Below is text from a diver trying to upload to Spot A Shark USA. Any direction I can give him?
Hi Carol,
I tried my first batch download last night of 11 images, but the “I’m not a bot” feature kept timing out… I re-clicked it every few minutes for a half-hour and then got too tired to continue. Any insight on this? The other batches of photos I have are much larger (50 images and 39 images in each batch from the two days on the Hesperides).
Hi Carol,
I was able to use the feature normally from Firefox and Chrome. Is this user possibly attempting to
use the site from highly limited bandwidth or intermittent service?
I’d be curious to know what browser/device this was observed on, any details about the internet service used and if you also see the behavior when trying to upload.
Thanks.
This is a staff member that uploads lots of images. The bot button has been an ongoing issue for him. He did reply later and said the issue was resolved so I am not sure what is happening there! I will forward him your questions.
Hmm. Perhaps an addition question then: Has he experienced this error on multiple computers/browsers or always the same one? Perhaps some work computer restriction or browser add-ons are causing it.
This is what Shawn sent back -
The issue I was having recently with the bot button timing out occurred on my personal computer from home – which usually has faster internet so I was thinking it would be better. The browser I used at home was Firefox… I don’t know about any browser add-on issues to look for?
At work I used the Safari browser, and it looks like it worked for two batch uploads… but then the third seems to not have gone through, as I left if running last night when leaving work and there has been no follow-up email for the “encounter submitted” this morning. The window for the SAS image upload page looked to be frozen as well. I will try again now using Safari and see what happens.
I also know that in the past I experienced the bot button timing out on both my personal and work computer… though I do have a new work computer this year so perhaps something is different there?
As a side note…when I first started managing SAS USA, I used Chrome for all work on SAS, even though I typically use Firefox for all other web browsing/shopping/banking/etc. This was because there seemed to be some weird glitches in Firefox that I did not experience with Chrome. However, that seemed to get fixed a while back and I now use both with no discernible difference between the two. Not sure this adds anything to the conversation but thought I would let you know.
Hello,
Update on this thread:
Thanks for being patient while we work on this. I’ve done some investigating on previous successful uploads up Shawn’s data. One thing that stood out to me, is that the images are extremely large- some upwards of 30MB.
This uploader does most of it’s work in the user’s browser before sending off the data to Wildbook. A very large upload could time out the recaptcha, and the uploader itself.
I downloaded and tested some of Shawn’s existing image data and saw the uploader seem to take longer than usual, but the encounters were still created. Based on this, it seems like the uploader is doing it’s first job but then failing to let the user’s computer know it is finished. Depending on Shawn’s internet speed his upload times may differ from mine also.
The test(s) that I performed all included at least 11 images, as that was the minimum described as encountering this problem. This came in at 293MB, exceeding the recommended 250MB for a single upload due to the image sizes- even though the number of images was few.
The images I downloaded are all around 6000x4000px and JPG quality 99, almost the maximum archival quality possible with JPG. Wildbook does not need anything close to this size of image for good quality display and effective spot mapping. We strongly suggest saving smaller images and reducing the JPG quality if possible. Quality levels over 90 in JPG tend to increase file size quickly, and 90 is still quite good. 6000x4000 could easily be reduced to 1600x1200 or thereabout. In fact, the images you see in the Wildbook software are in almost all cases processed smaller versions of the original. If the images are reduced to 1-5MB the multiple encounter submission process should proceed much more quickly.
This will not just reduce upload size and therefore upload time, it will save space on the server. Server space can be extended, but it add to cost for us.
In the mean time, I’m going to extend timeout lengths throughout the server and continue testing with these images. I’ve begun this process and will keep you updated as it continues.
Thanks for continuing to be patient while we work on this.
Thanks Colin for the time you’ve spent on this. I will forward this along to Shawn. I also suspected it had to do with slow upload speeds at his house. He did a speed test and he is really on a slow upload speed system at home. Because he sends so many pictures and is an Aquarium staff person and trusted colleague, I ended up giving him a user account. That seemed to help, but the advice to reduce file size will also be helpful. I asked him to only use his login powers for good, and to NOT go messing around with anything. This is exactly the kind of situation where tiered accounts would be useful, though I have full confidence that he will not purposely mess anything up.
Thanks again and hope you’re doing well. I heard about the Portland Wall Of Mothers….good stuff!
Carol