What you’re saying is Synology made life harder for its users so it could save (at most) 20c a year per NAS, when Synology NASs mostly have lack-luster hardware (1gbe networking, Old CPUs and hardly any RAM, less units with on-board graphics). Because people say with Synology you’re paying for mostly the software, because DSM is awesome. Well if they keep doing stuff like this, and pushing video streaming onto third parties like Plex, can we really say that anymore?
I think it's 1.06$ for appliances over 80$. Which is kinda ridiculous. Especially since backups from the iPhone which is the main way you get heic images into the nas already transcodes it. Is that great? Nah but it works.
Be careful prejudging this one. The codec licensors may be trying to extort Synology, and Synology simply said no. They also may not have allowed Synology to offer the codecs directly to their users for a fee, instead trying to get them to buy the codecs for all.
@@kend4438 yup we just don't know what happened. It makes sense that hvec would get a bit desperate and is trying to squeeze their smaller and smaller number of customers before av1 and other codes take off
got it in one, I don't know who would buy a syno in 2024 these days now when you can build a monster NAS for a fraction of the price, the software on the syno is crappy
@@kend4438 Yep! The devil is always going to be in the details of the "negotiation". As of right now it's possible that the owner of the license may have demanded 2% of the retail price on each Synology device. On a $1000.00 Syno NAS that's $20 on each unit. License Holder: Your hardware sucks. However, Your software is great. You want to keep it great. Right? Synology: Yep. License Holder: We're going to make you an offer you can't refuse. 2% on all sold units. Synology: F*ck you, you greedy bastard. License Holder: Well, f*ck you too - you greedy bastard! The 2 sides may have reached an impasse.
I agree... I just bought the 923+ a year ago and this is disheartening.. I would have rather built on freeNAS or something else.. 😢 They need to undo this..now I holding back on the 7.2.2 update until there is more to see..
@@NakulKhairnar Synology Photos is great. I don't get why you guys are crying. It automatically backs up the pictures on my iPhone the same way iCloud would.
The question is why did they not just offer to buy the codec? This seems like a crappy money savings solution and such a behavior will deficiently influence my purchasing decision for my next NAS. They are shooting themselves into the foot with that IMO.
yeap, but now greedfaltion got also Synology. But business is bad and greedy, according to the motto the less for you the more for them. Synology has a huge minus from me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been a 16+ years customer of Synology, onto my 4th NAS and using #3 as a back-up with SHR. I have never experienced such a customer unfriendly company before. When they went AMD without builtin graphics chip I already was in doubt whether to go with QNAP but the software and SHR still won me over. However, where I would have been forgiving them for being stale and lacking innovation, this is reverse innovation. Selling a downgrade as an upgrade. This is like buying a car and then they disable the airbags because they don't want to pay for the license fee. In the case of Synology you get a LADA but still pay BMW money. And to meet in the middle they tell you to get some rubber bands to attach to your head and car seat so you don't bump into the steering wheel upon collision.
@sydsai that is all synology knows how to do with everything. Learned to hate the practices and me getting squeezed for everything while they chase the dream of beating Dell in enterprise.
Or let your desktop or laptop or cell phone or tablet process the preview file. If your using your phone, bet you will not notice anything at all. Since your phone processes preview images. Also, coding to provide a UI for Users to make a choice could be too expensive.
@@NRB-mb7jc I still don’t get it, so when I’m viewing my photos on my PC I need my phone with the app turned on every time in order to have the thumbnails showing on the PC browser?
I am SCARED AF! I recently moved everything on Synology Photo 2 years ago, and I made my father and my wife do it too because I believed I found a serious company finally to entrust all our photos to and now this? What scares me the most is for how long are there going to be these workarounds? Are they going to stop anytime in the future or are they going to be absent on future NAS? That would be a complete deal break for me and I will seriously consider ditching all these turnkey solutions for diy.
yeap, because now greedfaltion got also Synology. But business is bad and greedy, according to the motto the less for you the more for them. Synology has a huge minus from me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Synology just has so many little annoyances here and there ill sadly have to ditch them for my next NAS when the time comes. You should make a DIY NAS video, everything from hardware to OS. Congrats on the milestone!
I doubt it, his sponsors are "easy to handle nas OS', a DIY NAS is so simple you can avoid to buy Pre build NAS HW, and then this kind of companies would take out their partnerships.
I'm feeling the same. Bought my Synology almost a year ago and am quickly learning they don't care much about ongoing support. This new update is another reason I won't be buying another Synology.
@@TheJLMDT its a shame because actually, now NAS devices are becoming more relevant than the early 2010. Qnap is more home user focused (budget friendly), but them had lacked in Software in comparison to Synology,
Sure, I agree most users are probably going to be fine. That does not make Synology’s actions here fine. They are removing a key feature from an expensive product where the software ecosystem is a key selling point. Even for users who can use the workaround, this may not be how they _want it_ to work. Moreover, think of the signal this sends to customers: we’ll remove a feature, not even give you the option to pay for it, to pad our margins; go pound sand about it. What’s going to go next? Besides Video and Surveillance Station? I feel like we’re moving backwards.
@@IYIySTiiKv1I use a bunch of different ways to get images on the NAS, from iPhone is least likely. Also the problem of shared space photos vs personal space-do I have to get all personal space users (two of us, but this problem scales) to setup some solution?
Why isn't anyone asking the question that if Synology is comfortable with removing "some" features now, then what will they remove randomly in the future? It's worse than simply degrading the capabilities people paid for with "Photos". It removes faith in the company to stand behind features people pay for.
Trust me, they will. They are heavily investing in cloud services. You can bet they will discontinue functionality on the nas in order to push their cloud offerings.
I wish there was some kind of rule / law to prevent companies removing features that were once part of a system. I purchased my Synology over Qnap as there were many more features available on Synology. Taking away DS video and having to make us side load it, not properly supporting image formats is just another annoyance. I would prefer if they just gave the option as a toggle, heck, I don't mind paying for a licence if they are worried about licensing costs.
This is infuriating. My mirrorless camera is set to shoot in h.265 and upload photos via FTP. The transcoding and search feature is one of the main reasons I got my NAS. How does this impact the context aware search feature? Once they're processed can I still search faces/objects in the photos?
I too was worried when I opened up Photos but thankfully I've saved everything in PNG and did not have any issues. The new 7.2.2 seems to have made my NAS more snappy. Glad you're getting over the 100K subs too! :):)
I've been doing so much research before buying a NAS and it seems like synology has really messed a lot of things up starting with DSM 7. If there is a problem with synology photos I may go somewhere else
And this emphasizes why I keep my photos organized in folders and add metadata to them. Would like to get the Synology metadata tied to the photos in case that gets modified as well.
This bad! Me and my family usally use our nases for photos. I wont update my nases now until some fix is out for this. Downside to this is that several nases out there will have no updated fixes for vulnerabilities with auto update disabled.
My iPhone 10se photos app does not show the image processing option, even when logged in as admin. Does it only shows it after the 7.2.2 upgrade? Because then I’m in a catch22 as I decided to postpone my upgrades to 7.2.1 because of this madness. Anyone knows how to get this image processing option visible?
