LOST & FOUND is driving me mad!
john_97a982ce
Posts: 300
I've spent sooo much time resorting products out of the Lost &Found into proper categories, but then DAZ throws things back into it willy nillie just to make us all crazy. Today, I'm discovering they did it again, and it's getting worse as the day progresses! After spending a s--t ton of money on this program you'd think they would make this process easier since they obviously LOVE the L&F and will keep torturing us with this. Why do they have it at all? Their product is either installed or it's not. If they can't fix this then they should get rid of it. As it is now I'm going to cut WAY BACK on my purchases until they either fix the L&F or get rid of it. If they never fix it then I'll be spending a LOT less on DAZ. I guess that's a good thing. Why should I make my sorting torture worse with MORE PRODUCT? You tell me. Are any of you as angry and frustrated as I am?! Sound off. Tell me how you cope with it or don't. I've suggested MANY times that they give us a designated window we can drag and drop from, keeping the Smart Content window open and a designated L&F window. Apparently that's simply being ignored. We need more people to suggest this.
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Comments
What do you mean by fix? Lost and Found is the home for thinmgs that lack an explicit category, where would you put them? I admit "Uncategorised", which used to be used, would be clearer. If you do categorise the items in Lost and Found that certainly should stick.
Well, that's nonsense! Everything I move has a logical place to live. "Outfits," "Hair," "Poses," "Wardrobe," etc. I'm NEVER NOT able to put them somewhere logical. What the heck are you talking about? As for things not "sticking," many times they don't. Why? Probably because DAZ is doing some kind of work on the system without caring a whit for the categorizations WE do to tidy things up. If DAZ tells me that the HUNDREDS of items that end up in the Lost & Found folder are SUPPOSED to be there because the artists don't know how to properly categorize their products then I will stop doing this apparent waste of time! The problem is that if I do NOT categorize them then they always show that they are located in the Lost & Found. Can DAZ Studios FIND these in the L&F when I'm trying to load a SCENE? NO, IT CAN'T! So, how do you, Mr. know it all, find your products if everything is in the L&F?
Are you from DAZ? If so, are you of the Conservative mindset that says, "Whenever possible, do nothing." It wouldn't take much for DAZ to simply create a designated L&F window that would let us drag and drop into the Smart Content window.
DAZ, I'm doing your work FOR you, here. I now know WHY the Lost & Found is filling up without being able to resolve into proper folders. It's the only reason that remotely makes sense. Your Data people are re-uploading products that were most likely reported as having problems but can't be automatically assigned back into their proper place. Why? Because when you removed the items to be re-uploaded you left empty placeholders. So, when you re-uploaded they had nowhere to go because the empty placeholder was already taking up their place in the right spot. When I have to manually do the "Move" FOR DAZ I first have to locate the empty shells and delete them. Then I have to "Move" them back into place. Take a look at the screenshot I attached here. These are only SOME of the ones affected. Not one of those products does not have a proper place to live. In fact, they automatically filled their rightful place before this week. This is happening RIGHT NOW! Shake up those Data people and wake them up! Tell them to completely delete EVEN the placeholders when they remove a product to re-upload. Or, this is going to continue to be a HUGE problem. What about those people that have THOUSANDS of products?
I'm not understanding the issue - being in Lost and Found has no bearing on the files' functinallity. If they are not working there is a deeper problem than their not being categorised.
You are obviously NOT reading what I wrote. This is not about functionality, as much it is about where they reside and how DAZ can search for them. Please read my email before you say something like that. Attached is what my Lost and Found NOW looks like, just after leaving for a few hours. It has grown MORE. They were sorted by me AND by DAZ before this week started.
Those are products. The products will show in every category that they have one or more files from, having many entries there doesn't mean that the presets are not categorised with something like a store link in Lost and Found. Please try opening soem of the products and see how their files are arranged internally (which is where they will be in the files tab of Smart Content, and under categories in the Content Library pane)..
I do know what you mean, but I've also had products tell me that they cannot find a certain file that's part of that product. Usually, I have to completely re-install. And also I've found them in the L7F after some of them snuck back into the L7F after I reassigned them. You looked at those products. You tell ME. Do YOU find those in your L&F?
Since when are we supposed to expect the number of products I just showed you to be unsorted and stuck in the Lost and Found? This is quite simply bad programming and lazy housekeeping.
Unfortunately products released prior to Genesis, around SKU 2200 and below, didn't have metadata as Smart Content / metadata feature didn't exist in Daz Studio. Other than older Platinum products where metadata was added when DAZ Studio .duf format installers were added, metadata was not retroactively added to these older products which are typically in the Poser file format.
Edit: If a product doesn't have metadata, they are categorized into Lost and Found because files don't show in the Smart Content tab if they are not assigned a category.
Again, you (someone) are ignoring the fact that the lion's share of the products I showed you (all in the Lost and Found) are not older products. And they WERE sorted properly prior to this last week. This tells me that DAZ reuploaded a ton of products because of the major issues they were having recently but did not delete the entire product FIRST before reuploading. If this is what happened then they should count this as a lesson learned and see to it that they DO delete all of the product FIRST before reuploading. What happens when they DON'T delete all of a product first before re-uploading is that there remains an old placeholder that prevents the new upload from going back to where it belongs. That's why I have to go into each one and delete that placeholder before I can "MOVE" it back. I have to do this with every one of them. Very time-consuming and extremely frustrating.
