The New iPad will not sync all photo's

I M P O R T A N T ( Apple please read )

Very good investigation, SuperJimNZ !

In fact with New iPad 3 there are several problems in compare with iPad 2:

1. Huge "Others" partition on New iPad 3 contains large files 158x158.ithmb, 240x240.ithumb, 332x332.ithmb and 64x64.ithumb thumbnail databases located in Media\PhotoData\Thumbnails ( i have used free iExplorer to delete them, 2.27 GB in my case ).

http://tinypic.com/r/2uf6kg0/6

2. Photo files, stored in iPad 3, are appx. 2-3 times larger that files for iPad 2 (probably due to 4 times more pixels on the screen), i.e. you can save 2-3 times less files. In means that you cannot transfer your photo library 1:1 from iPad 2 to iPad 3, in case your library big enough 😐

For instanse, i checked with 2 files, after sync them to iPad2 and iPad 3:

3. Synchronization works with problem when my library is large ( maximum for 16 GB iPad was appx 8000 photos for iPad 2 and 4000 photos for iPad 3), the only way to sync is to sync album per album, not in one move !

Yup, this is a major problem on the iPad 3. In my tests (see the complete article at http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/87/all-one-photo-viewer-roundup-70-price-drop-bes t-image-viewer ), I've measured almost three-fold size increase with 12 Mpixel 50% quality JPEG images.

Currently, until Apple seriously rethinks the size/format of the thumbnail images they put in the photos, the only solution is using third-party image viewers.

Surely the larger file sizes are due to the retina display and the better resolution of images? The whole point of the iPad 3 for me is the retina display and being able to see my photos in all their glory. I certainly wouldn't want apple to reduce file sizes and thus reduce image quality. They offer iPads with more memory for those who have thousand upon thousands of photos.

The problem is the added uncompressed thumbnail header, which introduces a sometimes HUGE size increase. This is clearly visible if you don't even decrease the quality (NOT the size! Slight JPEG quality degradation - that is, compression increase - results in far less problems than just resizing them) of your shots.

The smaller the original image, the more visible the size increase. For example, an 500 kByte 12 Mpixel image (typical for an image with q=50%) becomes 1.1-1.4 Mbytes during the synchronization process - that is, on the iPad, it takes almost three times the storage.

(BTW, this all is also explained in my article above - http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/87/all-one-photo-viewer-roundup-70-price-drop-bes t-image-viewer )

This is strange as the photos on my iPad take up less space than they do on my Mac :-/

Like I said in my previous post, I have tried the album by album thing and although I can get more photos on there, it only works 70% of the album size, in other words, if i have 100 photos in an album it will synch 70 only, if I have a thousand, it can be down to 30%, or 300... Really not a solution.

I am a new user of iPad. I brought it 2 weeks ago. Initially, I got the same problem mentioned : cannot sync properly of all photos to New iPad. I followed some of the suggestions here and re-tried. Not successful. However, having tried several times, now , I can easily sync 12,000 photos to New iPad in one go without any difficulties. Even I remove all of them and sync again 12,000 photos. I can still finish in one go. At the same time, I can also synced with iPhone. No problem at all. After I can sync 12,000 photos in one go, I find that the wrong thumbnail display does no longer exist. It means that it functions perfectly.

Sorry, I don't exactly know what I have done to make it work smoothly. However, I just post here to let you know that there is successful case under a few times of unsuccessful experiences. Hopefully, some experts here can find the way out. Currently, I am using Windows 7 64 bit, iTunes10.6.17, iOS 5.1(9B176), iPad 64GB 4G.

In fact, without those hiccups, new iPad is very good photo viewer. Quality is excellent.

@ericmok, thank you for the infomation, I am still under warrenty , you have convinced me to return for a replacement.

I think that the problem with sync exist in case you have no buffer memory more.

With 4000 photos for iPad 3 / 16 GB I have also no problem, but with more than 6000 photos (my maximum for step by step sync was 7600 photos, 80% of memory) this problem is always happens.

Since you have 64 GB, your problem level shall be appx. 4 x 6000 = 24'000 photos.

Most probably with 12'000 photos you allocate only 32 GB ( 50% ) of iPad 3 / 64 GB memory. Am'I right ?

Hi Karpatchev,

pretty close, 37.8GB

I said I would post back if the problem recurs. It has. I went off on a holiday, took 383 pictures with a digital camera, and when I got back, I transferred them to my PC and tried to sync them to my iPad 3. It stalled part-way through. I re-opened the support ticket with Apple ExpressLane. I've now sent them the diagnostic files from iTunes and the MSINFO from my PC, and they are looking at it. Meanwhile, I plugged in my old iPad 2 again, and successfully synched all the new photos in one go. This is definitely a problem with the iPad3 and/or iTunes.

I had same issue today with iPad 3. There are over 6,000 pictures on it to sync so doing this one by one stuff wasn't going to work for me. After a few aborted attempts, the following steps worked (as long as you have all your pictures on your PC):

Uncheck the Sync All Photos and Sync (it will tell you it's deleting all photos)

When Sync is complete, the only photos left should be on the Camera Roll

Delete the iPhoto Cache folder as per all the instructions in other posts

Check the Sync All Photos and Sync

This put all the photos back in their proper folders and in order.

This is definitely a problem with the iPad3 and/or iTunes.

IMHO it is common problem of sync for all models of iPad ( iPhone/iPod ).

I think that sync process do not check available buffer size.

For iPad3 this problem is more obvious since stored photos are 2-3 biggers and you quickly come to the memory limit. Also thumbnail files are large, upto 3 GB for 16 GB version of iPad3 ( 1 GB only for iPad2 ).

Relatively good news: after my second support call, I got raised to a "Senior Technical Advisor" who consulted with the "Engineering team", and then she called me back. She read me the engineers' response over the phone which said that this is a "known issue" that the team is working on, and I should be patient and keep my software up to date.

She herself had not previously heard of the issue - it seems that the support staff are not routinely briefed on "known issues". This was after about half an hour wasting my time and theirs with the usual debugging procedures, requiring me to send diagnostic files, backing up and restoring the iPad etc.. She also declined to forward me the written response from the engineers.

Really Apple should be more open about their bugs - a list of "known issues" should be posted on their web site, then at least everyone would know what they are working on. Any piece of software this large is bound to have a few bugs. I guess they are just paranoid about possible class actions, but I think it is better to flag known issues so that they can't be accused of continuing to sell a product which they secretly know has problems. Then people can choose whether to buy it anyway.

No, NO good news. That means nothing. I had those "senior technical advisor" calls months ago. To be exact: It startet on 17th of March! I had several calls with this guy. Every day they pleased me try something new and write them all details using E-Mail. I did. But nothing happens! So this "We are working on it" is old, very old. Nothing new. Apple still s-u-c-k-s at this point. They wait for iOS 6 and the new iTunes, I bet.