Affinity Designer file is corrupted suddenly

[Dan C]

Hi @LuggageGuy,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

I believe I have been able to recover most of your document, but please check this carefully as the colour space/DPI etc for the document may have been changed in the recovery process.

I hope this helps

1782738992_647113420inch_f.afdesign

[LuggageGuy]

That resolved it.  Thanks Dan!

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

Hi @LuggageGuy,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

I believe I have been able to recover most of your document, but please check this carefully as the colour space/DPI etc for the document may have been changed in the recovery process.

I hope this helps

1782738992_647113420inch_f.afdesign 276.97 MB · 1 download

[Gianni Becattini]

I am going to kill myself... Can you please help me?

The problem is "The document appears to be corrupted".

It would be great also if I can just read it, so that I can manually upgrade a previous version.

I add that I had a lot of crashes before, but only with my M2 MacBook, while on the Intel platform it has been always stable.  

I solved the problems disabling the hw acceleration. The performances remain good enough however.

Grazie di cuore

1850500362_TekscopesE02.15.afpub

[carl123]

A quickly recovered file is attached. 

Had to delete picture frame on page 238 no other checks of document done

 

TekscopesE02.15-recovered.afpub

[Gianni Becattini]

You are GREAT!

It's enough for me, a giant THANK YOU!

[PaoloT]

19 hours ago, Gianni Becattini said:

a giant THANK YOU

Gianni, and a GIANT THANK YOU for your vintage tech books! They are simply stunning! Serif should include them among the best example of what can be done with their suite.

Paolo

 

[HanMade]

Hey Guys, 

I see I'm not the only one with this problem. 
I worked on this file for long days now... 
Said the same this : must now be closed... 

Then when I made a copy and I started to export it started to show big 'pixels'...

Please can you help me? I put the files in this wetransfer file... 
https://we.tl/t-1KCACegrKt

https://we.tl/t-dODlj78GMP

Thank you in advance!
kind regards Hanne

[Dan C]

Hi @HanMade,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums & sorry to hear you're having trouble - many thanks for your file provided!

Can you please confirm for me:

• Are you using Windows, macOS or iPad?
• Was this file created in V1, or V2?
• Does this error appear when loading, or when trying to save the document?

Many thanks in advance!

[HanMade]

9 hours ago, Dan C said:

Hi @HanMade,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums & sorry to hear you're having trouble - many thanks for your file provided!

Can you please confirm for me:

• Are you using Windows, macOS or iPad?
• Was this file created in V1, or V2?
• Does this error appear when loading, or when trying to save the document?

Many thanks in advance!

I'm using Windows 10 - on a surface pro. 
created in V1. 
the error appeard once, and closed on it's own then. After that I could open it again, but everything chages colors and makes it pixelated/ like a corrupt file. 
It really is a large file, but rendering or saving the document is taking for ages... 

Thank you for your help! 

[carl123]

@HanMade

Document opens and looks OK but export is corrupt

Seems to be related to size

As if I reduce document width to 10% of current value all is OK on export

I can't immediately find the problem, seems to be corruption at document's core

But if I reduce document DPI from 300 to 72 then export is fine at original size (File > document Setup) 

If this is for screen (e.g. a website) then 72 DPI is fine but not sure 72 DPI will be good enough for printing

Hopefully the support staff will be able to assist you further but for now changing to 72 DPI is all I have found to "work"

 

 

[HanMade]

3 hours ago, carl123 said:

@HanMade

Document opens and looks OK but export is corrupt

Seems to be related to size

As if I reduce document width to 10% of current value all is OK on export

I can't immediately find the problem, seems to be corruption at document's core

But if I reduce document DPI from 300 to 72 then export is fine at original size (File > document Setup) 

If this is for screen (e.g. a website) then 72 DPI is fine but not sure 72 DPI will be good enough for printing

Hopefully the support staff will be able to assist you further but for now changing to 72 DPI is all I have found to "work"

 

 

Hey Carl

Thank you for trying and helping me! 
When I tried this, it did not work. When I scale down to 72 DPI it still looks weird.
The weird part is, this is a document that I drew myself... How can it be that it is corrupt in it's Core? 

kids regards!
Hanne

[carl123]

No Internet today just my phone. So difficult to type hope serif can look at at the file for u

[carl123]

Here is the full size 72DPI version, if it helps

(Back tomorrow, Internet still dodgy )

 

 

[HanMade]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

Here is the full size 72DPI version, if it helps

(Back tomorrow, Internet still dodgy )

 

 

Thank you! 
I see there are still lines that have not correctly been exported.. :s 
to Bad...

[Dan C]

My sincerest apologies for the delayed response here @HanMade & thanks for the further information provided.

I've been inspecting this file further and I can confirm that the pixel data itself is corrupted, likely occurring just before the file was initially force closed and the error was shown.

There are many reasons that pixel data can become corrupted in a file and this is not an issue that leaves a 'breadcrumb trail' to follow, meaning I'd be unable to confirm the exact cause of this corruption in your file, my apologies.

I can see that you are creating on a rather large canvas, around 330 Megapixels in size - this is roughly 10x larger than an 8K 16:9 image, at around 33 Megapixels. Creating on such a large canvas will require and use a significant amount of RAM and vRAM, and regularly 'filling' past this availability can lead to corruption, due to 'paging' temporary data to your disk, rather than RAM/vRAM.