The installers are not able to delete anything from the users computer unless the user tells them to do so.
IMHO, using DS in online mode is asking for trouble anyways, since Connect is checking for updated metadata, with concequences we all have been reading about since the store update last autumn.
did you Export User Data?
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when you doing manualy added / changes in "smart content"
you have to save your added / changes by the menu "Content DB maintenance" > "Export User Data"
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in case of crash, refreshing or upgrading version
you have to "Re-import Metadata" and it restore your user added / changes as you exported it
I am not manually adding anything. In fact, I seldom buy or download anything from anyone but DAZ so I can easily add it again if I lose a disc, etc. As for working online, how on Earth am I supposed to add an item I just purchased accept online, that doesn't fit my situation. You're saying that when they re-upload products into their system then they will always have to deal with blank placeholders preventing those items from dropping back into their proper place. WELL THAT sounds like a big friggen programming issue TO ME! As for the "Export User Data" concept, I have not done so due to limited space. I've added a couple of external drives to handle that, so I'll try that after I re-sort my current Lost & Found PROBLEMS back into their proper locations. Does it take up much room, or is it simply Metadata?
As for "IMHO, using DS in online mode is asking for trouble anyways, since Connect is checking for updated metadata, with consequences we all have been reading about since the store update last autumn," I just received an email yesterday from DAZ telling me that that problem is fixed. Is it not? What an annoyance THAT was. DANG IT. I would install and then it would uninstall when reconnected online again.
There's a reason I chose a headshot from GW2 as my avatar. I FEEL the way my GW2 character looks when dealing with all of these glitches from DAZ. What? Did they cut down on their savvy tech staff?
The products are no (I hope) in Lost and Found - one or more fiels from the Products are in Lost and Found, the rest may be prop[erly categorised. In any event, files being in Lost and Found has nothing to do with a missing file error on loading - categories are just a matter of presentation in the database driven views, but the loading of the content is based on file paths (locations on disc) inside the files; the two are completely unrelated.
There's a reason I chose a grim headshot from GW2 as my avatar. Following what you just said, explain to me why there were SO MANY products in the L&F (see the snapshots). If what you said is correct then there should not be blank placeholders in the places where they belong. Leaving products to hang around in L&F is just poor housekeeping on DAZ's part. When I open one of those and look at the description is says that it's in the Lost and Found, not in other more appropriate places. That tells me all I need to know; it's not supposed to be in there.
So you open the product and there is only one category listed, the Lost and Found category, and it contains all of the files? Actually, looking at the images most of them really are older content so I agree with the earlier comment - this is not likely to have been categroised. I do have Modeern House 2 installed, however, and the only file in Lost and Found is the 3Delight materials preset for the grass - it shouldn't be there, but it is only oen file and they may be reluctant to update for only that reason since it will require DIM users to redownload the whole product.
Every one of those products was already assigned the proper location before this last week. Now, all of those have to be put back. It's as if I spent a lot of time (and DAZ had done a lot of it as well) putting my belongings away, only to find a lot of it thrown into the middle of the room when I get back from somewhere. I cannot tolerate a Lost and Found loaded with products and I know I'm not the only DAZ owner that feels this way. They just don't read Forums or communicate except to send an infrequent complaint. After I finish this re-sort AGAIN I'll follow the advice above about exporting user data. Not sure how that's going to help if DAZ datafarts again and knocks everything off the shelf onto the floor.
Maybe your database is corrupted.
If I keep having to rebuild my database after DAZ fixes something I'm going to lose my mind.
OK. FINALLY, after a couple of weeks, I've been able to piece the time together to put the L&F items into folders that make sense. YES, I KNOW there are placeholders within the structre already, but without filing away the main folder in a good-house-keeping move they will all point to the L&F. Ridiculous. Not acceptable. NOW, I'm going to follow the advice of cm152335 and Export User Data. My only question is if I Re-Import Metadata does DAZ already know to pull the whole thing? Or, is there a specific selection to make that tells it to do that? I've used the Re-Import function to install problematic products. So, I have to believe this is a somewhat different process?
Re-import metadata opens a second dialogue in which you can select individual items or whole bloacks (all user data or all vendor product data or both).
But how does it know to use the data saved when exporting? I've used Re-Import before, but it came from DAZ, not the saved export. That's what I'm asking here. Thanks for you reply though.
There should be an option for User data at the top of the dialogue, the metadata is written to /Runtime/Support/ in the userdata .dsx file(s)
Ah, yes, when importing it's (in my case) "User Date 1." Very good. Well-- Thanks everyone for your input and advice. I still think it's a great idea for DAZ to provide a dedicated separate window (a "Pane") for Lost & Found." It would be for those of us that cannot tolerate ANYTHING sitting in the Lost & Found" so we can drag and drop products into a proper location. Even if we can't drag & drop it would be useful so we don't have to find our place again after re-filing the product. And, hopefully, we can choose more than one product at a time to move into a specific location. It is simply a very good idea for data-cleanly people.