Eh, it is a pity that we, as the users, are not able to just buy that codec per device. I'm also not sure if i understood, so now every single photo in library needs to be downloaded to phone, converted and sent back? It will take forever for a big library. Does it at least work in the background of i have to keep the mobile app open and screen active? And - previews - so it has to generate small jpg file to display on the timeline, and also bigger one with high quality to display after opening the photo?
Hi do you have a video about how to fix the Plex Server Remote Access Private IP always showing as my PC IP instead of the NAS Server IP. Even if I put it in the URL or the other IP options in the Network Tab still wont change. I just don't see a way for me to put the Server IP in it as a Private IP.
Are you saying I have to have all my photos on my phone? I took it as the photos and videos will be processed on my phone and once done, and thumbnails and such are processed, this issue kind of goes away to some degree? This is disappointing.
I have an entirely different workflow for my Apple photo backups. While I could do more research to make it work (thanks, Synology /s), if I'm creating a new workflow, I'd best dump Synology applications. I would not recommend Synology to friends and family anymore.
thank you for sharing. I'll keep an eye out once I upgrade to 7.2.2. Another note- I submitted a feature request concerning photos on the synology forum but have not received any feedback or a confirmation. Any idea if my request will be considered? Here it is verbatim... "Please add a feature to Synology Photos that would automatically put together a slideshow every now and then (time interval to be set by user) which is then presented in one's phone in notifications or via email. This feature would mirror Google photo moments. I backup (sync) my phone's photo gallery to Synology Photos automatically. I've been migrating decades of photos into Synology photos which I then share to family, albeit in a tedious fashion. I'd like Synology photos to automatically compile photos and videos (themed; like my kids at school, or a family trip from 6 years ago, etc...) into a slideshow (.30 secs, 1 min. etc...) with some fun little music in the background that I can then share with friends or family easily via email, SMS, whatsapp, facebook, etc... (no login required). it just pops up in my notifications and if I want, i can click 'share' and off it goes to family/friends of my choesing via a chosen app (email, facebook, insta, what-have-you). Super easy, super user friendly. Just mirror what google photos does.Thank you." I've requested this feature in the hopes of completing disconnecting myself from the Google ecosystem. Crossing my fingers. Thank you for the work that you do.
I recently upgraded my Synology NAS to DSM 7.2.2, and now I’m facing some annoying issues. Videos encoded with HEVC, especially those recorded by cameras (e,g, Sony A7C2), used to play smoothly in Synology Photo, but after the upgrade, they either won't play or only the audio works. I reported this to Synology, and they admitted it's their system”upgrade” problem but have no plans to fix it. They’re trying to cut costs by not paying for the video codec licenses. As a consumer, I’m really disappointed because they promised video codec conversion when I bought this NAS. Now they’ve quietly removed this feature with the so-called upgrade, leaving us without a function we originally had. Hoping you can bring attention to this issue and help us voice our dissatisfaction to Synology. Thanks!
Uploading pictures from my phone or using Synology Assistant is all well and good, but what if I send out a photo request for people outside of my network to upload their pictures of a party or event? Will their photos be processed as well (they will most-likely not have the Synology app on their phone)? Or will I be able to process their photos, from my phone, since I do have the app? Thanks for any help (before I upgrade the DSM).
They take way all server side stuff. Uploads will not be processed anymore. That sucks. No more thumbs, no smaller versions of videos. So you gonna have to stream those huge files over your mobile plan. How about if you are migrating 2TB of photos and videos to Syno folder? Tough luck, not processed anymore.
I have 7.2.1 DSM and now I had a strange thing happening. My heic files are showing thumbnails on my Photos Personal site, but when I copy the exact files for the Shared Photos folder doesn’t show thumbnails on the App.
Thanks for the video; but I am a bit puzzled. Ok we have a browser extension to auto generate the preview by the PC/Mac. But how it works to generate thumb for a full folder already on the NAS ? Shall I reupload all folders one by one ? I never used upload on synology photo, only update files/folder directly in the NAS (Rsync etc.) Any way to have a regular batch to generate all missing preview ? It's a real bummer right now ; can't use my photos anymore...
Yeah remember: - having client do the server job (who should collect and PROVIDE this data to many clients) is a total joke - they forgot the vaste majority of media is only on the NAS itself! - they forgot the clients might have policies not being able to install any extension (or even app! say whaaat, an app???) - your machine will become server now, busy while you doing work and earning money, interrupting your videconferencing, or playbacks - Image Extension garbage is barely downloaded, just few thousands of poor users - Image Extension has a solid rating 1.3 out of 5 a disaster.👎
@@happyhusband312 I need to find an alternative and run a docker on my synology... seriously, unbelievable... but didn't manage to find a way to make it work :(
@@bilbotorm i am running good ole VideoStation on 7.2.2 and AME 3, as hacks are circulating, so all is running except picture thumbnails. Those geniuses separated apps instead of central indexing (Hillarious!). So i allocated one PC to become "Synology Photos Server" (thanks!) before new hack will arise. Imagine Plex asked us to generate thumbnails, subtitles, chapters on PC.🤮
@@happyhusband312 Thanks. Trying to push a Immich server in container in the mean time.. but not as smooth as using simple Synology photos... such a shame...
My 918+ was staying on 7.2.1. This version can't display HEIC and also cant preview it with the app or addon.... Had to manually update to 7.2.2 with the update file for some reason.
How do you use the Synology Assistant for desktop to process the thumbnails? I recently purchased a DS124, plugged in an external hard drive, and copied 100,000+ photos and 30,000+ videos. The photos thumbnails seem to load, and some video formats, but none of the .MOV videos have thumbnails. Image Assistant is running on my phone, but it does not seem to be processing thumbnails if the Synology Photos app is not actively open. I assume this is only an issue because a large quantity was uploaded all at once and the phone would otherwise keep up.
I saw exactly what you did after upgrading to 7.2.2. No thumbnails for all my photo's !!! You mentioned your solutions was to connect to iPhone and all would be ok. However the reason I use Synology is to store all my photos and once uploaded to Synology Photos, I REMOVE them from my iPhone (to free up storage space on my iPhone). With no Photos on my iPhone, how would you suggest I get my Synology Photos back to the way they were ? Any feedback is appreciated !
i updated today and no problems at all. The only thing i noticed is that in Surveillance Station in the overview of the cameras, if you click on 1 to make the screen bigger and you go back to the overview the images has to load every time new, before it was more stable
So I have a huge amount of videos and photos backed up with Synology photos. The vast majority are no longer on the original device - just my NAS (my phone is not large enough). As such, I cannot do the first thing. When my NAS updates, am I going to be forced to use the app you mentioned on my PC to get all of my thumbnails back? Thanks for the heads up on this.
Couple questions. 1. Will the iPhone do this for photos that are not on the actual phone? Example, save heic from mac to synology photo, turn image assistant on iPhone, thumbnail gets generated? 2. @6:40 "using jpeg for all of them" is "them" the image itself it is making a jpeg or just the thumbnail is a jpeg?
