Screenflow track thumbnails suddenly not generating from screen recording
- When I make a new recording, there are no track thumbnails in the timeline for the screen recording.
- When I open up an existing .screenflow file that used to display track thumbnails for the screen recording, there are now no track thumbnails.
- I have tried completely uninstalling Screenflow following instructions in the Screenflow 10 User Guide, and then re-installing the software. No change.
- In the New Recording dialog, I have deleted all "Record" inputs and then re-created a "Record" input for "Built-in Retina Display"
- When I import an .mp4 or .mov file, the track thumbnails do appear properly.
- I have checked the Screenflow Preferences
- I have checked that the Track Thumbnails radio button is correctly turned on. I have also toggled this back and forth between "Single" and "Track."
- See the attached brief video just created (screen with cursor moving) and screenshot of Screenflow UI.
Help, please. I'm in the middle of editing a project. Thanks.
-Bob Schaffel
System Info:
- Screenflow 10.0.5 (Menubar helper is enabled)
- Mac OS 12.3
- Macbook Pro 16" M1 Max (2021) 10 Core CPU, 32 Core GPU, 64GB RAM, 2TB Storage (275GB free)
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Hold Shift and Help menu and then Gather Support Diagnostics and Reset ScreenFlow.
Try a new screen recording and make sure thumbnails are enabled and check the results.
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I opened your document on one of my Macs with ScreenFlow 10.0.5 and it worked.
So the document is fine. It may be a corrupt setting so Reset ScreenFlow may fix it.
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- I tried your suggestion and clicked the Reset ScreenFlow button: No change.
- Also, I checked the Security & Privacy settings... ScreenFlow appears to have been properly enabled. Attached screenshot shows ScreenFlow permissions.
- I completely deleted all ScreenFlow assets using CleanMyMacX and re-installed one more time, including having to re-activate. No change.
- Not seeing either the Track Thumbnails or the Audio Waveforms from the computer in the Timeline. The file plays back, but without the thumbnails.
- However, when I Detach(ed) Audio from the Clip menu. The new timeline row of the audio appeared properly (though still no video thumbnails in the original timeline row.)
Don't know what else to try on my own, if the permissions look correct and I've done a thorough uninstall and re-install of the application. Any other things we can try? Thanks for your help.
-Bob
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Here's the screenshot I forgot to attach.
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Bob Schaffel Try using this utility and Reset ScreenFlow as it may reset the thumbnail cache.
If that doesn't work, try creating a New User Admin account and test there to see if this is an account-specific or system-wide issue.Keep in mind your document displays thumbnails on my system so it looks like a system or account issue.
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CraigS The problem persists... I tried a bunch of things enumerated below. But here is some new information:
- ScreenFlow is creating thumbnails files at the time of the recording – But they are blank: completely black! I have attached a few of them to this email.
Latest troubleshooting steps below:
- I launched the utility and clicked Reset ScreenFlow. Problem persists.
- I created a new user as an administrator. Launched ScreenFlow, set up the permissions. Problem persists.
- When I checked the Screen Recording permissions in System Preferences, ScreenFlow Helper is what is being given permission, not ScreenFlow app. is that normal?
- I deleted the Screen Recording permission for ScreenFlow Helper. Then launched the utility you sent and clicked Reset ScreenFlow. Re-enabled Screen Recording permission for ScreenFlow Helper. Problem
- I have a computer backup with a copy of ScreenFlow that pre-dates the current problem. I mounted that backup and launched the ScreenFlow app on that SSD. Problem persists.
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Bob Schaffel said:
When I checked the Screen Recording permissions in System Preferences, ScreenFlow Helper is what is being given permission, not ScreenFlow app. is that normal?Yes.
This isn't a permissions issue. It's likely a thumbnail cache issue.
Your attached JPEGs appear black so it's not clear what they are supposed to show.
Try following this to set Thumbnail Cache to 0 (unlimited)
You may also try this to delete the Cache and see if it helps. -
CraigS said:
Your attached JPEGs appear black so it's not clear what they are supposed to show.CraigS The attached JPEGs were supposed to be the Track Thumbnails of the screen recording. The fact that they appear black is the sign that the screen recording is not being captured as thumbnails.
I followed the latest suggestions. No changes.
