Resolving Dynamic Media Smart Crop failures caused by dispatcher and CDN caching
Dynamic Media Smart Crop fails to load correctly or display updated crop renditions in AEM Assets and AEM Sites when dispatcher caching or Dynamic Media CDN caching serves stale or blocked resources. Common symptoms include broken Smart Crop editors, missing crop handles, and stale crop renditions. Resolve the issue by validating dispatcher cache and filter rules, clearing cached resources, invalidating affected CDN content, and verifying Smart Crop behavior.
Description description
Environment
- Adobe Experience Manager Dynamic Media
- Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service (AEMaaCS)
- Adobe Experience Manager Managed Services (AMS)
- AEM 6.5 with Dynamic Media Smart Crop
Issue/Symptoms
- Smart Crop Editor displays a broken image instead of the editing interface.
- Smart Crop loads only after adding a cache-bypass parameter such as
?nocache=123. - Updated Smart Crop renditions don’t appear on AEM Sites pages until a cache-bypass parameter is added.
- Crop handles, resize controls, or preview images don’t display correctly.
Cause
Dispatcher caches or blocks Smart Crop editor resources under /libs/dam/gui/content/s7dam/smartcrop/*, preventing the editor from loading correctly. Dynamic Media CDN caching also serves outdated Smart Crop renditions after asset updates until the CDN cache refreshes.
Resolution resolution
Perform the following steps to resolve the issue:
- Determine whether the issue is caused by Dispatcher caching or Dynamic Media CDN caching by testing the Smart Crop Editor with a cache-bypass query parameter.
- Configure Dispatcher to exclude Smart Crop editor resources from caching. Add a cache-deny rule for:
/libs/dam/gui/content/s7dam/smartcrop/*. Verify that Dispatcher no longer serves these resources from cache. - Review Dispatcher filter rules and ensure Smart Crop editor paths are explicitly allowed. Confirm that Smart Crop URLs return the expected content instead of HTTP 403 or 404 responses.
- Clear the Dispatcher cache to remove stale Smart Crop editor HTML, JavaScript, and related resources. Reload the Smart Crop Editor and verify that it works without cache-bypass parameters.
- Validate Smart Crop functionality by opening an asset and confirming that crop handles, resize controls, preview images, and editor components load correctly.
- If updated Smart Crop renditions still do not appear after publication, investigate Dynamic Media CDN caching. Republish the asset and verify whether updated renditions appear without query parameters.
- Invalidate affected Dynamic Media assets through the CDN invalidation workflow (or API where applicable), then reload the affected pages and verify that updated Smart Crop renditions are displayed.
- If Smart Crop profiles appear inconsistent across assets, open the affected folder properties and save the configuration to refresh folder metadata. Verify that the correct Image Profile is inherited by the folder and all assets.