Catalog Metadata Updates - number remaining is not intuitive to understand

[Bob Hendricks]

When one is  cataloging alargenumberof files the may reside number of folders the Catalog Metadata Updates presents the number remaining.  But, the number remaining seems to be some small number--2 or 3 or so, and these numbers seem to recycle. Can you explain what this output means?  Perhaps a minor change in the text for the output might help provide a more intuitive understanding of what these numbers mean.

[Bill Kelly]

Hi Bob,

When one is  cataloging alargenumberof files the may reside number of folders the Catalog Metadata Updates presents the number remaining.  But, the number remaining seems to be some small number--2 or 3 or so, and these numbers seem to recycle. Can you explain what this output means?

The Catalog system uses a batch-oriented pipeline of job queues.

For example, when scanning a folder to a catalog, there are typically two kinds of jobs being queued:

Scan -> Preview Gen -> Preview Copy to Catalog
Scan -> Metadata Gathering -> Metadata Updating in Catalog

However, the small recurring batches of Metadata Updates you're seeing are probably triggered by the Preview Gen job. When generating Catalog preview images, Photo Mechanic Plus also calculates hashes of the bytes and pixels in the original image, which are stored in the Catalog to help detecting when the original image may change in the future. In order to store those calculated hashes in the Catalog, they are queued as Metadata Update jobs. Thus, you'll see a trickle of Metadata Update jobs occurring during Preview Generation.

Hope this helps,

Bill