Closed: PM Crashing at ingest

[Hayo Baan]

I get consistent crashes of PM when trying to ingest a CF memory card.

I've suffered from this problem before, but then dismissed it as a problem with a single card as it was an old card and other cards ingested fine. I now however, suffer from the problem on a card that previously worked just fine.

In both cases I let PM create and send an error report so the crash info should be available to you. As a work around I'm now manually copying the files (and this works fine by the way), but this of course is not what I want  to keep doing

Oh, this is with Mac OS X 10.5.7, and the latest beta of PM (I see there is a release version now).

Oh, and I apply a basic IPTC template with copyright info and also perform a rename. The files are ingested into one folder.

[Kirk Baker]

Hayo,

I get consistent crashes of PM when trying to ingest a CF memory card.

I've suffered from this problem before, but then dismissed it as a problem with a single card as it was an old card and other cards ingested fine. I now however, suffer from the problem on a card that previously worked just fine.

In both cases I let PM create and send an error report so the crash info should be available to you. As a work around I'm now manually copying the files (and this works fine by the way), but this of course is not what I want  to keep doing

Oh, this is with Mac OS X 10.5.7, and the latest beta of PM (I see there is a release version now).

Oh, and I apply a basic IPTC template with copyright info and also perform a rename. The files are ingested into one folder.

I sent you a direct email from your filed crash report.  I guess you haven't received it yet?

Anyway here is what I wrote to you:

It crashed while trying to generate Finder Icons for your photos.  Unless you *really* need Finder Icons on your photos, I suggest turning that feature off.  Your Ingests and Copy operations will go much faster too.  You can turn this feature off in the Files tab of the Photo Mechanic Preferences dialog.

Regards,

-Kirk

Kirk A. Baker
Senior Software Engineer
Camera Bits, Inc.

[Hayo Baan]

Ah, excellent! This seems to have solved the problem (at least the next card ingests fine)!

I remember changing this setting recently; I thought, what the heck, it probably speeds up finder folder views. If not this, what is the benefit of this setting anyway?

Funny thing, by the way, is: not all cards/ingest seemed to suffer from the problem (I have ingested multiple times without any problem).

I reckon, this is an OS/library bug then, not a PM bug/problem? Is it something that can be solved/prevented by you, or should I just not select this option 

Thanks

[Kirk Baker]

Hayo,

Ah, excellent! This seems to have solved the problem (at least the next card ingests fine)!

I remember changing this setting recently; I thought, what the heck, it probably speeds up finder folder views. If not this, what is the benefit of this setting anyway?

Funny thing, by the way, is: not all cards/ingest seemed to suffer from the problem (I have ingested multiple times without any problem).

I reckon, this is an OS/library bug then, not a PM bug/problem? Is it something that can be solved/prevented by you, or should I just not select this option 

Adding Finder Icons adds a pre-rendered 128x128 thumbnail to the resource fork of each image.  It requires PM loading the image and then making a series of calls to the OS to generate the icons to be used by the Finder.  It is the code in the OS that appears to be crashing.  There isn't much we can do about it.  There is a newer API call that does all of the work but it leaks memory in a big way so we use the older methods which apparently aren't implemented very well on Mac OS X 10.5.x.

My recommendation is for all users to turn off this setting permanently.  Not much is lost by not having the thumbnails since the Cover Flow view is actually hampered by them.  And you'll get quite a speed boost by disabling the feature as well.

-Kirk