what's PM doing?

[cor]

If you click another application in Windows XP and make that the active app, and then switch back to PM, it takes 2-3 seconds for PM to become active. It seems to be doing a lot of disk activity on the currently selected folder and in cache files. Browsing in a directory with a few hundred 20MB raw files while switching back and forth to another application becomes quite tiring after a while. What's PM doing at this point? Can this be turned off somehow, whatever it's doing? This is in the latest version.

Regards.

Cor

[Kirk Baker]

If you click another application in Windows XP and make that the active app, and then switch back to PM, it takes 2-3 seconds for PM to become active. It seems to be doing a lot of disk activity on the currently selected folder and in cache files. Browsing in a directory with a few hundred 20MB raw files while switching back and forth to another application becomes quite tiring after a while. What's PM doing at this point? Can this be turned off somehow, whatever it's doing? This is in the latest version.

It is scanning all currently browsed paths for updated files.  It cannot be turned off.

Do you have multiple contact sheets open?
Where are the files located?

-Kirk

[cor]

I only have 1 contact sheet open, with the files on a network share (mapped drive). The directory holds about 700 20MB d2x raw files. It also happens if you switch between the keywording windows and the main PM window.

Cor

[Hayo Baan]

Hmm, are you on a slow network?  That would contribute to PM's lag.  700 images is quite a lot as well (though PM easily handles many more), but being on a network drive certainly doesn't help...

As a test, copy the files to a local hard-disk and compare the speed.

Cheers,
    Hayo

[cor]

I was wrong, I did have multiple contact sheets open, with a combined number of maybe 2000 images over 4 folders. This was totally accidental, I did not realize the default behavior was to open a new contact sheet when you click on a folder in the navigator. But, when I changed the behavior to opening a new folder in the current contact sheet, things didnt really get any better. It's trying a whole list of file extensions (xmp, thm, lzn, etc etc....) for every file in the folder. That's a lot of io to do on ethernet. It does this every single time I switch back to the main PM window, even if I switch to the keywording window or the preference window. I understand that sometimes PM will need to check if anything has changed on the FS, but it's not doing it if I just keep the window open and idle, so why do it if I switch apps (which to me is the same as keeping PM window idle).

It's making PM a bit of a drag to use unfortunately   The network is a gigabit network to a local fileserver with a 2TB raid array, surely lots of people have similar setups. The machine is quad core, 4GB memory). On a local hard disk this is (ofcourse) much faster.

Cor

[Hayo Baan]

Cor, with those specs I wouldn't count your setup as "a slow network"

On my own system (which has lower specs than yours), I can browse >2000 images stored locally, but that becomes slow too.  I hadn't noticed that putting it in the background to work on another application and then returning back to PM made things worse, but now you mention it, I think it does.

So the question is: does PM do something extra (or more frequent) when you return it to focus?  If so, could this maybe be stopped/reduced or something?

[Kirk Baker]

So the question is: does PM do something extra (or more frequent) when you return it to focus?  If so, could this maybe be stopped/reduced or something?

Photo Mechanic checks for new/changed/removed files.  At this time this process cannot be avoided.  I could make it optional but then if it were, then you would manually need to do a rescan in order to see any changes to the filesystem.

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

So the question is: does PM do something extra (or more frequent) when you return it to focus?  If so, could this maybe be stopped/reduced or something?

Photo Mechanic checks for new/changed/removed files.  At this time this process cannot be avoided.  I could make it optional but then if it were, then you would manually need to do a rescan in order to see any changes to the filesystem.

