JPG files copied to Philips Picopix 3410 are currupted with a prefix of ._ and will not display on the PicoPix. Help please?
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
Any file that begins with ._ isn't an image. When you copy files from a Mac to a drive formatted as FAT32 or ExFAT, the Mac OS creates two files. One is the data, and the other is the resource fork information written as a separate file. It has to do this since the drive formats mentioned don't support a twin fork file system, so OS X has to save the resource fork data a different way. You don't see them from your Mac since anything that begins with a period is automatically hidden.
So if you copied a file name hillside.jpg to a FAT32 or ExFAT drive, OS X will create these two files:
hillside.jpg (the actual image)
._hillside.jpg (the Mac resource fork data)
Thanks Kurt. This is helpful and explains the reason for the two files being created however it doesn't explain why the Picopix copies and displays some of the jpg data files but for others its just reads the files with the prefix ._ but not their data files? (So I am left with half a slide presentation). Any help on the reason for this would be appreciated. Philips has not been able to help me!
There are a couple of ways to remove these items from the drive.
One is with the $15 shareware app, BlueHarvest. It will remove the AppleDouble files from the drives you want the ._ files removed from, and has an option to prevent them from being written to non Apple formatted drives in the first place.
But the free and pretty easy way to do it is to use Terminal. From what I can see in the manual for your projector, you can only get images to it on either an SD card or a USB flash drive. So I'm going to assume a USB drive for the following.
Plug in your MS-DOS formatted drive so it appears on the Mac desktop. Open Terminal and enter:
dot_clean -m
Enter a space after the -m . Then drag and drop the icon of your flash drive into the Terminal window. It will fill in the path of the drive. Press Enter. All ._ files will be removed from that volume.
Actually, I think it removes all files that start with a period. None of which are of any great importance on a DOS formatted drive. Such as the hidden trash for that drive. The next time you plug the drive in, OS X will simply recreate it.
Kurt, this is a great help! I will try later tomorrow and report back. Thank you for your inputs.
You're welcome. Would indeed like to hear the results.
I double checked just to be sure. The Terminal command only remove files that start with ._ , so the trash folder and other Mac hidden items stay on the drive.
I'll give it a go later today anyway. I haven't seen any evidence that the Picopix reads the trash or other files so just removing those with ._ may be sufficient.
Yup, it should ignore those since they don't end with an image name extension. That's what was throwing the PicoPix off. It was seeing ._kitty.jpg as an image to display because it ended in .jpg. With all of the ._ removed, it won't get hung up trying to display files that aren't actually images.
Hi Kurt
Well I have tried your suggestion and it works!! So far I have just tried it with a USB stick but I see no reason why it shouldn't work with an SD card. I will try that a little later. I wonder whether its worth investing in the BlueHarvest software if this prevents these erroneous files being written in the first place and it will save me time. Whats surprising to me is that the Picopix Philips customer helpline couldn't offer a solution to the problem. Also I wonder why Philips hasn't made the Picopix Mac compatible. Anyhow thanks a lot for your advice. Bill/Brockenhurst
Excellent! It's only $15 for the app, but I guess it depends how often you use the Picopix if it's worth the cost. It would save you the time of running the Terminal command since it wouldn't allow the ._ files to be created on a DOS formatted drive.
Once again, many thanks Kurt
Bill/Brockenhurst
JPG files copied to Philips Picopix 3410 are currupted with a prefix of ._ and will not display on the PicoPix
