Do WEBP image files crash Windows 10 File Explorer?
coralyn
Posts: 46
I noticed a while ago the DAZ 3D images for products started having the WEBP extention (some new variation on JPG?). Unfortunately, moving them around seems to crash Windows 10 file explorer. Has anyone one else seen this? Or am I the odd one?
I'll have 4 or 5 windows open, and after a short 'hang', they all close and I need to reopen them all. I might not even have them active at the crash. Originally I assumed it was due to my Win 10 being a few years old, but last week I reformatted my drive C and reloaded a fresh Win 10 on my 240GB SSD drive C. My content installs on an internal 6TB HD as F:\DAZ 3D.
I can obviously 'live' with this - happens maybe once a week. A partial solution is to take the core image (aka: image representing the product in my 'catalog' directory), import into GIMP and export as stock JPG. This reduces the frequency of the crash, but doesn't eliminate it.
(I've used Poser since 2006, settled on G2F and DSON Import into Poser2014, but switched gears to DS 4.14 this month - ergo why I reformatted C to start fresh)
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Comments
Nope.
Not for me, but it also doesn't open w/ the default image viewer. Default app for it is my web browser.
they open for me, I think my default is irfanview
HDR files even open with that
I think just doing a lot of file operation in Windows Explorer will bring it to its knees. Views get slower, not sorting the new additions, then eventually not even bothering to display them. Adding a folder isn't recognized without a hard refresh. Time to re-start.
I had a folder through which I would funnel everything (page images, shortcuts, archive files) to an external disk. It got to the point that it would take almost 30 seconds to open a sub-folder. Windows Explorer would max out a couple of cores just to display the contents, and that condition persisted even after cold starts. I never could find out why, but I just made another folder and deleted the orignal. Problem solved, at least until whatever happened to the first folder happens to the new folder.
I did find online suggestions to disable the side 'preview' window, which I can live with. Those suggestions were NOT aimed at DAZ content, but the general reason was the 'quick-dirty' previews could be buggy or poorly handled. So I have been disabling that, which does seem to help. Maybe however Windows opens WEBP as small 'previews' has issues.
I've never had issues with opening the WEBP in Gimp, irfanview & other tools. This was only this preview issue.
Also interesting tidbit, if you open Windows 10 "Apps & Features", you'll find something called "Webp Image Extensions" by Microsoft. This is likely doing the 'previews'
Yeah. Webp kills windows dead. For no reason. Its not consistent or repeatable. But when windows gets mad at it, you best reboot.
I carefully convert any webp's to jpgs and never ever ever ever have any more problems with them.
Always install sagethumbs (sourceforge) with any new Windows setup. It's a MUST have.
Don't see how any artist can work without that installed at all times.
Probably thanks to that extension (?) but as far as I'm concerned : I've never felt any weird behavior viewing webp with Windows 10 or 11.
I'd not heard of the WEBP file format until DAZ3D started using them. I download the store promo image for every product that I buy as well as the product’s zip files. I hadn't paid attention to the fact that newer products had store images in the WEBP format until I tried to upload a WEBP image to a post in one of the forums sometime last year or earlier. WEBP file cannot be attached to a forum post!! That's when I started doing as @UHF does and convert any downloaded WEBP image to JPG format. Fortunately, Windows Paint opens WEBP files so I didn't have to go looking for software that could load and convert WEBP images. I even went back through my downloaded products to find all of the WEBP images that I had downloaded and converted them to JPGs also.
Regarding a WEBP image crashing my system (Windows 10 Pro) - I haven't had that problem.
I had issues with not being able to open/view webp files in Windows 10. A quick google search turned up a Windows 10/11 codec. Once I installed that all my issues went away and I could even view webp files with Windows default image viewer. You might want to give that a try.
Aside from hardware differences between different computers, I wonder if part or all of the issue with WEBP files could be related to whether one is running Windows 10/11 Home or Windows 10/11 Pro.
Irfanview will , open & save as ( many different kinds of files ) more simple & quick than the Gimps _ thanx
Irfanview has an Thumbnail Viewer , for looking at files ( like a browser : for example Adobe Bridge ) Thanx
As a tech tip and I just tried this with one of my latest purchases. Right mouse click on the image choose "save as" change file format from Webp to all files. Add .jpg or .png whatever file format you want to save as and it saves as that file format.
Thanks for that tip!! Now I know how to use that Save As option.