Issues with Media sync - Fresh install on a new profile

Hello Ankihub team,

I am having an issue with downloading media from Ankihub decks I am subscribed to onto a new profile, including media from my own uploaded copy of my medical school’s In house deck.

In preparation for the oncoming class of students at my medical school, I wanted to run a test ‘fresh install’ of the Anking deck and my school’s in house deck from Ankihub on a new profile (so that I can make a picture guide of the steps). However, when I do this, a decent portion of the media for the deck isn’t downloaded to my local copy. Ive confirmed the media for these notes DOES exist in the Ankihub copy. I’m not sure why but after repeating the process it seems like its the same notes that are consistently not having their media downloaded from Ankihub.

I have tried certain things such as resetting local changes, which helped a little bit (50k missing ->23k missing), but compared to my active study copy (6.8k missing), still a lot of room for improvement.

I’d appreciate any guidance on how to solve this! Is there a way to force a full media sync from Ankihub?

More background:
I have a main profile that I use for studying my school’s deck and the Anking deck. It is missing some images, mostly just physeo and some odd occassional images that are missing on Ankihub copy of the same notes, such as FA images (based on my random checks).

I have a second profile that I used to prepare the In house deck that I uploaded to Ankihub. It is missing essentially the same number of media files as my first profile because it stared as a copy of my active study deck. So far I have been syncing that deck with Ankihub with no problems.

Hello,

Let’s see if we can’t figure out what’s what. :slight_smile:


Just to make sure: the two decks, on separate profiles, are missing the same media or they are missing different amounts of media? Just want to make sure I’m on the same page with what you’re describing so I have the lay of the land correct in my mind.

If you can, can you let me know how you imported, or otherwise installed, the AnKing deck into your new profile? Knowing how, exactly, you went bout this may shed some light as to possible explanations for the discrepancy in media. Did you export/import as an .apkg? Or are you using the same AnkiHub account on both profiles?


Resetting local changes would be the way to force a full sync, of media and otherwise, from AnkiHub (which it sounds like you’ve done). We’ll keep digging to make sure we haven’t missed anything, but the only reasons I can think of that resetting local changes wouldn’t fully sync media are:

  • You may have certain fields protected, which is preventing AnkiHub from writing to them.
  • There may, in fact, not be any missing media and thus resetting local changes isn’t fixing the issue.
  • It’s possible you might have a bug of some kind.

Just for clarity, owing to copyright AnkiHub does not provide any FA images so their being absent is to be expected. More information can be found here (AnKing Step Deck Wiki), but just pointing this out to clarify that this may not be ‘missing’ media so much as media that AnkiHub does not provide and, thus, can’t sync.

Given this context, it might be helpful if you can show me a couple of things:

  • How are you determining that there is missing media?
  • Can you show me an example of a card in which media is not displaying appropriately?

If you can help me by clarifying a couple of these points I’m confident we can dig a bit closer and hopefully get to the bottom of things for you and get you squared away. :slight_smile:

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Hello Brian!

To confirm, they are missing different amounts of media.

  1. Profile #1, aka the active study profile ~6.8k missing files, mostly Physeo images as discussed.
  2. Profile #2, the copy of Profile #1, also is missing basically the same number of files. (of these, only ~25 in house notes are missing media)
  3. Profile #3, the one that I was testing a fresh install of Anking and my In house deck on, has 58k files missing, which goes down to ~27k after forcing resync with reset local changes (corresponds to about 2.9k in house notes with missing media, ~24k Anking notes that are missing images).

Method for installing on new profile:

  1. Create new profile
  2. Log in usingthe AnkiHub addon, using same account that was used on Profiles #1 and #2
  3. Use the menu for the Ankihub extension to see the two decks I am subscribed to
  4. Click the install button.
  5. Allow it to finish without interruption, and wait for media downloader to idle.
    Note: For Profile #3, no manual export/import done. That was only done for Profile #2

Methodology for determining missing images:

  1. Sync with Ankihub, wait for media downloader to be idle
  2. Tools > Check media > Tag missing
  3. count # of notes tagged with #AK* that have missing media
  4. count # of notes tagged with top level in-house tag that have missing media

Hopefully this helps please let me know anything else you’d like to know!
Understood about the FA images, that part I am fine with, thanks for the heads up though!

An example note:


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Got it, that was a very helpful rundown thank you. :slight_smile:

Just to make sure I have it down:

  • Profile 3 seems to be the outlier, yeah? The other two are at least in the same/similar state?
  • For profile 3, did you reset local changes to each deck individually? (it’ll have to be done one at a time)

And just so I’m on the same page: the card you shared ‘Card9 deficiency’, is that showing up abnormally in all profiles, or only profile 3?

Just for giggles, I went ahead and installed the deck myself and I see the same issue with that particular card, which tells me that there may be an issue with the deck itself, and/or the media, rather than anything that’s happening on your end specifically:

Hello Brian,

Thanks for testing this out on your end! I am simultaneously relieved and troubled that the problem isn’t just me haha.

To confirm, Profile 3 is the outlier. I assume this is because the other two profiles had their media imported at some point prior to being synced to Ankihub. Only Profile #3 was empty when connecting it to Ankihub (done intentionally to simulate a fresh install for the incoming class).
As a result of this, the Card9 card is only showing up abnormally in Profile 3.

Out of curiosity, on your own copy of the in house deck, if you do the check media method, does it show ~2.9k notes tagged with missing media?

Also I tried looking at the html file names for an example failed note vs successful note, and couldn’t discern a meaningful difference based on html filenames alone.
anki_debug.txt (715 Bytes)

Should I try the upload media option on Profile 2 (the one that was used to make the in house deck on ankihub) to hopefully patch this up?

Please let me know your thoughts!

This has been my operating suspicion, though as we get closer it seems all the more likely to be the case.

I also show the ‘Card9’ card as being errant when I installed the deck, which would seem to corroborate this.

It’s a little harder to hedge based on my end, since I installed the deck just to take a peek but didn’t do it from a completely fresh profile or install. But, after tinkering for a bit, and in an attempt to at least approximate something like a fresh profile/install, I see 3.5k tagged as missing media. Though again, that may only be directionally accurate since this wasn’t a fresh install.

If you can do that it might give us some good insight as to how to square the circle, so to speak. If that resolves the issue/s, we may have ourselves a ringer. If it doesn’t, then at least we’re a little bit closer to the stated goal. :slight_smile:

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Hey Brian,

First, sorry I forgot to answer one of your earlier questions about how I did the ‘reset local changes’. I did do them separately!

I have ran some tests for my in house deck and have attached my notes below.
I am happy to say that, after I uploaded media as described in my attached notes, the # of in house notes with missing media went down to 211 on a new test fresh install profile vs 2.9k on my first fresh install. Unfortunately I am struggling to see what is still affecting some of those 211 notes. The issue is most problematic for certain IO card masks that seem to be randomly missing with no clear pattern.
If you could try also doing a sync or fresh install to see if this also is reflected on your end, I would appreciate it!

Please let me know your thoughts!
anki_debug.txt (4.4 KB)

@martin23 is the current other maintainer for my school’s in house deck

I installed the deck in a fresh profile. AnkiHub downloaded ~45600 media files. Check Media reported 150 files are missing (mostly image occlusion images it seems). They are used in 211 notes as you reported. Most of the files exist in our database though, so this must be a bug. Will look into it more.

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Thank you Abdo and Brian for helping me with this!
I hope this thread has been helpful so far and that a fix can be found! In the meantime, please let me know if there is anything else I can provide to help.

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