Question: is Face recognition also damaged when they are not able lot process HEIC files? They will hopefully not base this on the thumbnails or hold a backup jpg file for every HEIC photo?
I installed it this afternoon (8/28). Broke Plex at first and had to reinstall and then it worked. I never used photos, media or music apps from Synology so none of that really makes a difference to me. Other than the Plex “misunderstanding” it seems to be running fine on both DS418 and 920+. Good video!!
I bought into synology two weeks ago because of first party software like video station and photos. Why should anybody buy synology again? What’s to say they would go on supporting other software?
I've migrated to Synology Photos from Google Photos. The first hassle was getting the Google Takeout into a folder structure that makes sense and write the metadata back to the photo. Google made this painfully hard. Now that I have all the photos in Synology Photos, I came across this. Most of my newer photos (shot in HEIC) are not showing previews in the app/website. The image assistant on the apps seems to gradually create the required previews but it's incredibly slow for when you import an enormous collection (100k+ photos). Added to that I will have to keep the app open for it to create the previews. I wish that I could just buy the license for the NAS to run this in the background on the NAS itself. What Synology developed here is extremely user-unfriendly and fragile in my opinion.
I commented on a previous video that Synology is falling apart. This continues to confirm that. I wouldn't buy a Synology right now until we know where they are heading with hardware and software.
Agreed. I'm almost regretting my decision to buy a Synology NAS for myself and for my parents last year. The more features they remove, the more troubleshooting and workarounds I'll have to implement for my family. That said, this is just another nail in the coffin and I had already decided I will not purchase another Synology in the future
Same, I recently installed two cameras for a customer. Who also wanted the perks like photo back up and ds video etc, mainly for her husband whilst he was having a kidney transplant. Both cameras are set to h265. Now I've got to alter settings, out on new software etc once I worked it all out myself. Can I charge them for this, I could but it would be morally wrong
I just updated my DS1517+ with 7.2.2 Plex is not compatible with this version it states. So wont connect. Any ideas? Maybe they will update Plex Server soon? Thank you
Never mind. I found a download from Plex directly that made it work again. Not sure why I had to go directly to Plex but it is now operational again :)
This was a really bad decision from Synology. This gives me very little faith that they won’t pull the rug on other features that are important to customers, including business customers who rely on consistency. The installation of the Synology Image Assistant software plus the extension that runs on your web browser is a complete train wreck. If you look at the web browser extension, Synology asked that you disable your security so that the extension can run because they did not get it signed as a Developer, which is insane and lazy.
This might sound crazy. but could someone point me to a video or tutorial that explain where/how Synology photos stores the actual photo. I've gone through every folder under homes, home, photos, mobile, memories and can't find them. I'd like to use snapshots to recover some.
Thanks Will for this great content, as usual. What about pictures that are no longer on my phone. I store my photos in synology photos and have deleted much of them from my phone to fee space and remain below the 5gb free icloud storage limit. Will i loose display capabilities for those files in synology photos that are no longer on my phone?
Thanks Will. Now i a pm afraid that the next app Synology will drop is AudioStation. This is my favourite app. Main app to stream my music at home on my yamaha receivers, in my car using ds audio in all my devices, ipad, phone… I looked for alternative free apps and there is nothing out there that does what audio station very well. My music library is huge. Thousands of albums properly tagged and stored in nested folders Genre/artist/album… I tried jellyfin, and looked for alternatives, but none does what AudioStation does. Would lokve your insight on this and perhaps videos on alternatives to audiostation. Thanks
Looking at the bright side in my case I use my Nas for moving around tons of videos regularly and actually processing them on 1522+ was a pain and i was hoping i can offload this process to one server laying around I guess It's the case now but I wish they could have add more control and configurations to this process now when i open my browser its just saying "generating previews" with no progress monitoring i hope image assistant will just be an app that we can login with an admin account and just let it sit aside to do this process all the time with progress monitoring and all that would've been awesome
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Not a good move. Making this as confusing as this is for end users is gonna destroy a lot of goodwill towards synology. At least they should have allowed users to pay for the codecs themselves. I am paying for and using a NAS so that it does not offload processing to my other devices (phone/computer).
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hey man, thank you for great content. I still haven't updated to 7.2.2 because of this. I got Emby installed for movies instead of Video Station and I'm loving it (even though free version only). But for photos, that's a bigger issue for me. Does this mean, compare to the DSM 7.2.1, that this will consume a lot more storage due to all the extra jpeg files? You mention the processing is for the thumbnails, but before you process it via the app, the photo itself is also not displayed. So, is there a fullsize jpeg file for every heic file?
I don't have 7.2.2 yet and I actually don't use either Synology Photos or Video Station. Thumbnails in jpeg are one thing but are you saying there will be a transcode of the video format (offloaded to the phone or whatever) and how does that impact storage? Do you get to keep both files or if it's transcoded the child gen one?
Hey @SpaceRex, thanks for the videos. It supported a lot on my synology setup. Look, I have a question that i have some talking about it but lack of response or resolution: My google photos image, when taken and moved to synology photos lose some quality. I know they are something about the loading be fast but after inserting the basics of quality first and that i still get some compression in terms of quality of the photo (size of the photo is still the same). Can you help me? Do you know any way to not lose the quality of the photo?
@@SpaceRexWill Really thank you about the reply. I saw the image size being the same and in computer couldn't find diference but in the computer was feeling a bit different. Thank you once again and continue the good work, i really appreciate it :)
Hey! I do not see the Image assistant option available within the Synology Photos mobile app. I ensured the application was up to date. Is that something we won’t have access to until the new DSM version comes out?
Main reason to buy Synology was complete software, a full set of media apps (Audio/Video/Photo) and guaranteed thumbnails. Literally it's the modern NAS duty to care of all the indexing at one central place on as it run 24/7. The NAS should do do processing, and provide the results in form of thumbnails, (Samba) search to the clients. Not the opposite, like decades ago, when everything was client centric. This change is a sign of Synology retail death. For enterprise, they're a joke, and small business? They want the same as retail.
Apple iPhones shoot images in HEIC, yet Apple won't pay the license for Safari to view HEIC natively. That's saying a lot about the licensing scheme. The extremely complex and expensive licensing is another reason most tech companies joined together to develop AV1 to replace H.265.
The whole breaking stuff with updates is driving me crazy. I'm still on DSM 6.2.4 with my RS815+. Because the rollout of DSM 7 wasn't flawless I stayed. But what's your opinion, did things improve enough to switch to DSM 7.2, even on this older NAS?
I am currently thinking about switching from truenas diy to synology pre built but this just reminds me again how easily you can get screwed😅. I don‘t know yet what I‘ll do. Biggest problem to me is finding hardware that suits my needs for upgrading my DIY NAS.
I'm the opposite. Got a Synology about 3 years ago mostly backing up phone photos and other photos taken with DSLR. Been thinking of adding a DIY NAS to the mix.
