, Mike said:

Photoshop has a Save for Web facility

I use that as well, but there's no need to go buying / installing any other fancy software

 

Windows 10

Click on Start

Move mouse up to Documents and click

Find your photo's

Right click on the one you want to resize

Click on Open With, then click on Paint

The photo should open with the Home tab open across the top, if not open, select the Home tab

In the Image section (2nd from left) click Resize

Select Pixels

Make sure there's a tick next to Maintain Aspect Ratio

Enter 800 in the Horizontal box, the vertical box should complete automatically (if the photo is standard 4x3 size this will be 600)

Click OK

Click on the File tab atthe top left of the screen

Select Save As

Rename the file (stick a 1 at the end or something) and save in the same directory, or save it somewhere else, just remember where you put it.

If you don't rename it, or just click the Save Icon, you will lose the high resolution version of the photo.

Upload the small version of the photo as normal.

 

Once you've done a couple, it will take much more time to read the above than resize your file, it's that simple.

The 1929kb image I used as an example previously gives a file size of  384kb at 1200x900 pixels, and 185kb at 800x600 pixels using the above method.

 

Haven't a clue how to do this on a Mac, but I'm sure there'll be a similar simple way to do this.

 

 

[dogsbody]

Somewhat related to the above issue but just a moment ago, I tried to look at a posting by @TheRealMrEd, regarding his XP-58 Chain Lightning kit. I tried 3 times but all I get is this: 

 

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /forums/index.php on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

 

 

Is this just something with his particular post or what? I opened at least 3 other posting and had no issues with them.

 

 

 

Chris

[cmatthewbacon]

11 minutes ago, Dave Swindell said:

Haven't a clue how to do this on a Mac, but I'm sure there'll be a similar simple way to do this.

Double click on any jpg picture and it'll open in Preview. Tools>Adjust Size  "Fit into 800x..." or "1024x...", File>Export "JPEG" and adjust the slider to give the desired file size...

 

Unfortunately, as far as I know, Preview doesn't have the combined fixing pixel size and file size in one operation that "Save for web" in Photoshop dies, but I'm sure someone will be along any minute to tell me it does...

 

best,

M.

[Ray S]

6 hours ago, Mike said:

no, that would be evil.  We've got a thread or two in the FAQ section, but I think I'll put together a more "hand holding" version and link to it from an announcement later this week.  That way more people will see it because it's in their faces, and if they choose not to follow the link before they close the announce, that's their look out

 

@JohnT I'm always happy to answer any questions you have on the phone, you know that

Mike, that would be a great idea. I strongly suspect that I am one of those who loads too big a picture. When I use Flikr, I have it re-sizing to 1024 x 768, so I thought that would be okay. Little did I know the intricacies of this. I will do my best in future Sir, and make life better for all!

 

Humbly yours,

 

Ray von penitent

[Mike]

7 minutes ago, Ray S said:

I strongly suspect that I am one of those who loads too big a picture.

Flickr are in the business of serving up your pics as frugally as possible, so if you've saved them at 1024 px wide, you've done your part. I think you will be one of the good ones, whether you know it or not. Don't be so hard on yourself

 

If ever you want to check, you can probably look at the properties of your individual photos on any of the major hosts, which will give you size in Kilobytes (kb) or Bod forbid, Megabytes (mb).  If you get it in terabytes (tb) you need help!

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Hello @Mike so sorry to be a bother but something seriously weird just happened to me. I was here, 

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/forum/667-in-the-year-i-was-born-gb/

 

Trying to open this post. 

 

When i opened it i got this screen, my phone locked up, and Google kicked me offline. 

 

Now my WIFI is blocked from accessing the Forum ? Im only able to access it via cellular data but if i get on WIFI i cant enter the Forum. What happened was i contaminated by something ? Any help will be graciously accepted. 

 

Dennis

Edited August 8, 2019 by Corsairfoxfouruncle

[Mike]

14 minutes ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Now my WIFI is blocked from accessing the Forum

Sounds like something went wrong your end if you lost your Internet. If you've been blocked from the forum though, use your WiFi to get on Google and search "what's my IP address". Send me the resulting number, which will be xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and I'll run you through the checker

 

UPDATE: That thread seems to be broken. We'll look into it.

 

[Max Headroom]

After a long break I’ve started getting the existential crisis warning again.

 

However all the above is based on access via a PC/Mac. For those of us using  a mobile are we stuck with uploading photos without being able to resize? From my viewpoint all photos I upload look the right size when viewed on the iPhone. However like others I also get the flashing grey box sometimes.

 

Trevor