Generate thumbnails for uploaded PDF files with jpeg2000 (currently they upload without thumbnails)

Michael W. McCormick

See https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/LH89-Y7H

I have reported this before, but sometimes the employees I talk to do not understand what I mean so hopefully this helps.

Usually FamilySearch will turn the first page of a PDF file into a thumbnail like the 1930 journal above. Sometimes it will not. What I have seen is that if I use Adobe Acrobat to optimize the file size of a file it does something to the enclosed jpeg files or jpeg2000 files so that FamilySearch can no longer make a thumbnail from the first page. I have experienced it consistently over years of using the website and other users have told me they have seen that problem too, and it is annoying that something so annoying still has not really received attention by FamilySearch engineers to get it fixed. All these blank spots are unpleasing to look at and it had to be something they can fix, right?

I appreicate what you all do. Just bummed out I could not get any attention for this issue for years after bringing it up a few times both on forums and directly to employees. Can you do something about it?

Once one of the employees tested it and said they figured out it was that Adobe turned them into jpeg2000. Here is the exact response I got in Feb 2018:

"It’s on the backlog now to see how hard it would be to support JPEG2000. It appears to be an older format that is not widely supported. The libraries we are currently using do not support it. 

We will either fix the issue and start supporting jpeg2000 or start rejecting all PDFs with jpeg2000s in them. Knowing how priorities work around here, and knowing that the jpeg version works, I would bet that the reject option will be chosen. However, if we start supporting jpeg2000, we can reprocess your pdfs. If we don’t support JPEG2000s, we won’t reprocess any PDFs. 

Thanks for the feedback."

My experience suggests that neither of these options was ever taken (rejecting PDF with jpeg2000 in them or accepting them with full support).

Family Bible

I have also wondered about this

I will see if I can get a clear answer support.