Album is slow, thumbnails are not created on sdcard - Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hello everyone,
I've bought a Transcend microSD 8GB class 6 for my hero, but the photo album seem really slow. When I open album it displays photos one by one, instead of instantly and even after it loads them all grey boxes appear when scrolling.
If I close the application and then browse the album again, it loads them all one by one although they were loaded before.
Any suggestions?

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How big are the pictures? what rom are you using?
I run Modaco's 2.0 rom and don't have any issue's its really fast and all the pictures are loaded directly. with a 16Gb sd card

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Some are 640x480, and other 8MP resolution but that seem to not affect the load times since they all take the same time to load.
I am using the stock ROM.

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Did you update your Hero? with the stock rom its a disaster its really slow i had the same issue till i moved to modaco's rom.
is your hero rooted? if so try Modaco's rom if not try to update youre hero.

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ZenorGR said:
Hello everyone,
I've bought a Transcend microSD 8GB class 6 for my hero, but the photo album seem really slow. When I open album it displays photos one by one, instead of instantly and even after it loads them all grey boxes appear when scrolling.
If I close the application and then browse the album again, it loads them all one by one although they were loaded before.
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought I was the only one. I am having the exact same problem. It seems like the "thumbnail cache" does not work as it is supposed to do. It did work however in the beginning with the original microSD card. After inserted a ScanDisk 8GB class 2 this issue started (same pictures on both cards). Swaping back to the original card and it worked fine again. Deleting "thumbnail cache and it "builds up" nice again after viewing the pictures in grid view the first time. Now back in with the 8GB card and it did not not work. Now I deleted all pictures and added some of them and then it suddenly worked in some folders. I dont know how many time I have deleted all pictures and tried to get it to work but allways failed. There is no logic, randomly folders sometimes starts to work and even in some folders were the "cache" is working after adding some new pictures just those new ones are not added in the cache. Always when going back to the original card everything works perfect. All this testing was made on the original rom.
After switching to Modaco's 2.0 rom I made another attemp to get this working but the result was exactly as above.
I did searched a lot and I did not find any one with this issue so I concluded that it must be the ScanDisk 8GB class 2 card causing this.
Ordered a Transcend microSD 16 GB class 6 card and have just inserted and started up and STILL THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM
We can't be the only one with this issue. I think many may not even be aware of it. For me it is terrible knowing how smoth it goes when it works.
Should be intresting to know if it actually works for anyone that have change the card.
PLEASE HELP. All inputs are very much appriciated.

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Its really anoying. I replaced my SD card i have a 16gb i thought class 2 and before that i had a 8Gb class 4 both worked fine. i don't think the problem is the sd card. i had this problem with the stock rom but when i moved to modaco's rom it was fixed. did you try to wipe?? maybe that will fix the problem.

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Ok i just made a movie to show the speed off mine hero album.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4V8OIQlO8M
Is it slower than this?? or the same?
Sorry if its not sharp but its only to show the speed right.
------Edit-------
This is with a 16GB class 2 SD card i forget to mention it.

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haha at first i thought you want to show us how slow it is on your device. and i was wondering: what the hell is wrong with the album?! its working perfectly on this video
now i realized that the video is meant to show that there are no problems with different sd cards

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commodoor said:
Ok i just made a movie to show the speed off mine hero album.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4V8OIQlO8M
Is it slower than this?? or the same?
Sorry if its not sharp but its only to show the speed right.
------Edit-------
This is with a 16GB class 2 SD card i forget to mention it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks commodoor for trying to help out. It is much slower and I dont think this is easy solved by changing rom. I have tried that and wiped and cleard cashe and format card and so on but nothing helps.
The first time you open up a folder with pictures it takes longer time due to that it is building up the thumbnail cache. If you then add pictures it will add it to the cache so everytime you open that folder it goes very quickly and smoth.
My and the first poster issue is that it does this everytime like it was the first time always.
Try this. Delete all files in DCIM/.thumbnail This is the place where the phone places the thumbnail cache for "Camera shots" (mine is always empty by the way). Now open the "album" and "Camera shots" and the phone will start showing the pictures much slower. When all pictures are loaded (and new thumbnail cache has been creaated close and go in again and now it shuold be quick and smoth again.
this is how it should work but does'nt for me and the first poster.
anyone else has any clue ??

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sixpackbud said:
Try this. Delete all files in DCIM/.thumbnail This is the place where the phone places the thumbnail cache for "Camera shots" (mine is always empty by the way).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have found that THIS is the problem that it's causing it.
If you use the default sandisk wich came with the Hero this folder is not empty, it contains the thumbnails as it is supposed to, so the next time you open up an album thumbnails are instantly loaded.
That does not happen when using my Transcend 8GB class 6, the folder is empty. Any suggestions?

