Author Topic: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?  (Read 8103 times)

Offline VictorBoyko

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why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« on: January 30, 2007, 11:29:09 AM »
i have quite a simple task: i shoot over thousand images (models on a runway) and have to select the very sharpest of them, checking the sharpness on models faces (meaning full size view has to be locked at the same offset from corner).

why photo mechanic renders the images so slowly? i mean the amount of time between rough preview and final image on my macbook pro is very annoying.

i wouldn't be asking this if i haven't checked that both iview (mac) and acdsee (windows) make this job without any noticeable lag. full size view are available almost instantly, already locked at the same coordinates image through image.

this is actually the main reason why i haven't bought photo mechanic yet.
it is an amazing piece of software, but this flaw distracts my workflow a lot.

thank you for your feedback.

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2007, 12:30:15 PM »
i have quite a simple task: i shoot over thousand images (models on a runway) and have to select the very sharpest of them, checking the sharpness on models faces (meaning full size view has to be locked at the same offset from corner).

why photo mechanic renders the images so slowly? i mean the amount of time between rough preview and final image on my macbook pro is very annoying.

i wouldn't be asking this if i haven't checked that both iview (mac) and acdsee (windows) make this job without any noticeable lag. full size view are available almost instantly, already locked at the same coordinates image through image.

this is actually the main reason why i haven't bought photo mechanic yet.
it is an amazing piece of software, but this flaw distracts my workflow a lot.

thank you for your feedback.

Are you shooting RAW images or are these file purely JPEGs?

-Kirk

Offline VictorBoyko

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2007, 03:45:46 PM »
i have quite a simple task: i shoot over thousand images (models on a runway) and have to select the very sharpest of them, checking the sharpness on models faces (meaning full size view has to be locked at the same offset from corner).

why photo mechanic renders the images so slowly? i mean the amount of time between rough preview and final image on my macbook pro is very annoying.

i wouldn't be asking this if i haven't checked that both iview (mac) and acdsee (windows) make this job without any noticeable lag. full size view are available almost instantly, already locked at the same coordinates image through image.

this is actually the main reason why i haven't bought photo mechanic yet.
it is an amazing piece of software, but this flaw distracts my workflow a lot.

thank you for your feedback.

Are you shooting RAW images or are these file purely JPEGs?

-Kirk


pure 8mpix jpegs from canon 1dmkii (2300x3500)
with raws it is much better, previews are instant, but not full size, they are embedded jpegs.

i can even shoot a video vor fou comparing the speed of full size viewing. with iview (or acdsee, god bless) i can quickly flip back and forward two pictures with my left and right arrow keys to understand which one is better. with pm this is just impossible.

i can even live with a side function like "render full size views" which will take additional minutes for a batch to be processed so i can view them later without lag.

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2007, 04:20:58 PM »
i have quite a simple task: i shoot over thousand images (models on a runway) and have to select the very sharpest of them, checking the sharpness on models faces (meaning full size view has to be locked at the same offset from corner).

why photo mechanic renders the images so slowly? i mean the amount of time between rough preview and final image on my macbook pro is very annoying.

i wouldn't be asking this if i haven't checked that both iview (mac) and acdsee (windows) make this job without any noticeable lag. full size view are available almost instantly, already locked at the same coordinates image through image.

this is actually the main reason why i haven't bought photo mechanic yet.
it is an amazing piece of software, but this flaw distracts my workflow a lot.

thank you for your feedback.

Are you shooting RAW images or are these file purely JPEGs?

pure 8mpix jpegs from canon 1dmkii (2300x3500)
with raws it is much better, previews are instant, but not full size, they are embedded jpegs.

i can even shoot a video vor fou comparing the speed of full size viewing. with iview (or acdsee, god bless) i can quickly flip back and forward two pictures with my left and right arrow keys to understand which one is better. with pm this is just impossible.

i can even live with a side function like "render full size views" which will take additional minutes for a batch to be processed so i can view them later without lag.

I take it you are shooting RAW+JPEG then?

Rather than a video, could you please post a screen shot of the RAW tab of the Photo Mechanic preferences dialog?  I'm guessing you have RAW rendering enabled and that you have rendering RAW files when possible.  This does indeed take a long time and would result in what you describe.

Also, what are the settings of the Caching tab in the Preferences dialog?  How much RAM do you have?

I can tell you that on my system 100% 8MP JPEGs render quite briskly and my system (Dual 2.0 GHz G5) isn't nearly as fast as your laptop.

-Kirk

Offline VictorBoyko

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2007, 05:35:53 PM »
no, kirk, i mean pure jpegs. no raw at all.
i know about raw rendering option but it's not about that.

i have 1 gig ram.

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2007, 06:04:52 PM »
no, kirk, i mean pure jpegs. no raw at all.
i know about raw rendering option but it's not about that.

i have 1 gig ram.

Could you please post the screen shots of both the RAW tab and the Caching tab?  Save the screen shots out as JPEGs and then use the "Additional Options..." link to attach your screen shots.

Thanks,

-Kirk

Offline VictorBoyko

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2007, 11:44:46 PM »
http://www.victorboyko.com/pmlag.mov

you will see what i am talking about.

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #7 on: January 31, 2007, 01:00:23 AM »
http://www.victorboyko.com/pmlag.mov

you will see what i am talking about.

I watched your movie.  For some reason it took more than 30 minutes to fully load.

Your images are from a D200 and they are 10MP, not 8MP.  Your memory cache is set to 256 MB of RAM.  When a single 10MP image is loaded and is ready for display it consumes 40MB of RAM.  Since your cache is set to 256MB this means that only six 10MP images can be held in memory at the same time (256/40).