@@running4fun74 If you find good hardware and have time to be a hobby server admin, go for it :D. You can still use your synology as backup or vice versa. I don‘t want to get rid if my homeserver but I just want my NAS ti wirk and be reliable. I do not good ways to expand a Synology RAID and am not sure about SHR. With TrueNas, I would setup mirrors and thos way I can easily add another vdev later and expand the pool. In germany the electricity is expensive though, which limits my hardware. And new server hardware is expensive. I will look inti used hardware for my specific needs, my current homeserver/NAS is very efficient but running out of space, but I can‘t simply add more drives so I need a few upgrades at once.
I have set up docker container with immich just because of uncertainty with synology photos, slow development and bug fixing. Seems like this is one of final nails in the coffin for synology photos.
You're taking them waaay to lightly! The only reason people are paying top dollars for underpowered hardware is their software. I will have to refuse to "upgrade" in order to keep my device's functionality. Now you have to waste your time, phone's battery, network traffic, etc just because they want to cheap out?? Why use a NAS if you need to still have and process phtots on your phone?
Firefox users with Synology Image Assistant extension still having issues with thumbnails: Install chrome and it's extension and perform thumbnail generation there.
As far as im concerned i paid for a feature set, much like i do when i buy a car, and have been robbed here- itd be like bmw disabling your turbo with an update and just telling you to go out and buy a 3rd party one if you want it back. I appreciate software costs money and in much the same way as i EXPECT updates for an xbox to be rolled in with its original cost, so to should this (and it was, given the premium we paid for syno).
After thinking about it , if someone copy their pictures via smb , then they are screw, I’m gonna test that , because I have around 100k pictures that are all inside a strict subdirectory and I don’t want to synology to mess with that structure. But synology photo is great but I don’t like their subdirectory layouts . Let me know if you tested with a simple smb copy directly to /photo.
I'm running DSM 7.2.2 now and I can confirm how it really works : 1. You need the browser extension so that when you start Synology photos from your browser, it will communicate with the 2.Synology Image assistant that needs to run on your PC or Mac. I also confirm that this new setup is CPU heavy for sure. I had to remove the 30 minutes DSM disconnect inside the security tab so that the HEVC and HEIC could be have thumbnail and so on. It took around 24h to process 100k pictures on 10k videos inside my /photo shared folder. My PC has a 13700KF, 32 Gb of RAM and a 4070ti. I'm using only the SMB copy and from time to time, I start Synology photo with my browser so that the Synology Image assitant start. You will see that there's a Square that is running on the side of the Synology panel if something needs to be process. If you import your pictures with the import directly from Synology Photos, it will do the magic on the fly. So beside that, it's no more a deal breaker. Only a slight change on my workflow.
It may not be as bad as you originally thought, but it is still very bad. What about the fact that transmitting files to a viewing device now requires transmitting the full file, instead of a smaller version (important for videos)? What about devices that do not support the encoding? This step backwards should be called what it is, a reduction in usability, delivered under a false pretence. The software was the only plus point Synology devices had going for them. If Synology keeps eroding the software, or start charging for delivering what was included in the purchase price before, they'll lose their last remaining advantage.
I played around converting photos to JPEG via imazing converter and mov files to mp4 via Shutter Encoder. They both work and will maintain metadata. However, it appears there is no way to maintain "live" photos that way. So yeah, this update sucks donkey balls.
Yea, synology is a nice NAS, but their stuff is not so hot. I would lean on it as little as possible. I mean we are trying to do secure sharing in a business and things are just not fully built out. I dont have a ton of confidence in the software solutions for them. But they are rock solid NAS's. Raid + Hyper back up to the cloud is all you can ask for and it does it well. But anything else, I feel like you might want to steer away from if you can. This issue is a perfect example. They arent paying the fee? Thats hilarious to me as I work with a lot of mac business clients and we always sell them a synology, fits well, but the quality and polish just isnt there.
“Fine,” so long as you don’t mind your HEIC images being reprocessed into H.264, and the resulting loss in fidelity as a result of decompressing and then recompression a copy. They need a new, separate way to do a canonical, unaltered backup of photos.
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What you’re saying is Synology made life harder for its users so it could save (at most) 20c a year per NAS, when Synology NASs mostly have lack-luster hardware (1gbe networking, Old CPUs and hardly any RAM, less units with on-board graphics). Because people say with Synology you’re paying for mostly the software, because DSM is awesome. Well if they keep doing stuff like this, and pushing video streaming onto third parties like Plex, can we really say that anymore?
I think it's 1.06$ for appliances over 80$. Which is kinda ridiculous. Especially since backups from the iPhone which is the main way you get heic images into the nas already transcodes it. Is that great? Nah but it works.
Be careful prejudging this one. The codec licensors may be trying to extort Synology, and Synology simply said no. They also may not have allowed Synology to offer the codecs directly to their users for a fee, instead trying to get them to buy the codecs for all.
@@kend4438 yup we just don't know what happened. It makes sense that hvec would get a bit desperate and is trying to squeeze their smaller and smaller number of customers before av1 and other codes take off
got it in one, I don't know who would buy a syno in 2024 these days now when you can build a monster NAS for a fraction of the price, the software on the syno is crappy
@@kend4438 Yep! The devil is always going to be in the details of the "negotiation". As of right now it's possible that the owner of the license may have demanded 2% of the retail price on each Synology device. On a $1000.00 Syno NAS that's $20 on each unit.
License Holder: Your hardware sucks. However, Your software is great. You want to keep it great. Right?
Synology: Yep.
License Holder: We're going to make you an offer you can't refuse. 2% on all sold units.
Synology: F*ck you, you greedy bastard.
License Holder: Well, f*ck you too - you greedy bastard!
The 2 sides may have reached an impasse.
@synology doesn’t realize a BIG reason users buy their NAS devices is because of synology photos. They SHOULD NOT screw this up!
I agree... I just bought the 923+ a year ago and this is disheartening..
I would have rather built on freeNAS or something else.. 😢
They need to undo this..now I holding back on the 7.2.2 update until there is more to see..
@@NakulKhairnar Synology Photos is great. I don't get why you guys are crying. It automatically backs up the pictures on my iPhone the same way iCloud would.
They are doing their best to ensure that my next NAS won't be a Synology.
Right
Second that!
The level of uncertainty with Synology is nerve wrecking. We never know what good feature will be axed or moved to subscription.
Google of the NAS world
The question is why did they not just offer to buy the codec? This seems like a crappy money savings solution and such a behavior will deficiently influence my purchasing decision for my next NAS. They are shooting themselves into the foot with that IMO.
yeap, but now greedfaltion got also Synology. But business is bad and greedy, according to the motto the less for you the more for them. Synology has a huge minus from me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been a 16+ years customer of Synology, onto my 4th NAS and using #3 as a back-up with SHR. I have never experienced such a customer unfriendly company before. When they went AMD without builtin graphics chip I already was in doubt whether to go with QNAP but the software and SHR still won me over. However, where I would have been forgiving them for being stale and lacking innovation, this is reverse innovation. Selling a downgrade as an upgrade. This is like buying a car and then they disable the airbags because they don't want to pay for the license fee. In the case of Synology you get a LADA but still pay BMW money. And to meet in the middle they tell you to get some rubber bands to attach to your head and car seat so you don't bump into the steering wheel upon collision.