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ZenorGR said:
I have found that THIS is the problem that it's causing it.
If you use the default sandisk wich came with the Hero this folder is not empty, it contains the thumbnails as it is supposed to, so the next time you open up an album thumbnails are instantly loaded.
That does not happen when using my Transcend 8GB class 6, the folder is empty. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not the root cause to this issue. The problem is that "album" program does not update this folder with "thumbnails". I will try to nail it down further to possible find a solution. I am surprised that it seams that only you and I have this problem.
No one else ????

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So now we are 3 persons with this problem.
http://android.modaco.com/content/htc-hero-hero-modaco-com/292539/album-thumbnails-not-created/
Who will be the fourth???

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I am not sure, but maybe it's caused because when I opened the phone for the first time, I didn't use the stock microSD but the Transcend one?
sixpackbud did you do the same thing?

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I've switched to a Sandisk 16GB Class 2 card and have no problem. My phone is rooted running the new ROM and I have 130 pictures in the DCIM folder on the card - a mixture of shots from my old Nokia, the ones that came on the card with the phone and pictures taken by the Hero. It took a while when first opening to generate the thumbnails, but now shows them immediately.

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I'm the one who posted on modaco about the same problem (see sixpackbud) post.
I also replaced the stock sd card for a transcend 8GB class 6.
So it seems all the problems started when changing the sd card.
Here I come with my 50 cents:
I tested the transcend class 6 card and I have to say it has a good read speed, but IT IS NOT A CLASS 6 CARD WHEN WRITING.
It does not get to the 6MB/sec it has to, but it stays at 4MB/sec.
So it really is a class 4 speed.
Maybe the album's thumbnails issue has to do with the card's write speed???

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Licenced, can you test the write speed of your 16GB sandisk card????
please???

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Following testing has now been done.
Wipe and load clean modaco rom 2.0. Directly went to camera and took some pictures and looked in album.
SanDisk microSDHC 8 GB class 2: NOT OK, thumbnails NOT created
Transcend microSDHC 16 GB class 6: NOT OK, thumbnails NOT created
Original SanDisk microSD 2GB Class 2: OK, thumbnails created
So it definitely seems to be connected to the cards. Now I did some speed measurement from the computer.
SanDisk microSDHC 8 GB class 2: NOT OK, thumbnails NOT created
Read: 10 000 kbytes/s
write: 3 600 kbytes/s
Transcend microSDHC 16 GB class 6: NOT OK, thumbnails NOT created
Read: 9 000 kbytes/s
write: 4 000 kbytes/s
Original SanDisk microSD 2GB Class 2: OK, thumbnails created
Read: 4 000 kbytes/s
write: 3 500 kbytes/s
The common thing for the two cards not working is that the read speed is much higher. You can actually see the difference clearly when loading album first time.
The only conclution I can draw out of this is that the thumbnail creating procedure doesn't work correctly when using high speed cards.
Is there anyone out there that can verify this by checking that album browsing works ok while using high speed sdcard
Thanks in advance.

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sixpackbud said:
The only conclution I can draw out of this is that the thumbnail creating procedure doesn't work correctly when using high speed cards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for making these tests. I suppose that if that was the issue then this would have been reported by multiple users. Let's see.
I have also contacted HTC support and awaiting response.

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I did the same tests that you did, using these cards:
SanDisk microSDHC 8 GB class 2: (the one that came with an htc magic) NOT OK, thumbnails NOT created
Transcend microSDHC 8 GB class 6: (the one i bought and I'm using now) NOT OK, thumbnails NOT created
Original SanDisk microSD 2GB Class 2: (the one that came with the hero) NOT OK, thumbnails created (NOT OK to me)
The speed tests showed exactly the same speeds you got.
See that the transcend is NOT a class 6 card???. What a dissapointment. I trusted the brand.
But..... I just solved the problem.
Copying 4 files I found inside the .thumbnails dir on the 8gb card that came with the htc magic.
I noticed (albeit the dir names are somewhat different) the .thumbnail dir in the magic had 4 files that were not thumbnail files.
The files are named: .thumbdata33-1967290299, .thumbdata3-1763508120, image_last_thumb and video_last_thumb.
I just copied those 4 files into the /sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails dir and the albums app started generating thumbnails.
The firs file is 230K long, the others 12K, 2K and 2K.
Maybe is a concurrency issue??? the writing speed of the card is not enough to allow creating more than one file at a time?
So putting in the card a pre-created file helps?
You can try with an empty file.

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HTC Support answer:
"We would have to investigate, as having just tried it on mine, it works absolutely fine.
you haven't been messing around with Apps to SD have you? i wonder if that could have anything to do with it? The device should work with any SD card, and it certainly seems to when we try it here, but of course we haven't done anything to the ROM.
what programs have you installed from the market? maybe we could test here and see if the same thing happens here once we have installed the same.
best regards,
HTC Europe Support"