In your movie you do not flip back and forth between two images, you perform the following sequence:

019, 023, 028, 031, 037, 042, 048, 052, 056, 065, 069, 074, 080, 086 before going backwards through the following sequence:
080, 074, 069, 065, 056, 052, 048, 042, 037, 031, 028, 023, 019, 014, 007 and then you go back up through the following sequence:
014, 019, 023, 028, 031, 037, 042, 048, 052, 056, 065, 069 and end the video.

A total of 16 unique images, using a total of 642MB of memory.
I note that it takes two seconds to load the first image (017) at 100%.  Given that time, and the fact that Photo Mechanic works on four images in the direction you are moving, it would take about 8 seconds to load and cache the four images that you would then be able to zip through at high speed.  But because you're whipping through the images so quickly and your memory cache is so constrained, Photo Mechanic cannot keep all of the images in memory at once.

I also note that in your usage pattern you never pause for even two seconds to look at an image so PM doesn't ever get a chance to finish loading a single image before you tell it you don't want to look at that image anymore and that you are now interested in a different image.

My suggestion would be to increase the amount of RAM in your system to 2GB and set Photo Mechanic's Memory Cache to 768 MB of RAM.  That will help a lot and will keep a fair number of images in memory at once, but you'll still need to slow down your pace a bit.  In your video you spend 27 seconds zipping through your images, visiting a total of 41 images which when there isn't enough memory to hold them all would take 82 seconds to load them.  And when you have enough memory to load the 16 unique images, it will still take 32 seconds to load them.  You spent 27 seconds going back and forth which just isn't physically enough time to load them on your system.

My additional advice would be not to go through the images at 100%, but instead use the non-zoomed mode and then Command-click on the detail area you want to see which will zoom that individual image up to 100% when you need it.  Command-click again to return to non-zoomed mode.

As for your comparisons to iView, are you certain it is showing 100% previews?  And as for ACDSee, are you running it on the exact same system?  Or is it on a desktop system with faster hard drives and more memory?

HTH,

-Kirk

Offline VictorBoyko

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #8 on: January 31, 2007, 03:39:55 AM »
kirk,

thank you for your valuable feedback.

the thing is that i went through images so quickly just for you to show how it would be done in real life. as you saw that type of pictures is what we do.
initially we take 10 to 15 pictures of one separate model (models are walking very quickly, lighting is difficult, we use predictive servo autofocus and so on - i just explain why so many) and then we have to choose which is the sharpest so we often compare images not one to one but like five to five., constantly moving back and forth to compare.

viewing non-100% can not work, because, as i said, we have to choose the best images.

just checked iview - it is not that faster, but acdsee 9.0, running on a rather old pentium4-2400 desktop with 512 RAM, loads 100% previews in approx. 0.29-0.33 seconds (this info is shown in status bar). i can flip them with even faster pace than i've shown in my video. amount of RAM acdsee consumes in no more than 140-150MB. compared to 2 seconds, as you say (and as i see) of PM workflow...

i just mean that in an ordinary weekday in a fashion week in milan there are ten shows that result in 10000-12000 images daily.
being that faster, acdsee workflow can gain us at least an hour of processing time, and that becomes important because tomorrow will be another ten shows...

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #9 on: January 31, 2007, 07:11:31 AM »
kirk,

thank you for your valuable feedback.

the thing is that i went through images so quickly just for you to show how it would be done in real life. as you saw that type of pictures is what we do.
initially we take 10 to 15 pictures of one separate model (models are walking very quickly, lighting is difficult, we use predictive servo autofocus and so on - i just explain why so many) and then we have to choose which is the sharpest so we often compare images not one to one but like five to five., constantly moving back and forth to compare.

viewing non-100% can not work, because, as i said, we have to choose the best images.

just checked iview - it is not that faster, but acdsee 9.0, running on a rather old pentium4-2400 desktop with 512 RAM, loads 100% previews in approx. 0.29-0.33 seconds (this info is shown in status bar). i can flip them with even faster pace than i've shown in my video. amount of RAM acdsee consumes in no more than 140-150MB. compared to 2 seconds, as you say (and as i see) of PM workflow...

i just mean that in an ordinary weekday in a fashion week in milan there are ten shows that result in 10000-12000 images daily.
being that faster, acdsee workflow can gain us at least an hour of processing time, and that becomes important because tomorrow will be another ten shows...

Then the answer is obvious.  Use a Windows PC and run ACDSee.

But really you're not comparing apples to apples.  You are running a different OS, a different system with a far faster IO system than your MacBook Pro.  ACDSee probably has some sort of region of interest JPEG decoder and does not decode the entire image at 100% meaning it only decodes the area that you're viewing.  That's the only way I can see them capable of decoding and displaying in a third of a second.

Also I'd venture that they are not doing color management (of course I could be wrong) and you can indeed get a 25% speed boost by turning off color management in the Preview window (turn off the colorful icon in the toolbar.)

And since you said it yourself that the lighting is difficult I'm sure you can judge lighting issues at resolutions lower than 100%.  But hey, it really comes down to you.  If you want to flip through 10-15 images without pausing at all, meaning that you can judge quality of an image in a tenth of a second and need that kind of speed, then PM is not going to fulfill your needs at this time.

To support your style of viewing, fairly serious changes would need to be made to the underlying caching system that Photo Mechanic uses, and those sorts of changes are not going to be made in the near term.

-Kirk
« Last Edit: January 31, 2007, 01:30:28 PM by Kirk Baker »

Offline VictorBoyko

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Re: why full size jpegs are rendered so slow?
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2007, 02:02:49 PM »
i will never switch to windows, that goes without saying :)
i'd rather spend another hour with PM, and maybe that 'slowing down' will make me to look more seriously into images.

anyway, kirk, i never thought that ANY software developer would be that prompt and helpful.
thank you very much and looking forward for new release!

take care.