It's insane. Either they think they are invincible or they want to get actively rid of non-enterprise customers.
My next nas will be ugreen or asustor. I'm done with synology.
I turned off DSM update now, this is insane decision by kicking consumers
@sydsai that is all synology knows how to do with everything. Learned to hate the practices and me getting squeezed for everything while they chase the dream of beating Dell in enterprise.
turn also off :/
Disabled as well. Installed a nas yesterday for a client and this happens.
For those users who can afford $0.2/year it would be great if synology let us pay for the convenience.
No brainer!
Or let your desktop or laptop or cell phone or tablet process the preview file. If your using your phone, bet you will not notice anything at all. Since your phone processes preview images. Also, coding to provide a UI for Users to make a choice could be too expensive.
@patrickwasp they probably don't want to put any more effort in this market. Based up the last 4 years I think they made their meaning plain...
@@Nasguy-b7q Oh yeah, they made it loud and clear that they want out of the consumer market
@@NRB-mb7jc I still don’t get it, so when I’m viewing my photos on my PC I need my phone with the app turned on every time in order to have the thumbnails showing on the PC browser?
I am SCARED AF! I recently moved everything on Synology Photo 2 years ago, and I made my father and my wife do it too because I believed I found a serious company finally to entrust all our photos to and now this?
What scares me the most is for how long are there going to be these workarounds? Are they going to stop anytime in the future or are they going to be absent on future NAS?
That would be a complete deal break for me and I will seriously consider ditching all these turnkey solutions for diy.
yeap, because now greedfaltion got also Synology. But business is bad and greedy, according to the motto the less for you the more for them. Synology has a huge minus from me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You sound like a pussy
Synology just has so many little annoyances here and there ill sadly have to ditch them for my next NAS when the time comes. You should make a DIY NAS video, everything from hardware to OS. Congrats on the milestone!
But what is next NAS device supplier?
I doubt it, his sponsors are "easy to handle nas OS', a DIY NAS is so simple you can avoid to buy Pre build NAS HW, and then this kind of companies would take out their partnerships.
I'm feeling the same. Bought my Synology almost a year ago and am quickly learning they don't care much about ongoing support. This new update is another reason I won't be buying another Synology.
I went with QNAP, they are a totally different company now they listened and cleaned house, Synology ignored us to chase a dream on our backs.
@@TheJLMDT its a shame because actually, now NAS devices are becoming more relevant than the early 2010.
Qnap is more home user focused (budget friendly), but them had lacked in Software in comparison to Synology,
Sure, I agree most users are probably going to be fine. That does not make Synology’s actions here fine. They are removing a key feature from an expensive product where the software ecosystem is a key selling point. Even for users who can use the workaround, this may not be how they _want it_ to work. Moreover, think of the signal this sends to customers: we’ll remove a feature, not even give you the option to pay for it, to pad our margins; go pound sand about it. What’s going to go next? Besides Video and Surveillance Station? I feel like we’re moving backwards.
Synology needs serious competition. And I'm not talking about DIY NAS.
QNAP charges 11.99 for the codec on their store and then it works with their new app. Would be a nice option.
That is really good to know
For a one time fee or cheap yearly subscription I would gladly pay to not worry about this. I usually backup from a mac not iPhone
@@IYIySTiiKv1I use a bunch of different ways to get images on the NAS, from iPhone is least likely. Also the problem of shared space photos vs personal space-do I have to get all personal space users (two of us, but this problem scales) to setup some solution?
Why isn't anyone asking the question that if Synology is comfortable with removing "some" features now, then what will they remove randomly in the future? It's worse than simply degrading the capabilities people paid for with "Photos". It removes faith in the company to stand behind features people pay for.
Trust me, they will. They are heavily investing in cloud services. You can bet they will discontinue functionality on the nas in order to push their cloud offerings.
We're only here Will because you make it worth being here. I've learnt so much from you about NAS drives, thank you.
I wish there was some kind of rule / law to prevent companies removing features that were once part of a system. I purchased my Synology over Qnap as there were many more features available on Synology. Taking away DS video and having to make us side load it, not properly supporting image formats is just another annoyance. I would prefer if they just gave the option as a toggle, heck, I don't mind paying for a licence if they are worried about licensing costs.
This is infuriating. My mirrorless camera is set to shoot in h.265 and upload photos via FTP. The transcoding and search feature is one of the main reasons I got my NAS. How does this impact the context aware search feature? Once they're processed can I still search faces/objects in the photos?
Stingy Synology. They're supposed to be top of the line in terms of software and user experience, yet they don't want to pay license fees for a codec.
You are here because you know your shit. Plain and simple.
And you make great content. So thank you.
I too was worried when I opened up Photos but thankfully I've saved everything in PNG and did not have any issues. The new 7.2.2 seems to have made my NAS more snappy. Glad you're getting over the 100K subs too! :):)
You are here because you’re extremely knowledgeable, honest and trustworthy. Appreciate all the work you put into your videos!
I've been doing so much research before buying a NAS and it seems like synology has really messed a lot of things up starting with DSM 7. If there is a problem with synology photos I may go somewhere else
And this emphasizes why I keep my photos organized in folders and add metadata to them. Would like to get the Synology metadata tied to the photos in case that gets modified as well.
OMG!!! Thank you for this information because I was SUPER sad that we might be losing this support in its ENTIRETY.
This bad! Me and my family usally use our nases for photos. I wont update my nases now until some fix is out for this. Downside to this is that several nases out there will have no updated fixes for vulnerabilities with auto update disabled.
My iPhone 10se photos app does not show the image processing option, even when logged in as admin. Does it only shows it after the 7.2.2 upgrade? Because then I’m in a catch22 as I decided to postpone my upgrades to 7.2.1 because of this madness. Anyone knows how to get this image processing option visible?
How about Surveillance Station and h.265?
Video on it coming out soon!
I have thousands of HEIC photos in Synology Photos. Will the already generated thumbnails stick around if I update to the new OS version?
Eh, it is a pity that we, as the users, are not able to just buy that codec per device. I'm also not sure if i understood, so now every single photo in library needs to be downloaded to phone, converted and sent back? It will take forever for a big library. Does it at least work in the background of i have to keep the mobile app open and screen active? And - previews - so it has to generate small jpg file to display on the timeline, and also bigger one with high quality to display after opening the photo?
I did not follow the flow too well either. Good questions.
I would also add, and it will also take additional space to keep these JPGs instead of accessing the file directly??
Hi do you have a video about how to fix the Plex Server Remote Access Private IP always showing as my PC IP instead of the NAS Server IP. Even if I put it in the URL or the other IP options in the Network Tab still wont change. I just don't see a way for me to put the Server IP in it as a Private IP.
I have close to 1,000,000 client photos and variants on my Synology but NOT my phone. This may have just nuked Synology for me.