I am attaching three files:
- ScreenFlow file with the latest test after following your most recent suggestions.
- Zip file of the complete "net.telestream.screenflow10" folder from Library->Caches. This folder has only the thumbnails from the latest test. You can see that the thumbnails generated are all black, instead of containing the proper content.
- Additional ScreenFlow file recording of the latest test file playing back in ScreenFlow UI.
Thanks.
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CraigS Your website won't let me upload the .screenflow files because they are too large. I have zipped the folder from the Library and included it below. The thumbnails are black but they should not be. The recording they were generated from was of my desktop playing a youtube video.
-Bob
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CraigS You just need to look at the first Zip file in the last post. Not sure how all the duplicates got added to the upload. Sorry about that. -Bob
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Bob Schaffel
Your JPEGs.
Is this how it's supposed to look?
If not then perhaps it's related to your thumbnail issue. They don't show a timeline.
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Bob Schaffel Investigation FLOW-11479
Please hold Shift and go to Help and Gather Support Diagnostics and this time Gather the Diagnostics and attach them to the forum or send me a link to them in forum private message system. We need to see if there's something about your system blocking them.
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CraigS said:
Bob Schaffel Your JPEGs. Is this how it's supposed to look? If not then perhaps it's related to your thumbnail issue. They don't show a timeline.CraigS The JPEGs are not supposed to be black... the JPEGs are from the Thumbnails folder in Library->Caches>net.telestream.screenflow10. My assumption is that these JPEGs are the ones that are used create the Track Thumbnails. If my assumption is correct, then there should be visible content from the screen recording in the JPEGs not black. When I look at the ScreenRecording track in the Timeline, it is black, but now I am reasoning that the ScreenRecording track is showing the black JPEGs.
If my reasoning is correct, then something is preventing the actual content from the computer screen from being turned into the JPEG thumbnails, which is why it appears that there are no Track Thumbnails.... The Track Thumbnails are actually there – BUT they have been created incorrectly: content from the recording has not been captured properly when creating the thumbnails.
I hope this clarifies what I think is going on.
I've attached the Support Diagnostics requested. Hope the team can figure out why the thumbnails do not contain the correct content. Thanks.
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Bob Schaffel said:
The JPEGs are not supposed to be black... the JPEGs are from the Thumbnails folder in Library->Caches>net.telestream.screenflow10. My assumption is that these JPEGs are the ones that are used create the Track Thumbnails.Thanks for that clarification.
Bob Schaffel said:
If my reasoning is correct, then something is preventing the actual content from the computer screen from being turned into the JPEG thumbnails,That seems to be the case. Hopefully, the Cache and Diagnostics will reveal the cause.
I wonder if there's a third-party app that is creating an incompatibility since we're not seeing this yet from other users. -
CraigS Any update on Investigation FLOW-11479? Thanks.
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Bob Schaffel still being investigated but it's an easy to reproduce the issue. We're getting closer to finding the patterns that cause it.
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Just wanted to chime in that I think I'm experiencing something similar. I've got a 6min30 project that's a combo of screencasts + freeze frames + QuickTime screen recordings. Things were going fine four about 8 days and then today I noticed that Screenflow is now longer showing thumbnails for anything but my external MOV files.
Here are some steps I've tried:
- Opened a few older projects that I haven't touched in months and they're exhibiting the same behaviour.
- Rebooted my Mac
- Reset ScreenFlow per CraigS' suggestion earlier in the thread.
- Increased thumbnail cache
- deleting ScreenFlow with AppCleaner and installing anew (I have a feeling the cache wasn't deleted though)
This definitely puts me in a pickle because I feel like I'm navigating without sight on the timeline.I'm on an M1 Pro 14" with 32 GB of RAM and 170 GB of free space.
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Thomas Wong That's the issue. We're working on getting a fix out for this. If you change it to single thumbnail you should see it but the string of thumbnails useful for navigation shows up blank. Working as fast as possible to fix this.
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ScreenFlow 10.0.6 just released and should fix this.
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CraigS Yes! It's back to normal. I can go back to using Screenflow again.
Many thanks to you for following up and to the rest of the team for figuring it out.
-Bob
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Bob Schaffel Great to hear. Thanks for confirming.
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