This is why reducing the file size in Carls testing was beneficial, as it significantly reduces the pixel dimensions of the image itself, and we'd recommend working on smaller (or less DPI dense) document where possible.

I will be logging this file with our developers, to see if the corrupted pixel data can be repaired - although more often than not this is irrecoverable data - our sincerest apologies for this.

[HanMade]

On 11/24/2022 at 6:46 PM, Dan C said:

My sincerest apologies for the delayed response here @HanMade & thanks for the further information provided.

I've been inspecting this file further and I can confirm that the pixel data itself is corrupted, likely occurring just before the file was initially force closed and the error was shown.

There are many reasons that pixel data can become corrupted in a file and this is not an issue that leaves a 'breadcrumb trail' to follow, meaning I'd be unable to confirm the exact cause of this corruption in your file, my apologies.

I can see that you are creating on a rather large canvas, around 330 Megapixels in size - this is roughly 10x larger than an 8K 16:9 image, at around 33 Megapixels. Creating on such a large canvas will require and use a significant amount of RAM and vRAM, and regularly 'filling' past this availability can lead to corruption, due to 'paging' temporary data to your disk, rather than RAM/vRAM.

This is why reducing the file size in Carls testing was beneficial, as it significantly reduces the pixel dimensions of the image itself, and we'd recommend working on smaller (or less DPI dense) document where possible.

I will be logging this file with our developers, to see if the corrupted pixel data can be repaired - although more often than not this is irrecoverable data - our sincerest apologies for this.

Dan, Thank you for your answer! 

It probably is the large amount of usage of the significant amount of RAM and vRAM... My computer was indeed not that empty... Maybe it destroyed itself ... 
It is kind of you if you send this to the developers, but I'll start all over again  So there is no need to recover the file anymore. 

Thank you for your time and all the effort! 

Kind regards! 
Hanne
 

[Calvert]

On 3/20/2021 at 4:35 AM, Pšenda said:

Try search:

https://www.google.com/search?q=external+drive+corrupt+file+site%3Aforum.affinity.serif.com

For example:

 

 

 

External drive or Nas? I've been saving for a few weeks now on my Nas and everything is good.

[Alix]

Help! My Publisher file has just corrupted too.  After experiencing a number of crashes, I'd been saving ridiculously frequently and, I think, it was during one of these saves that my file just said it appeared to be corrupted and needed to close.  Absolutely gutted to have lost hours and hours of work.  I'm working on a local drive on a mac. 

Can anyone help at all please?

I can't attach it here as it's over 9GB (which I'm very confused by too... yes, it is all photos - but they're all 'linked' so I thought that was supposed to keep file sizes down...?)

[Dan C]

Hi @Alix,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums & we're certainly sorry to hear you're having trouble, your .afpub file can be uploaded to the below link -

https://www.dropbox.com/request/RlIvRmWaLmTBpkl2lcFI

Once uploaded, please reply here to let me know - can you also please confirm for me:

• Are you using Publisher V1, or V2?
• What version of macOS are you running?
• What file format are your linked images?

Many thanks in advance!

[Alix]

Hi! Thank you so much for getting back to me - (only just spotted your reply 🙈) - I'm just uploading the file using your link (57mins remaining...)

I'm using Publisher V1 on macOS Big Sur 11.2.3 and the linked images are all jpgs. 

Thank you!!! Got all my fingers crossed🤞

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, Alix said:

only just spotted your reply

It is advisable to set up post tracking so that you receive an email notification when your post is responded to. This can be set automatically for all your new posts in the forum settings.

[Dan C]

No problem at all, many thanks for providing that for me!

I've tried to repair this file using the tools available to me, however thus far I have been unable, my apologies.

Inspecting your file in a HEX editor, it appears as though the file header may be missing or corrupted, causing this issue -

Therefore I'm going to need to log this file with our developers for further investigation, to see if it can be repaired, though unfortunately this cannot be guaranteed. 

I'll be sure to update you here asap, our sincerest apologies once again for any inconveniences caused due to this.

[Nickmas]

Hi Dan, one of my .afdesign files "appears to be corrupted", hoping you can help fix it? I can upload to your dropbox just let me know the link, and some other possibly helpful info is below, let me know if you need anything else.

Affinity Designer version 2.0.0.1640

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro version 10.0.22000

I don't believe any images are linked, all imbedded but I'm not 100% sure on that.

The file was on a server while working on it and while open I accidentally clicked to open it again, nothing happened aside from the taskbar icon lighting up. Then I decided to close and reopen Designer and when I tried to load the file I got the "Failed to open document...file appears to be corrupted." error. I have backup set to every 300 seconds and the file was open for a long time but upon reopening Designer I was not prompted for any recover files. 

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, Nickmas said:

The file was on a server while working on it...

This is a known potential cause of Affinity file corruption. Serif recommends that file be worked on only on local drives & if necessary copied to servers after being saved & closed in the app.

There really should be a warning about this built into the apps.

[Nickmas]

18 minutes ago, R C-R said:

This is a known potential cause of Affinity file corruption. Serif recommends that file be worked on only on local drives & if necessary copied to servers after being saved & closed in the app.

There really should be a warning about this built into the apps.

I've been working this way since Photo and Designer V1 launched without issue, I guess my luck ran out.