Are you saying I have to have all my photos on my phone? I took it as the photos and videos will be processed on my phone and once done, and thumbnails and such are processed, this issue kind of goes away to some degree? This is disappointing.
I have an entirely different workflow for my Apple photo backups. While I could do more research to make it work (thanks, Synology /s), if I'm creating a new workflow, I'd best dump Synology applications. I would not recommend Synology to friends and family anymore.
Try photoprism it's an open source version of what I expected from Synology Moments.
thank you for sharing. I'll keep an eye out once I upgrade to 7.2.2. Another note- I submitted a feature request concerning photos on the synology forum but have not received any feedback or a confirmation. Any idea if my request will be considered? Here it is verbatim... "Please add a feature to Synology Photos that would automatically put together a slideshow every now and then (time interval to be set by user) which is then presented in one's phone in notifications or via email. This feature would mirror Google photo moments. I backup (sync) my phone's photo gallery to Synology Photos automatically. I've been migrating decades of photos into Synology photos which I then share to family, albeit in a tedious fashion. I'd like Synology photos to automatically compile photos and videos (themed; like my kids at school, or a family trip from 6 years ago, etc...) into a slideshow (.30 secs, 1 min. etc...) with some fun little music in the background that I can then share with friends or family easily via email, SMS, whatsapp, facebook, etc... (no login required). it just pops up in my notifications and if I want, i can click 'share' and off it goes to family/friends of my choesing via a chosen app (email, facebook, insta, what-have-you). Super easy, super user friendly. Just mirror what google photos does.Thank you."
I've requested this feature in the hopes of completing disconnecting myself from the Google ecosystem. Crossing my fingers. Thank you for the work that you do.
I recently upgraded my Synology NAS to DSM 7.2.2, and now I’m facing some annoying issues. Videos encoded with HEVC, especially those recorded by cameras (e,g, Sony A7C2), used to play smoothly in Synology Photo, but after the upgrade, they either won't play or only the audio works.
I reported this to Synology, and they admitted it's their system”upgrade” problem but have no plans to fix it. They’re trying to cut costs by not paying for the video codec licenses.
As a consumer, I’m really disappointed because they promised video codec conversion when I bought this NAS. Now they’ve quietly removed this feature with the so-called upgrade, leaving us without a function we originally had.
Hoping you can bring attention to this issue and help us voice our dissatisfaction to Synology. Thanks!
Uploading pictures from my phone or using Synology Assistant is all well and good, but what if I send out a photo request for people outside of my network to upload their pictures of a party or event? Will their photos be processed as well (they will most-likely not have the Synology app on their phone)? Or will I be able to process their photos, from my phone, since I do have the app?
Thanks for any help (before I upgrade the DSM).
just do not upgrade
Wondering this too
They take way all server side stuff. Uploads will not be processed anymore. That sucks. No more thumbs, no smaller versions of videos. So you gonna have to stream those huge files over your mobile plan. How about if you are migrating 2TB of photos and videos to Syno folder? Tough luck, not processed anymore.
It's like buying a car to get to work, but get a lift to work from your neighbour
I have 7.2.1 DSM and now I had a strange thing happening. My heic files are showing thumbnails on my Photos Personal site, but when I copy the exact files for the Shared Photos folder doesn’t show thumbnails on the App.
Just as an update, Mobile app will NOT generate thumbnail of HEVC videos on the mobile app, only HEIC photos.
Thanks for the video; but I am a bit puzzled. Ok we have a browser extension to auto generate the preview by the PC/Mac.
But how it works to generate thumb for a full folder already on the NAS ? Shall I reupload all folders one by one ? I never used upload on synology photo, only update files/folder directly in the NAS (Rsync etc.) Any way to have a regular batch to generate all missing preview ? It's a real bummer right now ; can't use my photos anymore...
Yeah remember:
- having client do the server job (who should collect and PROVIDE this data to many clients) is a total joke
- they forgot the vaste majority of media is only on the NAS itself!
- they forgot the clients might have policies not being able to install any extension (or even app! say whaaat, an app???)
- your machine will become server now, busy while you doing work and earning money, interrupting your videconferencing, or playbacks
- Image Extension garbage is barely downloaded, just few thousands of poor users
- Image Extension has a solid rating 1.3 out of 5
a disaster.👎
@@happyhusband312 I need to find an alternative and run a docker on my synology... seriously, unbelievable... but didn't manage to find a way to make it work :(
@@bilbotorm i am running good ole VideoStation on 7.2.2 and AME 3, as hacks are circulating, so all is running except picture thumbnails. Those geniuses separated apps instead of central indexing (Hillarious!). So i allocated one PC to become "Synology Photos Server" (thanks!) before new hack will arise.
Imagine Plex asked us to generate thumbnails, subtitles, chapters on PC.🤮
@@happyhusband312 Thanks. Trying to push a Immich server in container in the mean time.. but not as smooth as using simple Synology photos... such a shame...
There is no 'image assistant' options in the synology ios app for me (latest) :(
It turns on when you update
My 918+ was staying on 7.2.1. This version can't display HEIC and also cant preview it with the app or addon.... Had to manually update to 7.2.2 with the update file for some reason.
How do you use the Synology Assistant for desktop to process the thumbnails? I recently purchased a DS124, plugged in an external hard drive, and copied 100,000+ photos and 30,000+ videos. The photos thumbnails seem to load, and some video formats, but none of the .MOV videos have thumbnails. Image Assistant is running on my phone, but it does not seem to be processing thumbnails if the Synology Photos app is not actively open. I assume this is only an issue because a large quantity was uploaded all at once and the phone would otherwise keep up.
I saw exactly what you did after upgrading to 7.2.2. No thumbnails for all my photo's !!! You mentioned your solutions was to connect to iPhone and all would be ok. However the reason I use Synology is to store all my photos and once uploaded to Synology Photos, I REMOVE them from my iPhone (to free up storage space on my iPhone). With no Photos on my iPhone, how would you suggest I get my Synology Photos back to the way they were ? Any feedback is appreciated !
i updated today and no problems at all. The only thing i noticed is that in Surveillance Station in the overview of the cameras, if you click on 1 to make the screen bigger and you go back to the overview the images has to load every time new, before it was more stable
I stopped updating at 7.0.1 as I lost some functionality with each update. I just use the NAS to store music, movies, and videos. No remote access.
So I have a huge amount of videos and photos backed up with Synology photos. The vast majority are no longer on the original device - just my NAS (my phone is not large enough). As such, I cannot do the first thing. When my NAS updates, am I going to be forced to use the app you mentioned on my PC to get all of my thumbnails back? Thanks for the heads up on this.
The image assitant option is not avaible on Android version of Synololy Photos ?!
I use Synology drive to upload photos. Will I also have to take this additional step and is it even possible when using only Drive and not Photos?
Nice, boosting their profit at user's expense by degrading functionality. Which was its USP btw.
lol…a nas offloading its work to its client devices is kind of ironic.
Couple questions.
1. Will the iPhone do this for photos that are not on the actual phone? Example, save heic from mac to synology photo, turn image assistant on iPhone, thumbnail gets generated?
