Affinity Designer V2 Crash when using Export Persona

[albertkinng]

This issue is happening so often that I decided to record the crash knowing when it's going to happen. I work on a document in Affinity Designer and when saved I want to use the Export Persona and when I'm ready to export my files It crashes. I need to close the document and open it again to be able to use the export persona. What I was doing to avoid this is finish the document and close it and open it again so I can export the files. This is an issue that needs to be fixed. 

[v_kyr]

Look after possibly generated crash reports, they might give some indication why he app crashes then.

 

[agcphoto]

I don't know if your problem is like mine, but it was extremely frustrating this morning.

• When i clicked to export the slice, it opened the last file dialogue box I had open
  • this was the folder which contained the last image I placed in my document, not the folder I wanted to save to
  • As soon as I selected another location, the problem started and crashed Designer 2
• This happened several time.
• I restarted the program
• I opened my document
• I pretended I wanted to place another image in my document, using File > Place and selected the folder to which I wanted to save my slice
• I then proceeded to select my slice, and it opened the folder I had just selected for "placing" an image (remember that I didn't really do that).
• Success.... Although it took a while to process

I think there is a bug in the export process that needs to be fixed.

George

Saskatoon, Canada

 

[albertkinng]

14 minutes ago, agcphoto said:

I don't know if your problem is like mine

Yes. That's exactly my problem. 

[albertkinng]

On 1/4/2023 at 6:42 PM, v_kyr said:

crash reports

As you can tell... This is an everyday situation...

[agcphoto]

Did you try my workaround?

Thanks.

[albertkinng]

19 hours ago, agcphoto said:

Did you try my workaround?

Yes, but my workaround works better for me in this specific situation. Either way this is annoying and Affinity needs to fix this bug ASAP.

[R C-R]

On 1/8/2023 at 11:25 AM, albertkinng said:

As you can tell... This is an everyday situation...

But they can't tell from that what is in the crash reports, which might help them diagnose & correct the problem. So it might be a good idea to post a few of those reports so they can examine them.

[Old Bruce]

On 1/8/2023 at 9:25 AM, albertkinng said:

As you can tell... This is an everyday situation...

Those are Diagnostic reports (and no I do not know what that means).

[albertkinng]

On 1/9/2023 at 2:24 PM, Old Bruce said:

Those are Diagnostic reports

So? In which way do you think your comment helped people with the same app issues? Just wondering.

[v_kyr]

The FAQ thread (which I referenced above) about where to find Affinity crash reports already tells ...

Quote

macOS

Open the Console app from Applications > Utilities. In the left hand panel click Crash Reports - you will see a list of Crash Reports. Find the relevant crash report - it should display the app's name in the Process Name column. Right click and select Reveal in Finder. Please send us the .crash file.

... so I would expect then to see here more the whole bloody contents of one of the latest ADe crash reports, either as an attached TXT-file, or as a copy/paste of text in a quote. - Otherwise nobody can inspect it (the report contents) and thus maybe find out what the overall problem of all evil might be here.

[albertkinng]

11 hours ago, v_kyr said:

where to find Affinity crash reports already tells ...

I did man. Thanks. Report has been sent to support.

[drpixels]

I get very long times when trying to switch to the export persona, in designer or photo, my old amdfx8150 8 cores, 32gb of ram, gtx970 was very fast with version one, on my new machine Ryzen 9 5900 24 cores, 64gb ram and a 3060ti with v2 of affinity it takes ages, is this normal? old machine with SSD and the new one with m.2 drive so I truly don't know why its so slow.

[albertkinng]

It’s happening to me too. I re-installed the old versions to see if it was a problem with Ventura OS (newest macOS) or it was the Affinity apps. I use Tech tool Pro for verifying the health of the drive and inspected the resources of the version 2 apps as well. Here’s an interesting found… Turning off all internet connections on my machine and basically blocking it from the web makes the apps work better after a soft system reboot. That means only the essentials without the internet were working in order to version 2 start behaving better. The problem was still there, but it was lightly better with this environment. Version 1 was outstanding with the same conditions. With and without internet Version 1 was fast, useful and productive. 

 

So, this is my theory. I am a developer too so, I think this new version (I didn't open this app with Xcode or any other program analyzer yet) is using a large amount of code from a server to help some of the tool executions inside the app shell. For example, in one of my latest developed apps a color picker app is using a server connection to create gradient progress of the selected colors and show the user a code for the preferred language to export as a color picker. It's a simple and small app, but it uses an online server to run. I’m not saying this is happening here but, Little Snitch (an app to track behind the scenes' internet actions) is showing a constant connection. 

 

If that’s true… Affinity needs to update the servers to a faster one or use a sandbox layout to bring half of the code within the app. In other words, that’s why Adobe is a cloud server overall that uses their apps as content shells now. Everything is running on servers. So, maybe the solution will be to create a super large app to run flawlessly, or to clean up the code and give them a better answer.

Anyway… it’s driving me crazy the way it has been responding V2 lately. Hope this gets resolved soon.

[calmar]

I have the exact same problem with Affinity Designer v1 and now v2. I'm saving to a NAS and always thought the network connection might be the problem. I nearly tried EVERYTHING on the NAS OS, changing SMB settings etc. ... but no luck.

Now I stumbled upon your post and really hope there is some kind of solution for it. I would love to go through the problem with somebody from serif support ... unfortunately, there is no crash report generated. I have to force-quit the application and open it again.

And that's my only workaround at the moment force-quitting and reopening the app ... until it lets me export. Normally I have to do this 2-3 times until the export-persona doesn't freeze and lets me export.

I wish you, me and of course everybody else a speedy solution to this behavior.

Edited January 20, 2023 by calmar

[agcphoto]

I think this is a bug in the program which Serif needs to fix. 

[calmar]

I also think so... I really love their apps. And when V2 was announced I instantly thought "YEAAAH... this bug will be gone". But it isn't ... yet

Edited January 20, 2023 by calmar

[albertkinng]

I hope it’s just a bug. Really. 

[mikeswarts]

Yes! This is also an everyday issue for me exporting from both Affinity Photo 2 and Affinity Designer 2. I did not have the problem before version 2. When I click on Export Slices, I frequently get a beach ball and I have to quit are restart the app. Even restarting the app is not fool-proof. I sometimes have to restart 2, 3, or more times to get it working.

+1

 

[albertkinng]

1 hour ago, mikeswarts said:

This is also an everyday issue for me

For some reason, and I'm maybe speaking too soon... This is not happening when using the beta apps. 

[Callum]

We currently have a logged known issue that causes this when you have folders synced to your drive from a Cloud service such as iCloud or OneDrive etc. Please could you confirm if this is the case? This is something are developers are actively investigating and we hope to have solved soon.

Thanks
C

[calmar]

5 minutes ago, Callum said:

We currently have a logged known issue that causes this when you have folders synced to your drive from a Cloud service such as iCloud or OneDrive etc. Please could you confirm if this is the case? This is something are developers are actively investigating and we hope to have solved soon.

Thanks
C

No, my files are all located on a (network-) mounted NAS and connected via SMB3 protocol.

[Callum]

Does the crash only occur when exporting back to the NAS rather than locally?

[albertkinng]

2 hours ago, Callum said:

could you confirm if this is the case?

No. My files are on external drives, connected via USB-3  but we're planning to use Google Drive and Dropbox to share documents soon.

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Export Persona hang in Open and Save Panel Process when Exporting Slices" (REF: AFD-5921) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.1.0.1781".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.