Kirk, yeah, I figured something like that already.  So it does it every time the application gets focus again?  I understand that is smart as after a focus change it is likely images have been altered by an application outside PM.  However, this also degrades performance a lot so maybe there should be some threshold or something for the minimum time between rescans?
The manual option would/could be a last resort, especially useful on network drives, or with large contact sheets.  The default should still be to automatically scan; we don't want people complain "PM doesn't show my new/altered files", now do we

Thanks,
    Hayo

[cor]

I did some network tests this afternoon and I dont think it's my network. I can get 950 mbit/s on this gbit link between the workstation and the server, so definately no bad cables, or packetloss or whatever. The raid enclosure can do 80MB/s reading. The main slowness seems to be the fact that it's trying to stat all those non-existing files for every single file in my folders. Let's see, for each of the hundreds of raw files it's trying to locate .XMP, .THM, .LZN, .FLT, NEF.BIB, NEF.RDSF, XIP, JPG, JPE, JPEG and WAV. So for each file it's doing at least 11 disk reads.

Im just thinking out loud, probably totally wrong, and without any knowledge of windows internals (more of a unix person)....

Why is it reading all those extension? Im assuming it's to see if some metadata file has changed and PM can show/use those changes. Maybe it's an idea to be able to set which files you want to scan. I dont use Canon, or bibble, or any others except for XMP.

Does windows have a possibility to see if something has changed in a folder by looking at the parent folder's last modification time (or even last access time)? Maybe cache that time and if it has changed you rescan, otherwise dont. (im not even sure windows has such a thing on a folder entry).

I'd personally be happy with a preference setting that doesnt rescan on focus

Cor

[Kirk Baker]

Cor,

I did some network tests this afternoon and I dont think it's my network. I can get 950 mbit/s on this gbit link between the workstation and the server, so definately no bad cables, or packetloss or whatever. The raid enclosure can do 80MB/s reading. The main slowness seems to be the fact that it's trying to stat all those non-existing files for every single file in my folders. Let's see, for each of the hundreds of raw files it's trying to locate .XMP, .THM, .LZN, .FLT, NEF.BIB, NEF.RDSF, XIP, JPG, JPE, JPEG and WAV. So for each file it's doing at least 11 disk reads.

Im just thinking out loud, probably totally wrong, and without any knowledge of windows internals (more of a unix person)....

Why is it reading all those extension? Im assuming it's to see if some metadata file has changed and PM can show/use those changes. Maybe it's an idea to be able to set which files you want to scan. I dont use Canon, or bibble, or any others except for XMP.

Does windows have a possibility to see if something has changed in a folder by looking at the parent folder's last modification time (or even last access time)? Maybe cache that time and if it has changed you rescan, otherwise dont. (im not even sure windows has such a thing on a folder entry).

I'd personally be happy with a preference setting that doesnt rescan on focus

What version of Photo Mechanic are you using?  Version 4.5.2 should not be individually checking for all of those file extensions.

-Kirk

[cor]

Im using 4.5.2. Just double checked.

Cor

[Kirk Baker]

Cor,

Im using 4.5.2. Just double checked.

And you're seeing the version number from where?  The About box?  Or from the version info in Windows Explorer?

-Kirk

[mbbphoto]

Photo Mechanic checks for new/changed/removed files.  I could make it optional but then if it were, then you would manually need to do a rescan in order to see any changes to the filesystem.

-Kirk

I think the new contact in a tab every time is a bit of an issue, especially if you are on a server or need to open multiple or nested folders in one window.
Don't get me wrong its a great feature.
It might be helpful to be able to turn off the 'open in new tab' feature with a preference option and have a  a key modifier (such as option or command) to use whichever action is not set as the default.

Marc

[cor]

Hi Kirk, check these screenshots:

First the downloaded file: http://uwimages.smugmug.com/photos/185925512-M.jpg. I installed 4.5.2 on top of 4.5.1.1
Then the startup screen: http://uwimages.smugmug.com/photos/185925520-M.jpg  (eeks, only 1 day left
And the About inside PM: http://uwimages.smugmug.com/photos/185925504-M.jpg

It's 4.5.2 unless the install of 4.5.2 mixed up with 4.5.1.1 somehow and ive got a hybrid.

Cor

[cor]

I downloaded 4.5.2 again, and reinstalled it, just to be sure. Same thing. I can see it opening all those extensions with a file io monitor.

Regards,

Cor