2. @6:40 "using jpeg for all of them" is "them" the image itself it is making a jpeg or just the thumbnail is a jpeg?
Question: is Face recognition also damaged when they are not able lot process HEIC files? They will hopefully not base this on the thumbnails or hold a backup jpg file for every HEIC photo?
I don’t love the choices Synology is making. I would love for them to give me a chance to buy the license for my NAS. We’ll see how this goes.
That's a big, "NOT COOL" Synology. 👎👎 Thanks a lot !!!
I installed it this afternoon (8/28). Broke Plex at first and had to reinstall and then it worked. I never used photos, media or music apps from Synology so none of that really makes a difference to me. Other than the Plex “misunderstanding” it seems to be running fine on both DS418 and 920+. Good video!!
I bought into synology two weeks ago because of first party software like video station and photos. Why should anybody buy synology again?
What’s to say they would go on supporting other software?
Just use Jellyfin, never use their solutions 😅
I've migrated to Synology Photos from Google Photos. The first hassle was getting the Google Takeout into a folder structure that makes sense and write the metadata back to the photo. Google made this painfully hard.
Now that I have all the photos in Synology Photos, I came across this.
Most of my newer photos (shot in HEIC) are not showing previews in the app/website.
The image assistant on the apps seems to gradually create the required previews but it's incredibly slow for when you import an enormous collection (100k+ photos).
Added to that I will have to keep the app open for it to create the previews.
I wish that I could just buy the license for the NAS to run this in the background on the NAS itself. What Synology developed here is extremely user-unfriendly and fragile in my opinion.
I commented on a previous video that Synology is falling apart. This continues to confirm that. I wouldn't buy a Synology right now until we know where they are heading with hardware and software.
Agreed. I'm almost regretting my decision to buy a Synology NAS for myself and for my parents last year. The more features they remove, the more troubleshooting and workarounds I'll have to implement for my family.
That said, this is just another nail in the coffin and I had already decided I will not purchase another Synology in the future
Same, I recently installed two cameras for a customer. Who also wanted the perks like photo back up and ds video etc, mainly for her husband whilst he was having a kidney transplant. Both cameras are set to h265. Now I've got to alter settings, out on new software etc once I worked it all out myself. Can I charge them for this, I could but it would be morally wrong
Does the iPhone-App needs update? There is no "assistant" slider shown. Does it appear after Update NAS to 7.2.2?
It just showed up for me on the iPhone app
@@SpaceRexWill Thanks!
I just updated my DS1517+ with 7.2.2 Plex is not compatible with this version it states. So wont connect. Any ideas? Maybe they will update Plex Server soon? Thank you
Never mind. I found a download from Plex directly that made it work again. Not sure why I had to go directly to Plex but it is now operational again :)
What happens to Apple's Live Photos? Do those transfer to Synology Photos?
This was a really bad decision from Synology. This gives me very little faith that they won’t pull the rug on other features that are important to customers, including business customers who rely on consistency. The installation of the Synology Image Assistant software plus the extension that runs on your web browser is a complete train wreck. If you look at the web browser extension, Synology asked that you disable your security so that the extension can run because they did not get it signed as a Developer, which is insane and lazy.
Does this codec changeg affect importing iOS Live Photos ? At the moment, I can import them, and even play them on the synology.
What about container manager and EOL of the latest released beta? Seems like EOL for Synology overall.
This might sound crazy. but could someone point me to a video or tutorial that explain where/how Synology photos stores the actual photo. I've gone through every folder under homes, home, photos, mobile, memories and can't find them. I'd like to use snapshots to recover some.
Thanks Will for this great content, as usual.
What about pictures that are no longer on my phone. I store my photos in synology photos and have deleted much of them from my phone to fee space and remain below the 5gb free icloud storage limit. Will i loose display capabilities for those files in synology photos that are no longer on my phone?
You will not
Thanks Will.
Now i a pm afraid that the next app Synology will drop is AudioStation. This is my favourite app. Main app to stream my music at home on my yamaha receivers, in my car using ds audio in all my devices, ipad, phone… I looked for alternative free apps and there is nothing out there that does what audio station very well. My music library is huge. Thousands of albums properly tagged and stored in nested folders Genre/artist/album… I tried jellyfin, and looked for alternatives, but none does what AudioStation does.
Would lokve your insight on this and perhaps videos on alternatives to audiostation. Thanks
Looking at the bright side in my case I use my Nas for moving around tons of videos regularly and actually processing them on 1522+ was a pain and i was hoping i can offload this process to one server laying around I guess It's the case now but I wish they could have add more control and configurations to this process now when i open my browser its just saying "generating previews" with no progress monitoring i hope image assistant will just be an app that we can login with an admin account and just let it sit aside to do this process all the time with progress monitoring and all that would've been awesome
Not a good move.
Making this as confusing as this is for end users is gonna destroy a lot of goodwill towards synology.
At least they should have allowed users to pay for the codecs themselves.
I am paying for and using a NAS so that it does not offload processing to my other devices (phone/computer).
hey man, thank you for great content. I still haven't updated to 7.2.2 because of this. I got Emby installed for movies instead of Video Station and I'm loving it (even though free version only). But for photos, that's a bigger issue for me. Does this mean, compare to the DSM 7.2.1, that this will consume a lot more storage due to all the extra jpeg files? You mention the processing is for the thumbnails, but before you process it via the app, the photo itself is also not displayed. So, is there a fullsize jpeg file for every heic file?
I don't have 7.2.2 yet and I actually don't use either Synology Photos or Video Station. Thumbnails in jpeg are one thing but are you saying there will be a transcode of the video format (offloaded to the phone or whatever) and how does that impact storage? Do you get to keep both files or if it's transcoded the child gen one?
Does removing of the codec affect the hw transcoding on jellyfin on a ds423+
No
@@SpaceRexWillthank you for your expert reply ❤
Hey @SpaceRex, thanks for the videos. It supported a lot on my synology setup. Look, I have a question that i have some talking about it but lack of response or resolution:
My google photos image, when taken and moved to synology photos lose some quality. I know they are something about the loading be fast but after inserting the basics of quality first and that i still get some compression in terms of quality of the photo (size of the photo is still the same). Can you help me? Do you know any way to not lose the quality of the photo?
So the preview will have less quality, but the image (by hitting download) should be full quality original file
@@SpaceRexWill Really thank you about the reply. I saw the image size being the same and in computer couldn't find diference but in the computer was feeling a bit different.
Thank you once again and continue the good work, i really appreciate it :)
Yep, I finally moved from Synology Photos to Immich on my Synology NAS, and it's much faster for backups. It also caches, which Photos doesn't.
Kudos on the subscriber milestone!!
Thanks!
Hey! I do not see the Image assistant option available within the Synology Photos mobile app. I ensured the application was up to date. Is that something we won’t have access to until the new DSM version comes out?
Yeah same. What gives?
@@harrispca Same as...Come on Rex do you have some preview version?
