Manual Directory Scanning Option

[danielmiller]

Hi, this isn't as much of a feature request as all out begging.

I have no real choice but to access folders containing 3,000-5,000 photos from a NAS over a gigabit network. Every time I leave PM to open photos in Photoshop or check information in my schedule, I have to sit and wait 2-3 minutes for PM to again auto-scan the open directory. It is a massive, frustrating wait that I have to endure about 20 times per day.

I'm pleading for an option to turn off auto directory scanning. Given the option, I would gladly manually refresh if it meant saving an hour of productivity per day. (There is already a menu command to refresh the view)

Thanks for listening.


2 x 2.8GHz Quad-Core Xeon Mac Pro (6GB RAM)
OS X 10.6.4
Photo Mechanic 4.6.5
Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2 x 2TB Mirrored RAID
Gigabit Ethernet

[ron_hiner]

Daniel... I have a similar setup... but my folders typically don't have more than 500 images in them.   But I feel your pain.

First, this is not a PM problem... any program that you use to read and write to your image files is going to be a get those files from the NAS.

Here is what did:  I installed another drive in my macpro and use it it for temporary storage.

Here is my workflow...
1) ingest to the temp drive, with second copy of images go to the NAS drive to a special folder called 'card dumps'
2) edit, rename, itpc, etc using PM on the local temp drive,  (which timemachine is backing up hourly)
3) once I'm done editing, copy the directory from the temp drive to the NAS drive, then take the memory card an toss in a box where it will sit until I need it for the next shoot.
4) once a week or so,  I copy the NAS drive to the other NAS drive using Delta walker.

I may switch this up a bit... I just bought a OWC desktop raid drive  (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/) 
that has an eSata interface - which should be MUCH faster than my NAS drive

[Kirk Baker]

Daniel,

I'm pleading for an option to turn off auto directory scanning. Given the option, I would gladly manually refresh if it meant saving an hour of productivity per day. (There is already a menu command to refresh the view)

If PM doesn't automatically rescan on resume then various problems can occur: PM won't know which images have changed, which ones may have been deleted, which ones may have been added, etc.  Obviously you're switching out of PM and doing things in other apps so PM detects when you come back and makes sure there is no stale data.  It just needs to do this to work correctly.

Is there a reason your network drive needs to have over 3,000 files in a single directory?  Is there any way to speed up access to the drive?  Is your network as fast as it can be?

BTW, the menu command that allows a manual refresh is there so that if you're monitoring a directory (as a contact sheet) and you expect files to be getting added to that directory outside of PM.  You execute the manual refresh and the new files appear.

-Kirk

[danielmiller]

Hi Kirk,

Thanks, as always, for responding.

I suppose I could create a folder for each day of shooting (I already have one for each week with 3,000-5,000 photos) but I'm trying to decrease the steps in my workflow, not increase them. My office time is under greater and greater constraints as we're expected to do more work with less time and resources. (Which I why I no longer have the space to store the recent photos locally) I am already accessing the data via AFP over a gigabit network consisting of three Macs and a gigabit switch so I don't think I can speed that up.

I definitely understand why there could be issues if the directory being shown isn't up to date, and why the auto re-scan is the default. But I also realize that due to the way OS X works, Photo Mechanic isn't always capable of keeping the proof sheet current anyway. This hasn't caused any problems thus far.

Obviously, I wouldn't expect the default auto-rescan behavior to be changed by default, but I'd gladly trade the odd error message for the ability to disable the behavior. Especially since I routinely edit on PM proof sheets that aren't current anyway.

I know this usage isn't normal or even preferable. I'd love to have the extra time at work to keep up with editing, sorting, and captioning, but that's not an option for me right now. I can't blame you for designing your software the way you think it ought to be, but I had to try.

[ron_hiner]

Just a followup... the OWC drive with esata interface has been working great for me and it has completely solved this problem.