Synology is not getting synology videos or Synology photos according to what I found out they are keeping it
Main reason to buy Synology was complete software, a full set of media apps (Audio/Video/Photo) and guaranteed thumbnails. Literally it's the modern NAS duty to care of all the indexing at one central place on as it run 24/7. The NAS should do do processing, and provide the results in form of thumbnails, (Samba) search to the clients. Not the opposite, like decades ago, when everything was client centric. This change is a sign of Synology retail death. For enterprise, they're a joke, and small business? They want the same as retail.
Apple iPhones shoot images in HEIC, yet Apple won't pay the license for Safari to view HEIC natively. That's saying a lot about the licensing scheme.
The extremely complex and expensive licensing is another reason most tech companies joined together to develop AV1 to replace H.265.
The whole breaking stuff with updates is driving me crazy. I'm still on DSM 6.2.4 with my RS815+. Because the rollout of DSM 7 wasn't flawless I stayed. But what's your opinion, did things improve enough to switch to DSM 7.2, even on this older NAS?
I am currently thinking about switching from truenas diy to synology pre built but this just reminds me again how easily you can get screwed😅. I don‘t know yet what I‘ll do. Biggest problem to me is finding hardware that suits my needs for upgrading my DIY NAS.
I'm the opposite. Got a Synology about 3 years ago mostly backing up phone photos and other photos taken with DSLR. Been thinking of adding a DIY NAS to the mix.
@@running4fun74 If you find good hardware and have time to be a hobby server admin, go for it :D. You can still use your synology as backup or vice versa.
I don‘t want to get rid if my homeserver but I just want my NAS ti wirk and be reliable. I do not good ways to expand a Synology RAID and am not sure about SHR. With TrueNas, I would setup mirrors and thos way I can easily add another vdev later and expand the pool.
In germany the electricity is expensive though, which limits my hardware. And new server hardware is expensive. I will look inti used hardware for my specific needs, my current homeserver/NAS is very efficient but running out of space, but I can‘t simply add more drives so I need a few upgrades at once.
I just noticed, for the first time, my camera app has the option for saving in HEIF. Do you recommend this instead of jpeg?
Up to you, HEIF has much worse compatibility with other services, but does take up less space
@SpaceRexWill thanks. I haven't noticed a huge amount of storage being used of my 4 GB. I'll leave on more widely used jpg.
With all these moves focusing solely on the business sector, could it be time to look at alternatives like Asustor?
I have set up docker container with immich just because of uncertainty with synology photos, slow development and bug fixing. Seems like this is one of final nails in the coffin for synology photos.
20cent... maybe is 1dollar? 2? 10?... synology cost a lot... just ad that 1-2-10 dollar...OR.. make a pay-addon ....wow...
and now I'm glad i stuck with photos for mac
Hi, can you tell me when synology will be able to generate thumbnails for videos in AV1 format ?
You're taking them waaay to lightly! The only reason people are paying top dollars for underpowered hardware is their software.
I will have to refuse to "upgrade" in order to keep my device's functionality.
Now you have to waste your time, phone's battery, network traffic, etc just because they want to cheap out??
Why use a NAS if you need to still have and process phtots on your phone?
Then why should we pay huge amount for NAS?
Firefox users with Synology Image Assistant extension still having issues with thumbnails:
Install chrome and it's extension and perform thumbnail generation there.
Not just thumbs. You cannot do server side conversion to smaller version anymore.
As far as im concerned i paid for a feature set, much like i do when i buy a car, and have been robbed here- itd be like bmw disabling your turbo with an update and just telling you to go out and buy a 3rd party one if you want it back. I appreciate software costs money and in much the same way as i EXPECT updates for an xbox to be rolled in with its original cost, so to should this (and it was, given the premium we paid for syno).
After thinking about it , if someone copy their pictures via smb , then they are screw, I’m gonna test that , because I have around 100k pictures that are all inside a strict subdirectory and I don’t want to synology to mess with that structure. But synology photo is great but I don’t like their subdirectory layouts . Let me know if you tested with a simple smb copy directly to /photo.
I'm running DSM 7.2.2 now and I can confirm how it really works : 1. You need the browser extension so that when you start Synology photos from your browser, it will communicate with the 2.Synology Image assistant that needs to run on your PC or Mac. I also confirm that this new setup is CPU heavy for sure. I had to remove the 30 minutes DSM disconnect inside the security tab so that the HEVC and HEIC could be have thumbnail and so on. It took around 24h to process 100k pictures on 10k videos inside my /photo shared folder. My PC has a 13700KF, 32 Gb of RAM and a 4070ti. I'm using only the SMB copy and from time to time, I start Synology photo with my browser so that the Synology Image assitant start. You will see that there's a Square that is running on the side of the Synology panel if something needs to be process. If you import your pictures with the import directly from Synology Photos, it will do the magic on the fly. So beside that, it's no more a deal breaker. Only a slight change on my workflow.
I don’t recommend hooking up your phone too, let a PC or a Mac handle that process.
DS1823+ DSM 7.2.1-69057 Update 5 stopped generating thumbnails for HEIC files, seems like Synology is forcing something in the background
It may not be as bad as you originally thought, but it is still very bad. What about the fact that transmitting files to a viewing device now requires transmitting the full file, instead of a smaller version (important for videos)? What about devices that do not support the encoding? This step backwards should be called what it is, a reduction in usability, delivered under a false pretence. The software was the only plus point Synology devices had going for them. If Synology keeps eroding the software, or start charging for delivering what was included in the purchase price before, they'll lose their last remaining advantage.
At least there is a solution! Thank you for calming my nerves.
VIdeostation should have been mentioned in your video about apps to either improve or ditch, imo. It's... frustrating.
Video on it coming out soon!
I played around converting photos to JPEG via imazing converter and mov files to mp4 via Shutter Encoder. They both work and will maintain metadata.
However, it appears there is no way to maintain "live" photos that way. So yeah, this update sucks donkey balls.
It's not the best company image when they penny-pinch like this while inflating prices of their hardware and rebranded HDD's.
Synology is a terrible company now with ridiculous products, all in with QNAP and couldn't be happier...
Yea, synology is a nice NAS, but their stuff is not so hot. I would lean on it as little as possible. I mean we are trying to do secure sharing in a business and things are just not fully built out. I dont have a ton of confidence in the software solutions for them. But they are rock solid NAS's. Raid + Hyper back up to the cloud is all you can ask for and it does it well. But anything else, I feel like you might want to steer away from if you can. This issue is a perfect example. They arent paying the fee? Thats hilarious to me as I work with a lot of mac business clients and we always sell them a synology, fits well, but the quality and polish just isnt there.
“Fine,” so long as you don’t mind your HEIC images being reprocessed into H.264, and the resulting loss in fidelity as a result of decompressing and then recompression a copy.
They need a new, separate way to do a canonical, unaltered backup of photos.
So the original files are never altered. This is only for the thumbnails
@@SpaceRexWill Ohhh. Good to know. I wasn’t clear on that point. I suspect I wasn’t the only one. Thank you.
This is exactly why I never update my NAS, disable updates and be happy.